liamsaunt

Pureed winter squash and potato soup with some crispy roasted mushrooms added at the end for texture.

Thank you very much! I will look into all of these today. I really appreciate your help.

So, rememberer how I said early in my last report that I was going to plan the dining for our April visit much more tightly? Well, that did not happen. We are leaving next week and I have exactly one dinner booked. I'm traveling with my nephew, who has an anaphylactic allergy to crustaceans, which makes things little more complicated. We have an apartment in the 16th this visit, and will probably be eating at home at least some of the time. We are going to London for a few days before going to Paris, but the London part is all settled. If anyone has any last minute suggestions for Paris restaurants, preferably on the more casual/bistro end of things, I am all ears! We are definitely not looking for multi Michelin starred experiences this time. The only thing everyone has told me that they want to eat is "lots of bread, really good cheese, and tasty food". So helpful... 🙂 Thanks!

Ramen noodle bowls with the leftover cabbage from the prior evening's stir fry, oyster mushrooms, cilantro, and a big spoon of chili crunch to spice it up

I had a package of chicken thighs that I ground up and a big green cabbage to sell to the group, so both got used over the last couple of nights. Tuesday we had chicken tinga tacos And last night we had stir-fried chicken and cabbage with fish sauce butter with rice, adapted from a recipe for stir fried pork that I found on NY Times Cooking. Leftovers of the stir fry will be resurrected in a noodle bowl for tonight's dinner. And thankfully we are supposedly not getting cabbage in today's CSA delivery.

No cook dinner: wedge of brie, hunk of bread, arugula salad with strawberries and blueberries Fish and chips another night

A few recents. Potato chowder Arancini with tomato and spinach sauce Spaghetti with meyer lemons and bay scallops

Sir fried noodles with bok choy, broccoli and scallions, with an egg on top

It rained quite a bit overnight and remained overcast today. Instead of swimming, we spent the day birding and looking for sea glass. Dinner was at Mim’s Seaside Bistro, a long time restaurant on St. Thomas The menu is massive. This is one of the three drink menus. The setting is very casual. They have an outdoor patio area right next to the water, but were seating everyone under the roof as it had been raining off and on all day. I think they were a little overbooked because of not being able to use those outdoor tables. I grabbed a picture in between seatings We had to start with conch fritters. They were very good with big chunks of conch I had grilled shrimp with seasoned rice and vegetables And husband had a big lobster We shared a slice of key lime pie for dessert Moon rise from the patio We fly home tomorrow. We are booked to come back to St. John for two weeks this summer, and I doubt we will come back over to St. Thomas during that trip, but I ended up liking the visit very much. There are certainly more restaurant options on this island, and we enjoyed most of the places we tried.

Same condo breakfast as yesterday We spent the day snorkeling again, and had better luck finding lots of creatures hiding inside the mostly dead reef. I still have not looked at our underwater photos yet. At this point I will probably wait until I am home, since tomorrow is our last full day. We took a sunset sail from the hotel side of the resort. Leaving from the beach I was able to get a better shot of the ruined house I am obsessed with. It is massive. I suggested that my husband buy me this waterfront property. A reasonable request, don’t you think? 😂 A view of St. John across the water. This side of the island is where most of the residences and businesses are. The other side is mostly National Park and undeveloped. There was food on the boat, but we didn’t eat much since we were going to dinner. I saw caprese skewers, shrimp seveche, chicken sliders, and goat cheese tarts go by. There was an open bar too, but we just relaxed and took in the views. Back to the resort, and then out to dinner We went to Three Palms. Menu Drinks. Husband had a cucumber cocktail, and I had club soda We shared the gambas ajillo, which were nice and garlicky. They were in a deep bowl, so it was hard to get a picture of them. Husband also wanted to order the lobster dumplings. He liked them. I tried a bite but wasn’t in the mood. I had the swordfish, which was nicely cooked And he had the mahi, which was also perfectly cooked Dessert was a passionfruit panna cotta with guava crust and mango. We did not like this. It was too bitter. The rest of the dinner was really good though, so we did not mind too much.

