It’s been a few busy days

I started writing to you a few days ago but didn't have time to finish. Every moment is taken up and by the end of the day I am exhausted. Showing the second cook (who is very nice but has no experience) is taking extra time and energy. I'm happy to do it because he will make a great second cook, but it is a lot of extra work. Along with the extra hours we also had boat drill, a safety meeting and of course the groceries, leaving no free time. On Sunday's menu we had yellow split pea soup, sub sandwiches on homemade buns, Tuna casserole (which was surprisingly very popular, perhaps because I called it "My Mom's tuna casserole" on the menu board). Of course it was Cinnamon bun Sunday which is something everyone looks forward to. It is now Monday morning and I am stealing a little time from my day to finish this story and add some photos. I got some beautiful video yesterday during boat drill and hope to share it with you later today or tomorrow. Have a wonderful Monday.

I got some great video of the Harvester passing us during our boat drill on Sunday. I will share it with you soon.

We had boat drill on Sunday. In an emergency, I am on the port side life raft.

I don’t usually make homemade buns and cinnamon buns on the same day but I did on Sunday.

I left some of the cinnamon buns without the cream cheese frosting but in the end put frosting on all of them because no one in this crew wanted the without frosting.

It's Saturday March 23rd. As well as it being grocery day, the first day with the full crew and a sunny day, it is also my birthday. Thank you to all those who have sent birthday wishes. It would be fun to have my birthday off but not this year. Like Christmas, and any other special holidays, I will celebrate when I get home and try and quietly do something special for myself today. Lorraine sent these photos. I thought they were fun and in a way a prediction of my life.

Lorraine sent me some old photos for my birthday. This made me smile.

I guess I knew at a young age that I wanted to be a sailor

Who knew that 20 some years later, I would ride my bike across Canada. I made the ride from Vancouver to Thunder Bay before I had to stop because my knee was getting sore and the shoulder of the road was so narrow in Northern Ontario. It was a great trip though.

I always loved horses and when I was 15 I got my own horse. It was one of those life lessons. My parents said I could have a horse but I would have to pay for the horse, the stable, vet bills and food for the horse. It was a great experience and of course a great lesson in budgeting and if you really want something…you can make it happen.

I still have that Teddy Bear and I still go outside without a coat.

Lorraine and I, best friends from the very beginning.

The last 24 hours were very busy. It is a very relaxed atmosphere during layup and yesterday the crew were scheduled to return. With that comes the return to a busy schedule. Lorraine (my sister, best friend and publisher) had been with me for the past week and we were having such a good time. We heard that they were having trouble finding a second cook so Lorraine volunteered to stay if they didn't find a second cook in time before we are scheduled to leave on the 25th. I thought that would be the best birthday present. To sail with Lorraine would be so much fun. I had written to the office but didn't hear anything back so we waited. Yesterday morning at 08h00 a nice young man came in and said he was the second cook. Lorraine and I both looked at each other and knew that our little opportunity to sail together was gone. I told Lorraine that just having 24 hours to imagine how much fun it would be was enough to keep me going. She offered to stay for the groceries but when we called the grocery delivery to confirm the time of arrival they stated that we won't get our groceries until next week. I didn't panic right away but we quickly called the office and the order was arranged for Saturday morning. There had been a misunderstanding about the delivery. Lorraine left Friday at 14h00 and drove home to Tremblant taking the route south of Lake Erie to avoid the snow storm, making a stop at the Niagara Falls post office to mail out some books. She asked me to tell you that the original cookbook "Recipes and Stories as I Sail Through my Day" and the Children's book "The Stowaway Adventures" are now available in Duluth at Lake Superior Marine Museum Gift Shop 600 S Lake Avenue Duluth MN.

Lorraine turning around and giving a final wave before she headed back to Tremblant.

The new second cook is very nice and without me asking cleaned the portholes. He is very nice and we will get along very well.

