Steve and Cathy's Blog

We are heading back to Miami. We are in the Old Bahama Channel, with Cuba at least twelve miles (the very last thing we would want is to wander into their territorial waters) on our port side. The ship is traveling at almost twenty nautical miles per hour, a pretty good clip. We’ve covered approximately 280 miles since we left St. Barts, and that leaves another 800 to go to reach the Port of Miami at 6:00 am on the 28^th.

Timely arrival for a cruise ship is a must, because we must be off the ship by 9am so that they can replenish the ship, welcome another complement of passengers from 1pm to 4pm and set sail again by 6:00pm. It’s a very organized drill, and is actually quite fascinating for us logistics geeks.

Cathy has been lobbying to eat breakfast in the Grand Dining Room rather than Waves Grill. We had chosen Waves because it’s outside and quick. But the selection is necessarily limited at Waves, and Steve has a hankering for something other than just eggs, bacon and fruit. Cathy uses his wish for greater variety to lobby for the GDR, and of course it works.

We enter around 8. It’s pretty quiet. As always, Mary the maître d is there and friendly and efficient as ever. We are seated and order our customary cappuccinos (to which we have become quite happily addicted). Steve orders what he has come to the GDR for: Swedish pancakes and corned beef hash! Ahhh! Cathy orders smoked salmon without cream cheese, four slices of a baguette, and a fruit bowl with Tahitian vanilla syrup (with berries and perfectly, identically cut up assorted melon, pineapple, and kiwi. This is a breakfast we will never get at home. A wonderful start to the day.

We have signed up for another Food Demonstration hosted by Chef Steph at 10:00am. This one is entitled Master Class: Caribbean Favorites. Both of us find her to be both an expert in her profession and a very entertaining individual, but each of us take away something very different from her lectures. So this post will have two responses. 

Steve will start: Well, since I knew Cathy would follow the recipes for the food she prepares, I took notes on some of the interesting other things Chef Steph had to say. She started by saying that this demo was about four food subjects: Caribbean, Floridian, fresh and healthy, and 1493. 

The first three she would incorporate into her actual food preparations. 1493 actually is her way of introducing the Columbian Exchange, which Wikipedia’s article on the subject begins this way: “The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the New World (theAmericas) in the Western Hemisphere, and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) in the Eastern Hemisphere, in the late 15th and following centuries. It is named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and is related to the European Colonization and global trade following his 1492 voyage. Some of the exchanges were purposeful; some were accidental or unintended. “

In Columbus’ second voyage in 1493, he purposefully came back to this area, to search for black pepper, a very valuable spice that he hoped he would find to bring back to Europe. He did not, of course, but he did return with many other edibles, such as potatoes, tomatoes and many others such as peppers.

Here are some interesting tidbits from her lecture:

• The smaller the pepper, the closer it is to the original strain.
• Some foods that were found in the New World and traveled east to Europe: chili peppers, black beans, tomatoes, chocolate, wild rice and celery.
• When first introduced in Europe, the nobility considered tomatoes to be poisonous. The problem was the acidic nature of the fruit. Nobles ate on pewter plates, and tomatoes created a chemical reaction that caused the lead in the pewter to be released. This problem did not exist in the lower classes, who couldn’t afford pewter plates!
• There is an old admonition that, to stay healthy, east food of a wide variety of colors each day. Chef Steph prefers a handful of M & M s to meet that need.
• To accurately measure the temperature in a pan or saucepan, use the back of your hand. Hold it about 4 inches above what you are cooking.
• Chef Steph’s rule of cooking: If it makes you happy, do it!
• Three sisters: beans, squash and corn.
• Three theories on how the Bloody Mary drink got named: 1) a bar in New York City, 2) Ernest Hemingway, and 3) Mary Tudor.
• She showed us that when you need to add ginger as an ingredient, it is easier to have ginger juice made in advance. You add it in exactly the same measure as you would grated ginger. To make the juice, grate the ginger, then squeeze the juice out of the grated ginger through cheese cloth or a tea towel.

One very creative part of her lecture, designed to introduce some of the foods involved in the Columbian Exchange, is what Chef Steph calls Columbus Bingo. Each couple or single is given a bingo card. As the food items are called off, we use the chocolate squares that are left on our beds nightly by our stewards to mark the stares we have on our cards. Steve just misses winning; another ‘contestant’ just yells “Bingo” seconds before.

Cathy, of course, has a much more learned experience, since she has so much knowledge about such matters. Here are her comments:

She made black beanburgers, which she said “sound awful but are surprisingly good!” ingredients include such things as mushed up black beans and sweet potato, sauteed in light olive oil.

Then she made pain perdu which means lost bread in French. It’s basically fancy French toast, made with leftover French bread. She made a caramel sauce for it, then drizzled melted chocolate over the top. 

She had told us that she lived in New Zealand. So after the class I asked her how that came about. I knew that it isn’t easy to become a citizen there. She said she had flown there years ago on a vacation and walked off the plane and felt and overwhelming sense of belonging. So first she established residency (5 years!) there, and after five years of that applied for citizenship. She lives in Christchurch and loves it. 

Well, we head back to the stateroom to await the time for lunch. Right at noon, as our ship captain customarily does, an announcement from the bridge begins. Captain Maksym Melnikov, a native of Russia, come on. Most captains give just location, weather and that’s about it. He does much better, and today is no exception.

“Why talk about the weather, when we can instead talk about the rich and famous,” he begins. He continues with the information he has been providing about the super yachts that we saw abounding in Gustavia, St. Barts. He knows this is an interesting subject to us cruisers, and he seems pretty taken by the subject as well. The information is fascinating, and he tells us about one particular yacht: Flying Fox. This yacht cost $400 million to build, is 150 feet long with a crew of 54. It is said to be the largest yacht available for charter at $3 million Euros per week.

Fascinating stuff to be sure. But lunch is beckoning. We head for Waves Grill. The weather is perfect. After that, Cathy stays in the room to watch a movie (no more sun for her!). Steve finds a spot on the Pool Deck to sit and blog. 

We also filled out the survey that Oceania asks every passenger to do at the end of a voyage (there is one mid-cruise as well, but not nearly as detailed). It is no longer done on paper; it’s on line and the Cruise Director has been urging everyone for days to fill it out. It takes an hour for us to complete it, and it is time well spent because cruise line management takes these surveys very seriously. It’s a time to offer improvements, of course, but also to recognize crew members who we believe have gone above and beyond to make our journey even more special than it already is. Steve has kept a list, and we run though the list. The difficulty is that the level of service is so high that we could mention dozens of people, but we hadn’t made notes of all their names. We do the best we can and Steve feels guilty for no doubt leaving off some names that should be on the survey.

We have a reservation for 6:30pm at our last specialty restaurant, Red Ginger, which features Asian cuisine. It is packed, which is not unusual as it is reputed to be the most popular of the four specialty restaurants on board. Packed and loud; not obnoxiously so, but significantly louder than, say, the Grand Dining Room. The service is friendly and fast, especially given the crowd they have to serve. We speculate that many of the passengers have put off dining here, and, now that the cruise is ending, want to try it out. The food is excellent and quite intriguing.

We head back to the room and watch a Humphrey Bogart movie. Turns out there are dozens and dozens of movies we can watch. This is the way we end our next to last Sea Day.