liamsaunt

Build your own lettuce wraps and cucumber salad

gnocchetti sardi with fennel, swiss chard, and bacon in a parmesan cream sauce

Where is everybody? 😀 Last night, pork stir fry for my niece and husband, and chicken stir fry for me and my sister. The check on my husband's plate is the stuff my sister snuck on there because she said i gave her too much chicken 😂

We had sandwiches last night too. Nobody could decide what they wanted, so I just made BLTs.

Pizza with tomato eggplant sauce And a carbonara one for my niece

Spicy cashew butter chicken and spinach with rice and naan. Not a very attractive curry, but we all thought it was delicious.

Rigatoni with summer squash and zucchini sauce

Use up the crisper drawer dinner salad before today's CSA box delivery. Chicken on top. I wanted to just do a spice rub on the chicken but niece wanted them breaded so that's what I did. The simple spice rub would have been better. I made a creamy avocado dressing, again to appeal to my niece's taste. She's not a huge fan of dinner salads but she ate this one. The bacon on it might have helped.

Yes indeed! We really like it. I made a large batch of the spicy tahini this time and stuck it in the fridge for future dinners. My husband did comment that he would especially like it if I would make chicken shawarma to go with it, so I might try that next time. Last night, miso salmon noodle bowl with bok choy, scallions, shiitake mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and chive flowers. All the veggies were from this week's CSA box.

I usually mix it up. I recently did three weeks of vacation with no cooking at home other than toast for breakfast, and by the end I was so sick of restaurant food. More typically, I do about half dinners out and half cooking at home. I have a small Wusthof travel knife kit that I bring with me since rental house knives are universally terrible. I sharpen them before I go and they get the job done. If I am going somewhere that we are driving, I also bring along a skillet for cooking eggs, plus reusable straws and cups/travel canteens and a pepper grinder. If we are flying and checking bags I still bring the knives and cups/straws.

Hahaha. Maybe I should have said cauliflower cooked with shawarma style spices. Anyway, it was tasty. Yesterday we got the dreaded Acadian redfish in the fish share delivery, so after cutting out all the bony parts and stripping off the skin, I ground up the rest and made miniature Thai flavored fish cakes that we ate in lettuce wraps. I also made rice and a smacked cucumber salad. I added some bell peppers to the salad because I only had one cucumber for four people.

Cauliflower shawarma. We decided at dinner that making both rice and flatbread was too much food. Based at what was left on everyone's plates, next time I will skip the rice.

Sometimes my farm share gives me giant bok choy. I separate the leaves from the stalks, chop both (after rinsing about 1000 times, that stuff is sandy!), then stir fry the stalks first and add the leaves towards the end. It gets tender while still remaining some crunch, and my family finds it very enjoyable. I do not own a CSO, so nope! Last night, lemon linguini over arugula with roasted broccolini, garlicky breadcrumbs, and a frico egg.

Thanks! I was on vacation. It turns out that three weeks of restaurant food is too much restaurant food for me. I am not complaining but I am glad to be home and eating my own food for a while. The salmon. It is from the Andrea Nguyen cookbook The Banh Mi Handbook. Here is a version from her website. The version in her book adds fish sauce, and suggests cilantro instead of dill. I also added lemongrass and some spicy chile. https://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2007/08/salmon-cakes-wi.html Last night, Indian spiced squash zoodles and chicken with herbed yogurt, mango, and naan

If you enjoy coffee or tea, make sure you have the equipment and set aside the space for whatever you need to brew that. I had a very, very tiny kitchen once when I lived alone, and was generally cooking only for myself, and my now husband when he was able to visit for an occasional weekend. Other than my stove and a dorm sized (!!!) fridge, I owned a dish strainer, two good skillets, a larger pot and colander for making pasta, a teakettle, three good knives (chef, paring, and serrated), one thick baking sheet (I did not bake bread or cookies back then), a blender, and two cutting boards. I wished I had a food processor, but could not afford it at that time. Even now, living in a home with two full sized kitchens, I don't own a lot of the gadgets that many people have. (I do have a food processor though!)

Salmon banh mi

Soy ginger haddock with (not enough) box choy and rice.

