Lorraine’s first 2024 ship visit

I am well into my second week onboard the Spruceglen doing the Lay-up job in Port Colborne, cooking for a little crew of 8. I am enjoying my time here. Lorraine (my sister, best friend and publisher) came last night. I am excited to have her here because we are going to work on the next cookbook together.  She brought some things with her so that we can try some new recipes. I asked her to bring Brussel sprouts, portobello mushrooms and frozen riced cauliflower. I often make riced cauliflower from fresh cauliflower but want to use the frozen riced cauliflower to understand how it works with my recipes. The ready to use frozen riced cauliflower is available in all the grocery stores, is very easy to use and makes dinner preparation reallly fast.

Lorraine’s first 2024 visit onboard a ship that I am working on

The crew here are very easy to cook for and they are open to try new things. I start my day making breakfast and I am challenging myself to offer a new  omelette each day, yesterday's omelette was a spinach, sundried tomato and bacon omelette and today's omelette of the day was a roasted grape tomato and onion. There were a lot of grape tomatoes in the fridge and they were starting to not look so fresh anymore so I wanted to use them up. I am adjusting to making less food, however, I still like to offer two choices for lunch and for supper. They are not big dessert eaters so I try to tempt them with some of my desserts and sometimes I am successful.

I am challenging myself to make a different omelet every day for the omelet eaters. This one had spinach, bacon and cheddar cheese

This omelet had roasted grape tomatoes, onions and cheddar cheese

Grilled cheese with two eggs over easy and some of the nice bacon Lorraine brought. The bacon we get on the ship is a cheaper version of bacon, so it was nice to see the bacon that she brought.

I looked back at my photos as I often do before I write to you and realized I didn't share my New Year's Day meal with you. I have been busy working by myself, but now that Lorraine is here it will be easier to find a moment in my day to write to you. I went shopping in the freezer to see what I could make for a special New Year's Day celebration. I made a list of things that I normally add to my holiday menus and then edited the list reminding myself that I am only cooking for 8 people and they can only eat so much. I found duck legs in the freezer and thought that would make my meal special. I don't cook duck very often so I am always a little nervous. I wanted to make a sauce with the duck that could go into my next book so I made my blueberry BBQ sauce without sugar and simmered the blueberries with maple syrup until they thickened a bit and built my sauce from there. I was really happy with how it came out and one crew member who was hesitant to try it, commented after how much he liked it. I found some butternut squash in the fridge and had always wanted to try and make butternut noodles. Another thing I wanted to try was Hasselback potatoes. I had beautiful long sweet potatoes and decided to do both sweet and regular potatoes. I miscalculated the time it would take and the sweet potatoes were not ready in time but the regular potatoes were. I love how they opened up and will definitely be trying to make them again so that I can share the recipe in the next book. I always make rice but thought it would go especially well with the roasted duck legs. I was really pleased with the crisp that I got on the duck skin. I had a piece myself and really enjoyed dipping the crispy skin in the blueberry BBQ sauce. One crew member didn't care for the blueberry sauce but I always appreciate it when someone tries something new.

New Year’s Day supper. Crispy duck legs with blueberry sauce, butternut noodles, hasselback potatoes and rice.

When I do a holiday meal I like to make a few appetizers. I found some smoked salmon and a jar of capers and laid it out on a tray with a little bowl of cream cheese in the center. There was a large piece of brie cheese which I sliced a few pieces and laid them down on half of a tray and on the other half put some green grapes. There are lots of shrimp in the freezer and I made a shrimp tray. Unfortunately there is no horseradish so I couldn't make cocktail sauce but I made spicy mayonnaise which goes really well with the shrimp. I cook the raw shrimp from frozen and they always come out perfect. As soon as they are cooked, I place them in the freezer to stop the cooking immediately. They were delicious and enjoyed by all except one. I love devilled eggs so every holiday meal has to have a tray of devilled eggs. I always steam a few extra eggs to just use the yolk for the filling because I like lots of filling. I found a huge bottle of gherkins and placed a bowl in the center of a tray and then surrounded the gherkin bowl with the devilled eggs. One crew member shared with me that he likes his devilled eggs made with miracle whip (a childhood memory) but he went on to explain that if you popped a gherkin in your mouth at the same time as the devilled egg you were able to achieve the sweet devilled egg childhood memory. I love when food evokes a memory. For dessert I served the chocolate mousse cake that I purchased for the chief engineer. He was happy to share it with everyone.

