Lorraine arriving to help me organize the galley

It is Cinnamon bun Sunday, or rather it should be cinnamon bun Sunday, but I just spent the last 5 minutes discussing with Lorraine (my sister, best friend and publisher) whether we can have cinnamon bun Sunday without the delicious cream cheese frosting. We decided that we would buy some cream cheese and make the tasty treats another time when we have all the ingredients. I asked the Chief Engineer for permission to have Lorraine come on for a few days to help me organize things. I was so pleased that he agreed and she arrived last night. She came just after supper but I had sent her a message that I had a plate put aside for her. We had steak for our Saturday night supper with beautiful fresh mushrooms, asparagus and fried onions. I chose the smallest potatoes from the bag of supersized potatoes and baked them. I made a caesar salad with my homemade caesar dressing, leaving some of the salad with the dressing on the side so it would be fresh when she came. I was funny at supper last night because the crew are starting to ask me if I would like to photograph their plate for the blog. I laughed. I usually photograph the plate of the person that chooses the items that I think go well together and comment to them, "your plate is so pretty, you don't mind waiting a minute for me to take a photo do you?" They actually feel special now to get the selected plate for the photo. In all the excitement of them offering their plates to be photographed I forgot to take the picture. The entire day I had been following Lorraine on my phone. We use location sharing so I can track where she is. It's a great app. I went for a walk after lunch and thought how we will walk together when she comes.

The Algoma Buffalo spent the winter in Port Colborne too. I worked on her two years ago. She has great windows in the messroom.

Her timing was perfect. I just finished the dishes and saw that she was coming down the road. I called the ship keeper and asked him to get the basket ready.

I had a list of things that I asked Lorraine to bring. My plan is to work on some of the recipes for the next book while she is here with me. It is going to be fun to be together. She has already seen the new galley when she dropped me off a week ago, yes, can you believe I am already in my second week. While she is here I asked if she would help me organize the galley and find a good location for everything. Right now there is no rhyme or reason and it needs her expert organizing skills. I also asked if she would organize the linen locker. We have bags of linen that need to be unpacked but I found that task too daunting so she will do that. Having her here gives me the motivation to attack things that I was excited to do. I love cooking, and once everything is organized I am good at keeping things nice but I do get overwhelmed when things are disorganized and find it hard to find time in my day to attack these projects. The galley looks so nice with the new stove and new floor and I will take pictures for you when everything is in its proper place. Today I will share a photo of the tiles that they installed in the galley. I shared with you the other day how I was trying to clean the dirt off of the tile, realizing when the stain wouldn't budge that it was the design of the tile. I think they chose that tile for that reason, is it clean or is it dirty?

This is a sample of the floor tile and on the right the “design” that I thought was dirt

I am looking at the time on the bottom right hand corner of my screen and I have to go start lunch. I already changed my mind three times about the lunch menu. I will share the meals I made since I last wrote to you. My soup yesterday was Italian wedding soup and there was none left at the end of the day. For lunch I made macaroni and cheese, Italian sausages, egg salad sandwiches on homemade bread and broccoli salad. I had a few that asked for the combo plate. For supper we had steak dinner and for dessert I made bread pudding and used homemade bread. I didn't think they would eat it but one of the crew had some and came back for seconds. He said it's really good and a few of the crew overheard him and before long everyone was trying the bread pudding. I was pleased that they liked it. Have a great day. See you tomorrow. Hi from Lorraine.