Food, Glorious Food!

Yesterday, January 9^th, was an at sea day. So we went to the culinary show and were treated to some great recipes and techniques. As you know, I like to share recipes on my regular blog and in my author newsletter, so I'll definitely be passing these treats along.

Mushroom Cappuccino
(I have no idea why they call it cappuccino. There’s not a smidge of coffee in it. The dish is an appetizer/soup.)

Ingredients:

1 lb Chopped assorted mushrooms (button, shitake, portabella, whatever kind you like)

5 TBS Chopped onion

1 clove garlic (also chopped. Are you seeing a pattern?)

2 oz. clarified butter (I’m afraid you’ll have to Google how to do that. It’s what I’ll do before I try this recipe at home.)

2 pints Chicken or Vegetable stock

A few drops of Truffle oil (This stuff is like magic in a bottle. It makes your kitchen smell as if a real chef is at work! Even if I don’t know what I’m doing, I like to make people think I do!)

1 tsp. Chopped parsley

Salt & white pepper to taste (Why white pepper I hear you asking? I guess it’s so your soup won’t have a bunch of little black flecks in it. Also, white pepper has just a hint of “lemon-iness” to it. )

Sprigs of thyme to garnish

Directions:

Here’s what the Carnival Cruise chef said to do.

Sauté onions & garlic in butter.  Add mushrooms. Add stock and simmer. Season with salt and pepper. When mushrooms are cooked, blend in a blender and sieve through a chinoise (I’m sure a number of you know what this means, but it’s another thing I’ll have to Google when I get home. The chef was terrific, but he zipped through each dish and didn’t show how to do everything.)

Return the puree to the pan and add cream and a few drops of truffle oil. Adjust the seasoning and consistency. Garnish with thyme, parsley and a thin slice of garlic bread. Serve hot.  

(Personally, I don’t see the need to use a blender. I’d like tasting little bits of mushroom in my soup. This recipe serves 4—or just 2 if you want to make a meal of it.)

When I get home, I’ll post the remaining recipes for this four course meal—Baby Leaf Spinach & Fresh Mushrooms, Broiled Supreme of Chicken, and—drumroll, please!—Tiramisu! Be sure to sign up for  my author newsletter, The Coldwater Warm HeartsClub, so you’ll be notified when they’re up!

Carnival Dream Itinerary

Internet service is notoriously dicey while at sea, so I'm posting our itinerary as a sort of place holder. I'll be blogging every day. It's my way of remembering my travels, but my musings may not post until I get a good connection. Thanks in advance for your patience.

Date	Port	Arrive	Depart
Sunday, January 8	New Orleans, LA		4:00pm
Monday, January 9	At Sea
Tuesday, January 10	Cozumel, Mexico	8:00am	6:00pm
Wednesday, January 11	Belize City, Belize	8:00am	5:00pm
Thursday, January 12	Roatan, Honduras	7:00am	5:00pm
Friday, January 13	At Sea
Saturday, January 14	At Sea
Sunday, January 15	New Orleans, LA	8:00am

NOLA or Bust!

On Saturday morning I laid awake in the darkness, just waiting for the alarm to ring. When it finally did, after a quick breakfast and last minute packing, we loaded up the van and pointed out noses south.
Sort of…
There’s no direct way to get to New Orleans from our home in the Missouri Ozarks, so we drove in a southeastern diagonal, cutting across Arkansas on highway 63. The sky was just beginning to lighten by the time we reached Mammoth Springs. Ethereal, huh?

In a few more minutes, the sun made its glorious appearance. Everyone always raves over sunsets. I really love seeing it rise.

We drove on, slipping through a teeny corner of Tennessee, then from Memphis south into Mississippi on I-55. All went well until we hit Jackson where an accident had both sides of the interstate at a standstill. We took the opportunity to slip off the interstate and grab a quick lunch at a fast food place at the bottom of the ramp. Unfortunately, when we came out ready to go on, the snarl on I-55 hadn’t moved a jot. The same eighteen-wheeler was still sitting on the overpass where it had been when we left the line.
So while the DH filled up our gas tank, I went into the station and said to the other customers waiting in line to pay for their chips & drinks, “We’re trying to get to New Orleans. Does anyone know how far south this traffic jam goes?”
A couple of people in line were really helpful. One had come from the south and knew where she’d hopped off to drive through town to avoid it. Another gave us excellent directions for making a detour through the capital city to skirt the traffic stoppage. I snagged this photo of the capital building as we breezed by.

No more problems all the way to NOLA. Now the DH & I have both been in all 50 states! Yeah, I know it’s not the greatest pic, but we were moving fairly fast.
As we neared New Orleans, I realized we were not driving on a normal highway. It was elevated on pylons over a swamp. (Should I say wetlands?) Anyway, it was an amazing feat of engineering that went on for miles and miles.