I made a few appetizers. I love devilled eggs and always think of my mom when I make them

This is the Chocolate Mousse cake that we bought for the chief to say thank you for letting Lorraine come on board

On the second day of January I made a simple lunch. I made a choice of a chicken club wrap or chicken caesar wrap with homemade caesar dressing. (The chicken caesar wrap was the winner) The second choice was a poutine which almost everyone ordered asking for varying sizes. I replied "no problem" and made the tiny poutines to large size as requested and knew when someone said small, but they really wanted large, so I made it a little bigger. For supper I made "Marry me chicken" I however do not call it that on the menu board. I also roasted the rest of the duck legs. I had to thaw three bags of duck legs for my January 1st special meal but didn't need all of them so I had enough for everyone to have another duck leg on the 2nd day so I put it on the menu board as Duck part 2. This time I made an orange sauce which came out perfect. I looked up a recipe for orange sauce for the duck on the internet and it said it was so good you could eat it without the duck and I have to agree, it was that good. After supper I went out to wave at a friend who was passing by on a ship. It was very windy but fun to see the ship passing by so close. Unfortunately they didn't get the message but I like to think the wave was felt.

This particular crew member asked for extra homemade caesar dressing on their chicken caesar salad

I thought it would be fun to make the poutine on the curly fries

“Marry Me Chicken” or as I put it on the menu board, Chicken in a sundried tomato cream sauce

It’s fun to watch the passing ships. soon the Welland canal will be closed and it will be very quiet

Yesterday after making breakfast I started lunch by making dahl soup. I could have made a bigger pot because it was gone by the end of the day. I made cabbage rolls, ham and cheese pockets and potato skins. I always think of my mom when I make potato skins. When she saw potato skins on a restaurant menu she would comment that during the war in Germany they would peel the potatoes as thin as possible not to waste the potato and now they eat the potato skins. This actually then leads to me thinking of my dad finding a downed fighter jet in a field. It was hard to find food during the war so he took the hydraulic oil from the plane and as a youngster thought that they could fry potatoes in the hydraulic oil. He soon found out that was not a possibility. I wanted to make something that I know Lorraine likes so I made butter chicken for supper with basmati rice and peas.. The second choice was plain chicken with the leftover excellent orange sauce. For lunch I made a fun dessert, Beaver Tails. they were delicious and for supper I made individual blueberry crisp. For the filling I used fresh blueberries, frozen blueberries and blueberry pie filling (I never find there are enough blueberries in the pie fillings)

I made potato skins for lunch using the leftover baked potatoes. An icecream scoop works really well for removing the inside of of the potato. I paint them with bacon drippings until they are crispy then add cheese and bacon bits. They were really good but I forgot to take a photo

Everyone, including Lorraine’s, butter chicken

I made beaver tails that were so delicious and surprisingly easy. I had saved some of my cinnamon bun dough and just rolled it out before frying it.

Individual blueberry crisps

One of the crew had some free time and asked if he could help with something. I said that Lorraine was coming but one thing that he could do was take down the Christmas decorations. For 24 years Lorraine put up and took down all the Christmas decorations when we had the restaurant and I knew she would not be excited to take down the decorations here so I mentioned that to the crew member and he was happy to do the task.

I was grateful that a crew member took down the Christmas decorations. Lorraine always helps me when she comes onboard, but I know taking down Christmas decorations is not her favorite task

Just as I was finishing the last of the supper dishes Lorraine called to say that she was at the gate. We have a security guard and after checking in with them she made her way to the ship and stopped beside the basket. The shipkeeper lowered the basket for her and when the basket was full raised the basket again. We had used the last of the bacon so there was 6 kilos of bacon (10 lbs) . I was so happy to see her and walked midship to meet her. We started chatting non-stop like long lost friends even though we communicate daily. I hope you had a wonderful happy new year and look forward to sharing the upcoming year with you. See you soon. www.shiptoshorechef.com 

Here comes Lorraine. The shipkeeper lowered the basket

I love a shadow picture and here is one of Lorraine and I

We have lots of books in stock and will be happy to mail them out to you.