Surprise in the Morning

 

 

 

 

Wooosh, wooosh. A familiar sound at several times a year, but rarely is the wooosh accompanied by a surprise landing at 7:15 on a Sunday morning. Quite a surprise as this beautiful balloon with five passengers landed on my driveway. I quess our cul de' sac made a great target for journeys end from nearby Cheshire, Connecticut. Almost got my self in trouble when I told them had I known they were dropping in, I would have had bacon and eggs ready for them. THey had the right answer that shut me right up.....we can wait was their reply. All in all a very interesting way to start the day.
Was able to document the activity with pictures, so here they are.

Cruise News II

Those of you who know me are quite aware of my passion for cooking and obviously eating based on my size and appetite. It is then natural for me to be keenly interested in all things food aboard a cruise ship. The cruise on the Maasdam included not only many great meals, but several cooking demonstrations ( you can be sure I went to them all) by a master chef and even a tour of the kitchens. I found out that every day over 6,000 meals are served on the ship by a dining room staff of 84. It was interesting to see how they handled that many meals it in the kitchen and what the kitchen itself looked like. Some of us panic when we have a few guests for dinner. Can you just imagine how organized you have to be to handle that many meals. After you finish the tour you begin to think about the quantity of food consumed when you dish out 6,000 meals a day and a total of 84,000 for our 14 day trip. Well, of course I found out for you folks and thought it might be interesting to pass it on.

Here’s the consumption for a fourteen day cruise:

17,000 pounds of meat and meat products
8,000 pounds of poultry
4,000 pounds of fish
5,000 pounds of seafood
2,200 pounds of butter and margarine
24,000 pounds of fresh vegetables
9,000 pounds of potatoes
3,600 pounds of watermelon
36,000 eggs
8,000 quarts of dairy
1,400 pounds of sugar
40,000 individual sugar packages
4,200 pounds of rice for the crew
40 pounds of caviar
5,800 pounds of flour
400 gallons of ice cream

Oh, and I also calculated that they needed 40,000 chocolates to leave on the beds each night. Can you just imagine the consumption on the really big ships. This list doesn’t even take into consideration what the baker produces daily. The baker and his staff of four prepare over 20 different kinds of breads that include 120 loaves of bread, 100 loaves of French bread, 4,000 dinner rolls, 800 croissants and 800 Danish and sweet rolls.

And just think of the dish washing involved. Each evening 3,000 dinner plates, 7,000 dessert plates, 2,000 side plates, and 5,000 glasses are washed, not to speak of ramekins, plate covers, silver cutlery, trays, and other odds and ends. Unbelievable!

Cruise News

If any of you have been wondering about my long absence from this blog site this picture is part of the reason. This ship is called Maasdam and is part of Holland America’s cruise fleet of 14 vessels. By the way, Holland is part of the Carnival conglomerate that also owns several other cruise lines such as Princess, Carnival etc. Marge and I recently spent 14 days aboard the Maasdam as it cruised from Boston to Montreal stopping on the way in Bar Harbor, Halifax, Sydney,Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec City. From Montreal we reversed direction and headed back, stopping again at all these ports.

This is the third cruise we’ve taken, all with Holland America. We think Holland America is the cruise for us at our age, no climbing rock walls, surfing down pool waves and late night dance parties. A more sophisticated crowd (but not everyone), but you do have to dodge the wheel chairs, walkers and motorized vehicles carrying people who aren’t quite sure where they’re going.

The Maasdam is an older ship that was built in 1993 and is scheduled for a makeover in spring, 2011. It’s much smaller than the huge new ships they are building, but not small in class or service. Its size also allows it to make some ports that the big boys can’t make. She’s 720 feet long, carries 1258 passengers and a crew of 572. It has its share of amenities, beautiful dining room, casino, computer area, library, pools spa’s etc. Entertainment was phenomenal. Went to the shows every evening and had opportunities to meet a several of the entertainers. I was even part of the act one night, but that’s another story.

Obviously whenever anyone thinks about cruises they think about the food. The Maasdam didn’t disappoint. We had a nice gourmet dinner very night which included Alaskan king crab, Tenderloin, Lobster, Duck, Salmon, Chicken, Pheasant and so on. Appetizers started me off right by offering me Escargot on two occasions and great shrimp on many others. If you didn’t want to be waited on elegantly you could choose to enjoy a buffet type dinner up on what they call the Lido deck. Food was very good up there too, and the view from that top deck was great.

We had the good fortune to meet a great number of very nice and interesting people during the cruise. Trivia was played somewhere every day and we were fortunate to meet and team up with a very nice couple from Wales who were retired doctors. They were pretty sharp and the four of us had about four victories and many, many second places over the fourteen days. Seems we lost by one point almost every day.

Enjoyed the tours we took at the ports and visited many of Canada’s historic places. The excellent tour guides did a super job relating a great deal about Canada’s history, which frankly, I knew nothing about.

I really feel that a cruise is the way to go vacationing. If you want to do nothing you can do nothing. Want to live it up, you can. Want to read a book, grab a deck chair and enjoy the book along with the ocean. Marge and I took advantage of just about everything offered to us, and filled our time between events playing Gin Rummy (often by the way, 44 games in all. Score: Marge 22, Bill 22).

Stopping now because you’re all probably bored and fourteen days creates two many stories to include in a short blog. You’ll have to wait to be bored during a future face to face.

Loved this on our Alaska cruise a few years ago.

Taku Smokeries Famous Pate

1 pound smoked sockeye salmon
16 oz. cream cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tsp. dill weed
A few turns of fresh ground pepper

Remove skin and finely shred the smoked salmon. Add softened cream cheese in small chunks. Process all ingredients in food processor. Enjoy on crackers, bagels etc.