At Sea to St Maarten

And on the first sea day, we ate!! And on the second sea day we ate!! Again!! Actually we have had three sea days (including today) so far on this cruise and each one has started with a cooking demo! The first two days we had a husband/wife team, Giuliano and Lael Hazan (son and daughter-in-law of the famous Marcella Hazan, if anyone follows Italian cooking in America), demonstrating Italian cooking. Today we had a different chef demonstrating Caribbean curry dishes. The Italian dishes are available on the menu at Prego and we sampled three of them last night. They were as tasty as they looked. Tomorrow night the other guest chef, Azmin Ghahreman, will be presenting the lamb and fish curry dishes (the ones he did today) on the menu in the Dining Room. If they taste as good as they looked and smelled……..

Giuliano Hazan demonstrating...

...and us tasting his recipes at Prego

Azmin Ghahreman

This being a Wine and Food theme cruise, and having covered the food, later today Crystal is going to try and get us all drunk! The other celebrity onboard is Mixologist Tony Abu-Ganim of Iron Chef America fame! He teamed up last year with Mario Batali in Battle Mango on Iron Chef. Crystal actually brought him in as a bar consultant two years ago and he completely overhauled the bar operations on both ships. He is responsible for them going entirely to fresh fruits and juices in all of their mixed cocktails and the barkeeps are encouraged to experiment. Crystal actually placed two of their barkeeps (both of whom we know) for awards at the annual bartender competition in Las Vegas in 2009. Later this afternoon Abu-Ganim is giving a demo in the Starlight and then will be “going behind the bar” for the pre-dinner cocktail hour for each sitting. It won’t do much for Larry (not too many ways to serve Perrier after all!), but it should be fun to watch! But then again, it will give us a perfect opportunity to test Abou-Ganim’s skill with the liquor-less cocktail.

Of course it’s not all eating and drinking. So far we have made (between us) NINE trips to the gym (and on five of them we actually did some work!) plus every sea day we cover TEN MILES on the Promenade Deck. We walk two miles and in the 30 minutes that takes, the ship, traveling at 16 MPH, covers eight miles. 8 + 2 = 10 miles covered!! Never let it be said that we don’t get any exercise when we are on a cruise!

Tomorrow we are in St Maarten. We don’t have any tours booked but we plan on checking out a few of the shops in town. Might even by a B-Day present for Monica.

A late night post-script:

During his demonstration, Tony Abu-Ganim had “volunteers” from the audience join him in preparing various cocktails. One of those chosen (she was the ONLY ONE who had seen him on Iron Chef. Well, Larry had too, but……) to assist in the preparation of a Manhattan was none other than Monica. She who had never HAD, let alone MADE a Manhattan in her life! The picture tells you how THAT turned out!! Monica and her “new best drinking buddy”, Tony!