Here is the JetBlue Mint menu for the return trip. Options: I don't know what the welcome snack was--we were not offered anything. Rose and sparkling water pours. Both were unlimited if you wanted. Lots of fish on the menu, as you can see. I always think fish is an odd choice for airplane meals, but there was no avoiding it. I went with the beet salad, the mahi caesar, and the Jamaican vegetable stew The stew was extremely sweet and unappealing. I did not eat the mahi on the caesar. The beet salad was pretty good. Husband got the snapper plus the mahi and the beet salad. He said the mahi on the salad was fine flavor wise but very overcooked. The snapper was "OK." The best thing was actually the dessert--carrot cake Side order of Vieques

Now that I am home--back to the chaos that is three bathrooms being renovated at the same time--here is the final installment of our trip. For our last lunch, we drove out to our favorite, Miss Lucy's. The sargassum had abated a bit We shared an order of callaloo soup with crab and then ordered a grouper reuben and a crunchy grouper sandwich and split them We spent the afternoon at one of our favorite beaches, Cinnamon And had dinner at Rum Hut, where we split an order of mahi mahi sliders and tuna tacos One final sunset from the deck of our rental villa And then the next morning, the saddest view of all, the island's downtown from the water taxi to the airport We'll be back!

Nope! It should be though, we spend enough time there haha. Yesterday we basically punted on food. We did stop at a local deli and pick up a couple of sandwiches for lunch. I got a rock shrimp, remoulade and arugula one (bread is universally terrible down here, probably because of the humidity, so I just scooped out and ate the filling), and my husband chose a more traditional cold cuts style of sandwich. Shrimp Cold cuts I thought I would go a bit off topic and use this post to show why we keep coming back here over and over--the snorkeling. Here are a couple of things we spotted yesterday. Spotted trunkfish Feather duster worm Arrow crab pair Horse-eyed jack French angelfish Blue tang with porkfish Needlefish Barred hamlet Baby sea turtle Porcupinefish (when they are excited or threatened, they have big spikes that stick out everywhere! I've seen this in a mating pair once) Full grown sea turtle with remora attached The beach, post snorkel And dinner, a frozen coconut popsicle from Irie Pops in the pool with sunset It's the last full day of our visit today. Time to get out there!

Yesterday was our 25th anniversary, and our last "big" meal on this trip. But first, lunch at High Tide. I kept things lighter with a caesar salad with shrimp (I basically ate the shrimp and left most of the salad). Husband got fish and chips. Drink And we had to get some soft serve from Irie Pops We spent the afternoon at Trunk. Here is a photo from the scenic overlook. Trunk is consistently voted one of the best beaches in the Caribbean. Later that night it was off to Zozos at Caneel Bay for dinner. Here's a sailboat bringing a party in to dine. I meant to set something like that up for us, but never got around to it. The resort is still destroyed from the 2017 hurricanes, but the current leaseholder's option runs out next year, and someone new will be taking over, and hopefully restoring it to some form of its old self. View from the check in area The restaurant from the dock We had the table on the rail all the way to the left, with a nice view of the water and dock Here's the menu and wines by the glass list Husband got a cocktail named "Two Butt Beach" after one of the seven private beaches on the resort's property. The beach was definitely big enough for more than two people, but that was its nickname back before the storms. It was actually our least favorite of the seven beaches so I thought it was funny that he picked that cocktail. The menu is prix fixe and you chose one option from each section at the start of your meal. They bring out an antipasto to start. This is tasty and hard not to eat too much of it, knowing all the food that is coming. We both chose the wild mushroom pappardelle for our first course. And the mahi mahi for our main course. My husband added a butter poached lobster tail to his, but I did not get a picture. We picked two desserts to share., the vanilla cheesecake with blueberry compote and the chocolate torta. Neither of us were hungry at this point, so most of the desserts went uneaten, though they were both very good. We both agreed the ice cream on the chocolate dessert was our favorite part of either dish View of St. Thomas and the moon to end the evening

