boscobeans

The funny thing about lobster is that in early America it was considered to be trash food for the poor and was a steady diet in this country's prisons. And those were the New England cold water variety. Times as well as people's tastes change.

A decent sized cold water New England Lobster is far beyond the flavor and texture of a Caribbean bug. Unless you are at a Golden Trough it would be hard to find any restaurant that serves unlimited entrees and has lobster on the menu. Maybe at a 50 to 100 dollar Vegas buffet where they are hauling in millions a day at the one-armed donation machines.

I don't care WHAT they are SMOKING on their veranda. NO SMOKING EXCEPT IN DESIGNATED AREAS ! Vape anything and wherever you want but please no smoking.

Anthem for us is the perfect size and Cape Liberty our favorite port to sail from. Our vacation starts 3 hours from our front door. We sail the first 3 months of the year to get away from the Great Northeast Freezer and on dates where there are relatively few school holidays. We have sailed from the ultra large to the smaller like the Celebrity Zenith and have always been able to find what we need on any of the ships. Anthem just feels comfortable and less like an amusement park than the larger ships..

If at any time in the future, they offer a SINGLE nice juicy plump Maine lobster tail in place of the usual, all you can eat, chewy Caribbean Crawdads I will give one a try.

Bechamel is just a white sauce made with flour, butter, milk and pepper or salt. White if the roux is not cooked long enough to slowly darken into differing stages. It is a basic in everything from lasagna in parts of Italy to biscuits and gravy in the South. Thanksgiving gravy is bechamel with turkey juices and drippings instead of milk.

Labadee. We first visited there before they had a dock and I remember hearing the drums playing in the distance as we approached in the tenders. HaHa, Haiti, Drums, Voodoo, and Zombies. HaHa Seems smaller and more like we are in the Caribbean than CoCo Cay. Labadee feels like less of an amusement park. Both are nice but for us Labadee has a slight edge.

Franks in Pretzel crust with cheese sauce.

There are a few showing the newer pub food aspect like Reuben type pastries?, Mac and Cheese and pigs in a weird blanket. There were also steak and a chicken? Not sure. They geared it as American Comfort Foods. No terrible but not something we wanted to have several times.in the cruise.

They tried it in so many different ways but it still lost out to what is now the 4 dining room system. We rebooked our FREE CLIA AGENT cruise on Quantum for the menus and other complex scheduling problems encountered in the beginning especially with groups. There WERE many of people who loved it as it began to change but it still got the deep six. I QUOTE "Eats The menu at American Icon Grill is the same throughout your cruise and each restaurant has its own special menu."

That was after the ORIGINAL system was planned. The menus were published and set in stone. It changed quickly when people AND Travel Agents began getting questions. I was booked on the first U.S.A. sailing from Cape Liberty on the Quantum and changed it after getting the ORIGINAL DD specifics directly from my contact at Royal Caribbean before the ship even left for New York. After designing the Anthem with the same restaurant layout Lisa Lutoff-Perlo left Royal Caribbean and headed over to Celebrity where she bagan building ships with what look like cargo loading elevators on the side of the ship and a majority of veranda staterooms that really don't have verandas. LOL

Add a dash of cinnamon to it.

Not that good for longer cruisers. The four separate restaurants originally had one menu each and that menu DID NOT CHANGE. American Icon was PUB FOOD, stuff like Mac and Cheese and franks? Silk was Asian and many people do not go for Asian foods Grande and Chic, the other two were typical MDR's with different menus, I think Grande was formal as well. On a longer 11 night you had to eat from the exact same menu a few times and if you didn't think Pub food or Asian you had to eat form the same two menus a lot.

All he many times we have been there they let people INTO the terminal based on the scheduled time. Was different back in the small ship era but they TRY to keep it orderly now. Ask them to get off the ship at the end of their disembarkation schedule while they stay warm inside.