We reached our hotel before the sun set and now we’re just waiting until it’s time to head for the pier tomorrow morning.We’re scheduled for an 11:00AM embarkation!  I’ll leave you with one last pic from our day’s journey.

Why I Travel

When I was a kid, my family used to vacation at my grandparents' cabin in northern Minnesota. Every year we made the same journey, caught the same bass and crappies, and fought off the same mosquitoes. It was fun, but it was sort of like being at home except we could hear loons calling and see bears at the dump. Still, it was all I knew about being adventurous.

But then one year, my father bought a camper and we took to the open road. He made me his navigator (even after I steered him over the Big Horn Mountains when it was still a gravel road!) For many summers, we camped all over the western United States.

I loved it. Moreover, I loved how I felt when I was out of my element, when I was seeing something besides midwestern cornfields, when I was meeting new people around our campfire. I learned that folks in other places spoke and thought differently than we did and that was ok. Camping created a hunger in me for more experiences, more unexpected vistas, more understanding the greater world.

When I was a senior in high school, I was invited to join a national choir that sang at Carnegie Hall in NYC & the Kennedy Center in Washington. One of the pieces we did was based on Walt Whitman's

Song of the Open Road

Related Poem Content Details

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 

Healthy, free, the world before me, 

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. 

...

The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. 

...

All seems beautiful to me.

...

Camerado, I give you my hand! 

I give you my love more precious than money, 

I give you myself before preaching or law; 

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? 

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

(This vid isn't of my choral group, but if you want to hear the music, click away!)

The text spoke to me and I vowed then to make travel part of my life plans. I craved the adventure, the sense of expansiveness, of getting out of myself and exploring this wide, gorgeous world.

Good thing I married a guy who eventually went into travel technology and worked for multiple airlines, finishing his career with Google! Thanks to his flight benefits, our kids had passports from the time they were 8 & 6. We took trips we'd never have been able to afford otherwise, both foreign and domestic. Here at home, I've been blessed to visit 49 of our 50 states.

Louisiana is the last, so this cruise begins by crossing off that milestone for me.

Our bags are packed and we'll leave at oh:dark-thirty tomorrow morning, heading south! Can't wait to see what other things this trip has in store! 

This is us…

Merry Christmas to me! On January 8th, my DH & I are heading out for a 7 day cruise out of New Orleans on the Carnival Dream. We’ll make stops in Cozumel, Belize & Roatan (an island off Honduras). We love cruising. This trip will bring our days afloat to 110!

There’s just one teensy, weensy problem.

This is us…
My DH retired (a little early) in January 2015 and that’s me with the supplemental  O2 cannula elegantly draped from behind my ears and down my chest. We’re all about having adventures, but we’re not exactly party people. We'd be voted least likely to wind up with a lampshade on our heads.



We usually cruise with lines that cater to older clientele (75 of our 103 sea days are with Holland America.) We’ve had lovely times dining with nonegenarians, partly because they have fascinating stories to tell and partly because it makes us feel like the young guns.

The demographics on Carnival ships is much younger. For this cruise, WE are in serious danger of being the old farts at the table!

So to combat the case of “old-itis” I feel coming on, I’ve compiled a bucket list of things to do on this cruise that will shock me out of the feeling that I’m over the hill. Here goes:

1. Slide down the big water slides!  This is going to be a bigger deal for me than it may seem. You see, I have a lung condition that means I require supplemental O2 when I’m active (read: doing anything but the imitation of a rock.) My POC (portable oxygen concentrator) doesn’t like to get wet. It will short out. Soooo, I’ll either have to climb the stairs to the top with all the speed of a three-toed sloth without my POC, or my Dear Husband will have to carry it up for me & then carry it back down to meet me when I reach the bottom. Either way, I intend to do it at least once.
2. Dance at the disco. Years ago, the DH & I took ballroom dancing lessons. It was great fun. The DH loved it because the man is always in charge on the dance floor.  Now, doing an underarm turn means we get hopelessly tangled up with my cannula, but I can still bust a move if I dance pretty much in one place. It’s worth a try.
3. Sing karioke. I’m a classically trained soprano. I sing all the time, but the idea of doing it to canned accompaniment without any rehearsal makes my heart flutter a bit.

Anyway, even with our challenges, I’m sure we’ll enjoy this cruise as much as any of the others we’ve taken. After all, when the deck is swaying beneath my feet, I know I’m on vacation.
And when you’re on vacation, you should never sweat the small stuff. In the grand scheme of things, being an old fart is exceedingly small.