Yesterday we drove around the island--to a neighborhood we were considering renting a home in for a family trip next summer (turned out to be a hard no, the house is beautiful but the road to it is a horrible chore), and then over to one of the furthest spots in Coral Bay for some snorkeling. You need four wheel drive to get over here, so we usually have the place to ourselves. We had not ventured here since the storms, so were unsure what to expect underwater. The moonscape beach Unfortunately, this area has not recovered well from the hurricanes, so no underwater photos today. It was nice to snorkel for a couple of hours though. We stopped by a little bar/restaurant for lunch while on that side of the island, Aqua Bistro We got an order of the mahi tacos and the shrimp tacos. They were pretty paltry. Mahi Shrimp We had planned this to be our only meal for the day, but obviously plans would have to change! We encountered heavy traffic while leaving Coral Bay And then went for a late afternoon swim at Trunk Bay. There were cruise ships in port on St. Thomas yesterday, but we figured the cruisers would be gone by now. In prior years, the call for "Back to the Ship!" came at 3PM. We discovered that unfortunately that is no longer the case Back to the Ship! Is apparently at 4PM these days. After 4PM the beach was much nicer We got back to our rental house to see the sun set from the deck. It was a bit cloudy. We were hungry, so headed in to town to find something casual. Husband lobbied for the Beach Bar, one of his favorites. The bar was crowded so I did not want to take a picture of it and disturb anyone. It's very funky inside. Here is the area where we were sitting Menu. Typical bar food Husband's margarita Tuna down now Fried shrimp Fried mahi mahi. Our last fancy dinner of the trip is this evening, and I am hoping for a good sunset.

The mahi had a remoulade style sauce, and the shrimp had a spicy sriracha-mayo type sauce. Yesterday we woke up to a rainbow. It brought rain to the island in the photo, but not here unfortunately. By the way, the island in the photo is a private island that was owned by the disgraced and deceased Jeffrey Epstein. It is on the market and can be yours for the bargain price of $125 million. Creepy vibes and bad karma included for free! Yesterday was a big beach day for the locals and the tourists. Parking at the sandy ones was basically gone for the day by 10AM. I think a fight broke out for our spot when we left. We went to Cinnamon and walked down towards the end. The roped off area in the photo is a leatherback turtle nest that was laid a few weeks ago. I don't think there has been a viable leatherback nest on St. John since 2005 (there are lots of green and hawksbill turtles here, but the leatherbacks tend to nest on St. Croix). Hopefully it is viable. Beachy blues Last night we went to dinner at La Tapa Plage in town. We had a gift certificate from Christmas 2019 that was a gift from my parents to spend. Our 2020 visit to St. John was cancelled because of Covid, and then the restaurant closed for a couple of years to move to a new location. They just reopened on St. Patrick's Day of this year, and we were looking forward to eating there again. Here's the menu. It's quite similar to the one they had in their old location. They were out of the artichoke and the mussels last night. The restaurant (I took this photo right when we arrived. It filled up very quickly thereafter) The view from our table Husband's cocktail I really wanted to try the conch stew but the sun was shining right on me and I was pretty warm, so I went with the gorgonzola caesar to start. It was very good Husband chose the bacalao fritters. I tried to gently dissuade him from getting these. Every time we eat here, he wants to order these, and every time he gets them he says they have too much potato. He got them again, and guess what? He thought they had too much potato! He needs to listen to me haha For mains, my husband chose the mahi mahi. He said it was excellent I chose the tuna. It was fantastic, probably my favorite tuna dish of the trip so far We had a nice sunset with the main dishes We knew we still had some money left on the gift card at this point, but were not really hungry, so we decided to get a couple of ice creams to share. We tried the lemon lavender and the carajillo. We both thought the carajillo was spicier than we were expecting, but the lemon lavender was nice. By the way, it's hard to tell from the photo, but these are really small--less than a kiddie cup size. If we did not have the gift card we would not have chosen these at $15 each. But, as you can see, it worked out perfectly haha (the waiter got tipped in cash on top of the gift card of course!). We have no reservations today so not sure what we are doing for food, but I am sure we will think of something. 🙂