They will keep cutting until inflation stops or they increase prices. Our cruise which was booked a year ago DID NOT go up in price, but everything else I buy sure has. Flying back then? You mean when you had to climb up the boarding stairs into the plane even in the rain. Or when they gave you a trial pack of cigarettes when walking out on the tarmac to board. Maybe ashtrays with people smoking as they enjoyed their free martinis. Everything changes and some for the better and some for the worst. I'll take cruising even if it isn't what it was 22 years ago when we first cruised. As for flying? I'd go back to a climb up the stairs, roomy seats, decent food and stewardesses that acted like they enjoyed their jobs. LOL

We are soon to be travelling from New Jersey to the Caribbean for a Winter getaway and to recharge our batteries from a month or two of the Northeast’s best attempts at freezing us to death. The first leg of our holiday will take us to sunny and warm San Juan Puerto Rico where we will walk to a few favorite spots that we have enjoyed in the past and see how things have changed since our last visit. It has been a while since we did a bit of shopping, and the liquor cabinet does look like there are a few bare spots so it’s off to St. Maarten to spend some quality time. Reminder to myself, don’t forget to test some Guavaberry delights and bring a bottle or two home for any cold winter nights awaiting our return. A walk down Nevis Street after a quick visit to Antigua for a free trinkets from a little old lady who swears all her dodads are local even if they are marked MADE IN CHINA. Hope she is still there for her winning smile and a thank you. A relaxing visit to St. Lucia for a few bites and an hour or two doing some people watching and planning our upcoming day in St. Kitts. Wonder if they have any monkey repellant, thinking about tomorrow, in the local pharmacy????? To excursion or not to excursion? We will see and decide as we head off to the next day in Basseterre? Oh did I mention that we will do all this fun stuff and only unpack our luggage ONCE? Did I mention that on each day of our journey we will never have to worry about finding and excellent place to dine? We won’t be bothered trying to locate a place to lay our weary heads, since accommodations that exceed almost any hotel we have ever stayed at on land are just a short walk from any of our adventures. One other minor thing that requires mentioning is that the several thousand miles this 11-night escape takes us will be accomplished on a ship that is one hell of a lot more comfortable than a seventeen inch wide seat in a cramped over packed plane. We do enjoy lounging away a few days on a private veranda under the Caribbean sun, catching some live music or shows in the theater. I certainly don’t mind spending a few hours each night playing with the odds in the casino. So they limit me to “ONLY ONE” New England Lobster tail? I guess we can’t have everything for $140 a night each.

When I make that kind I use pork, asiago cheese, parsley and fennel with a touch of anise. I use sheep casings (same like for hotdogs). Best cooked on the grill. It is my summer favorite.

The sauce and the meat(s) are a different story. At family gatherings I make the lasagna and sauce meatless and serve Sweet and Hot sausages with fried onions and peppers long with a pile of meatballs. I even make one BREAD LOAF pan of gluten free lasagna for a niece who has an allergy, Not that good but tasty anyway. PS the meatballs are made with oatmeal so our one niece can eat them. The half-cooked oatmeal makes a decent sub for softened bread.

16 ounces well drained (in cheese cloth) Ricotta cheese. 12 ounces shredded whole milk mozzarella 3/4 cup of FRESH chopped Italian Parsley at least 1/2 cup grated Locatelli Romano cheese Careful with salt as the cheese can be salty Sprinkle with fresh ground black pepper till it looks like a very light snow of pepper. 3 whole eggs. . Combine and let the flavors meld for a few hours in the fridge. Bake until internal temp is 170 and sauce is bubbling ALLOW TO SIT FOR 30 MINUTES TO FIRM UP. Same filling can be used for homemade ravioli, stuffed shells or manicotti.

My Sicilian relatives, all women that came over here at the end of WW2, claim they almost always use ricotta and mozzarella whereas other parts of Italy use bechamel more of the time.

In reality all you need to get on the ship is your photo id and passport or original (or certified copy) for a closed loop cruise. It may take you a few minutes more for them to process you at the terminal, but I have seen it done when people arrive without any of the cruise docs.

Posted just to show a bit of bias on how the ENTIRE industry including Royal Caribbean falls victim, as they have in the past. Easy enough to just not read the post.

Our friends travel NCL in the highest category of the HAVEN. They claim it is the best cruising they have ever experienced, and they have both been in the Travel Industry for decades. An 11 night from NYC to the Southern Caribbean is about $17,353.00.

Family is already taking action against NCL according to news media. They are said to be taking legal action against the ship’s operator. A search for her body was organised immediately but to no avail. Experts seem baffled over how Ms Ertek – who was just over 5’1 – was able to fall over the three-feet-high guard rail to her cabin. Captain Mustafa Can reportedly said: ‘It is difficult to fall from this type of passenger and cruise ship.’

News stating a wealthy Tiffany heiress FELL overboard from her Norwegian Cruise ship stateroom.?? She fell over the THREE FOOT guard rail ?? Should be interesting to see how the media once again chastises the cruise Industry.