It was probably a mistake to order the coconut cake. However, it’s one of our favorite desserts in Provincetown on our Cape Cod vacations. The “dark chocolate” ice cream tasted exactly like a kid’s fudgcicle. We were…not impressed. Tonight is looking more promising though. We are going on a sunset sail and then having dinner at a “new to us” highly rated seafood restaurant. We’ll see! 😀

Today was another relaxing day. Condo breakfast And then off to the beach. We borrowed some fins from the beach hut and spent most of the day snorkeling. I have not looked at my photos yet. The snorkeling on St. Thomas cannot compare to St. John, not even a little bit. We did see some grouper, snapper, barracuda, rays etc. The coral was almost all dead, not surprising given how warm the ocean has been, but sad to see. We cancelled our original reservation for this evening, and walked back to Caribbean Fish Market for dinner, mostly because husband wanted to get the wahoo I had the other night. This ended up being an unwise choice. Husband ordered a martini, and I ordered a club soda with lime When I took a sip, it turned out they gave me a glass of vodka with a splash of soda and a lime wedge! That was a big surprise to say the least. They swapped it out pretty quickly. We shared tuna nachos. They were OK. Husband got the wahoo he wanted. The piece I had was thicker and better cooked than his portion. I ordered coconut shrimp. They were a little bland. I ended up peeling off the coating. The menu description said they came with mango salsa, but instead there was just what tasted like a jarred sweet mango chutney. The rice on the side was terribly overcooked too. The pickled carrots were tasty. Good thing I was not really hungry! Ever optimistic, we shared a slice of coconut cake with dark chocolate ice cream. One bite each and we were done with this dessert. It was….not great. We will leave it at that. Oh well. Not every meal is going to be great. We are going to some new places the next few nights and hopefully our luck will improve.

It’s a person. The stilts they dance on can be up to 15 feet high. These were a bit shorter than that. The mocko jumbie is the cultural ambassador for the USVI.

Today was very uneventful. We woke up and immediately decided to cancel tonight’s dinner reservation. Neither of us wanted another multi course meal. Condo breakfast We spent the day swimming. I went for a walk along the rocky shoreline on the side of the beach because I wanted to get a better look at a Balinese style property that I could see at the point of the bay. Coral rubble beach When I got near it, I saw that it was boarded up and abandoned. Many of the roof tiles were missing. I assume it was wrecked during the double whammy of Irma and Maria in 2017 and never rebuilt. It’s just odd to see such a large property in a prime spot sitting fallow. I would like to know what the house’s story is. Every afternoon at 3pm there are free freshly baked cookies in the lobby, and free cocktails on the pool deck. None of the cocktails have sounded good to my husband yet, but today we sampled the cookies. Pretty tasty. We went across the street to the local beach to watch the sunset and just went to one of the restaurants in property for a casual dinner. A mocko jumbie was there, which was cool. These guys walk in the Carnival parades every year. St. Thomas Carnival is in a month, and St. John Festival is always on July 4. We have been on St. John for Festival before, and have attended some of the events, but have never gone to the parade because it always starts late and takes forever. Kind of like our dinner tonight haha My husband’s margarita, delivered 52 minutes after we were seated for our reservation. Maximum island time! We ordered some fried shrimp, which arrived much later and another batch of grilled fish tacos to share No dessert, because we would probably still be there if we had ordered any!

So, remember how I said I was going to leave and go to a famous beach since there were no ships in today? Yeah…that did not happen. I got a serious case of lazy-itis and just stayed at the resort. Breakfast in the condo. I did do some exploring, though. I went across the street to the public beach It was rocky, but pretty. All beaches in the Virgin Islands are actually public, but you have to access them by the water. No crossing over private land. The resort I am at provides public land access to the beach on either end. I actually think many of the St. Thomas resorts do. The St. John properties do not. I did some exploring and visual beach combing. It’s illegal to take shells, rocks, coral etc. You can pick stuff up but have to leave it. This is why I collect sea glass, it’s considered litter here. Cool sponge Hobie cats that you can take out from the resort beach. I would probably break a leg or something. For dinner we took a ferry over to Lovango Cay. Drinks menu Husband had a margarita and I had the Lovango breeze Specials and the regular menu I really wanted to try the triggerfish, but they are one of my favorites to see snorkeling, so I passed. Husband had no similar qualms. I got the Lovango tomatoes, which were delicious And he had the triggerfish bologna. I chose the mahi. The fish was delicious. The corn was a tad chewy. And he had the triggerfish main course. He said the triggerfish was kind of sweet. I gave him part of my mahi and he preferred that. I guess triggerfish are better as snorkeling companions. None of the desserts sounded super appealing to us, so we just split a dish of sorbet and each got an espresso. We got a scoop of blood orange and one of coconut lime. Now we know what the mystery light pink flavor was from last night’s meal. It was blood orange. The coconut lime one was our favorite Goodbye Lovango