Yesterday we went back to our favorite Francis, just to swim. Husband was still babying his knee a little bit after bashing it. We got our usual spot at the end, away from almost everyone else We decided to keep food light yesterday, and went to town to eat dinner at the bar at Rum Hut, mainly because there's a nice view of the sunset there. Here's the menu Husband's margarita The view We split the blackened mahi mahi bites and the sesame shrimp from the snacks section of the menu And then shared an order of the tuna tacos Everything was tasty, but we both agreed our favorite thing was the salad with the mahi bites! I think we are officially veggie deprived by now, compared to how many we eat at home. Another shot of the sunset And of the bottles behind the bar in the afterglow. I'm curious what that big blue and white ceramic bottle is, but forgot to ask the bartender After dinner we walked across town to get some ice cream at St. John Scoops. I chose toasted coconut and husband chose guava Both were delicious. And one unrelated photo: I am a big reader, and love looking at all of the books the house owners and prior guests leave behind in the vacation homes we rent. I often leave the books have read while staying there behind too. (One time we rented a house down here for three weeks and left behind twelve books. When we rented the house again two years later, all but one of the books had been taken. I took the sad rejected book back home with me haha). Anyway, I always nominate one book I find at each rental house as the most unusual option. Here is my selection from this house 🤣

People harvest it to use for cooking and to make things like salt scrubs. I have never done it personally. I think we are going over to Salt Pond Bay tomorrow, where the largest salt pond is, and if we do I will take photos. It will depend on my husband's knee--he bashed it yesterday and it's about a 3/4 mile uphill hike back out of the bay. It seems to be doing OK, but we will see. Yes, it is imported. Almost everything is imported, other than the local fish such as tuna, wahoo, snapper, grouper, and lobster. There are other fish available to buy on the side of the road but it's not considered safe for people who did not grow up eating them because of the ciguatera risk. There is also one vegetable farm that grows greens for all of the restaurants on the island (you might have noticed "Josephine's greens" mentioned on almost all of the salads on various menus), and of course you can get fruit like mango, pineapple, papaya, banana, genips, etc. when they are in season. Neighboring St. Croix has a dairy farm and a beef farm, but those products do not seem to make their way here. Yesterday we went to a beach we had not visited in about 10 years, Hawksnest. Normally if we go here, we just dump our stuff and snorkel over to spend the day at neighboring Gibney (the beach you can see in the distance), but today we found a secluded spot and hung out for a bit People don't set up on this end of the beach generally because the reef comes up to the shore, and you have to walk to the other end to get in the water. Of course, that's why we picked this spot 🙂 Here are some snorkeling shots. The elkhorn coral is recovering from the storms five years ago, but still showing some bleaching Schools of blue tang were around Hello from Mr. Parrotfish! These fish eat the coral with their strong jaws, and their waste makes some of the sand on the beaches. True story. Last night, we had dinner at the Lime Inn. They recently changed to a prix fixe format. Four courses for $75, six courses for $95. We did the four course. Restaurant interior Here's the menu For the first course, we both chose the wahoo tiradito. This was very good! The fish was super fresh Second course, I chose the camarones nocturnos, and husband chose the curried Spaniard empanada. My dish was a salt lick. It was almost inedible. The plantain chips were good, and the eggplant puree under the shrimp was nice, but the shrimp itself was awful. It was too bad because the texture was good and they tasted fresh. Husband's empanada looked a bit sad just sitting there on the plate, but the flavors were OK. Third course, I chose the tuna dish and my husband had the whole fish. Both were....not good. As salty as the shrimp was, my couscous had no flavor at all! No salt, no sauce, nothing! The tuna was nicely cooked, but again, terribly bland. It had a dill coating, but nothing else. I ate about half of the tuna and a few bites of the couscous, just to eat something. My husband's whole fish suffered the same fate. No seasoning at all on the fish. Meanwhile, the broccoli with it was insanely salty! He also sadly reported that it was not the freshest fish he has ever been served, to put it nicely. The rice and beans underneath were good. The meal was redeemed by dessert. You had a choice of semifreddo key lime tart, brownie a la mode, or coconut tembleque. We both got the key lime tart, and it was absolutely fantastic. It was by far the best thing about the meal, and one of the best things we have eaten this trip! It was very tart and limey, just the way I like it. Despite the delicious dessert, this definitely counts as the most disappointing meal of the trip so far. Oh well, you can't win them all!