Slowly throughout the day on Friday the crew started to arrive. The groceries were delayed until Saturday morning but I had enough to serve the growing crew Friday night and Saturday. I had assembled a lasagna Thursday night thinking the groceries were coming Friday and it would be easy to just pop it into the oven. Even though the groceries didn't come, I put the Lasagna in the oven. Since it came out of the fridge and was very large I put it in the oven early. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the oven didn't start properly, it's a convection oven and every once in a while it doesn't click on. I was alarmed when I went to check on it 90 minutes later and the oven was just lukewarm. I pleaded with the oven to please start, turning the button on and off wishing it to start. It finally started. I told Lorraine and she said it's just one of those days. Earlier we had to empty the little fridge in the back galley because it had stopped working. I left the lasagna in the oven as long as possible but had to take it out at noon to start serving. The center of the large pan was only at 100 degrees F so I cut pieces from the sides which came in at the correct serving temp and when I lifted the first piece out, the melted mozzarella and steaming piece of lasagna assured me that it was hot enough. On days where things go wrong I always take a moment to appreciate that it is not normally this difficult and just accept that it's one of those days. I made enough supper for a full crew. Some were not arriving until midnight so I set trays of food out to help themselves. I made an apple crisp with the last of the apples and it was gone by the next morning. I had heard that the groceries were coming at 08h00 which was just at the end of breakfast. My new second cook is very nice but has no experience so I will continue to get up and start my day two hours early for breakfast, make the salads and do the desserts, the normal job of the second cook. I will show him the job and when he is comfortable with a task, I will start handing over the tasks to him. Today was toast. It doesn't seem difficult to make toast, but the little details of a good foundation for a sandwich is to have the toast facing the same way, not to put too much butter and to butter the toast to the edges. All little details, but to me they are important if you want to leave the person with the feeling that they just had the best sandwich. I am also very concerned with cross contamination when working with raw eggs. I use colored cutting boards and showed the second cook to keep one cutting board for buttering the bread and one cutting board for placing the bowl that may have drips of egg running down the side. We always break the eggs into a bowl before putting them on the grill.

I love making breakfast sandwiches and this one had it all.

I had tried to put together an easy lunch because I knew we would be busy taking on the groceries. I had planned on sub sandwiches on homemade bread but put that off until Sunday. I didn't have a lot to work with but I had some gravy leftover from the meatloaf the other night. I decided to use the last bag of processed ready made meatballs and make Swedish meatballs over buttered noodles or rice. The second choice was a broccoli cheddar frittata and the third choice was a salad plate. When we are on the go, the crew are on watches but when we are doing fit out everyone is on day-work so everyone came in for lunch. I was glad I had an easy to serve lunch. Supper was steak. I've learned a long time ago, don't mess with Saturday steak night. I cut 21 steaks and with that I roasted mushrooms, fried onions, baked reg or sweet potatoes and roasted beautiful asparagus. The plates looked really good. It was very busy because all 21 crew members ate. (I was one of the 21) The second cook did a really good job and he is very pleasant to be around. We got fresh strawberries that were very close to the end of their strawberry life so I decided to make a trifle for dessert. Everyone likes it and it will be a nice Saturday night dessert to finish the day. I made caesar salad and both the salad and dessert were finished at the end of the meal.

Swedish meatballs with buttered noodles were a hit

This big bowl of trifle made with fresh strawberries was finished by the end of supper.

It was a busy day and by the end of it, I found myself finding my beat. It takes a moment to go from laid back easy going lay-up job to full crew get it all done busy days. Around 19h00 (7pm) I heard the familiar sound of the engines. They were testing them. There are a lot of noises throughout the day and the occasional black-out. Lots of testing before we get underway Monday morning. I am excited to make the first trip. It is listed on Marine Traffic so I can share with you that our first trip is to Thunder Bay. I was there two years ago but only for a few hours because I got off the Baie St Paul early morning and went to the airport to fly to Windsor, Ontario to join the ThunderBay. I look forward to having some time there and will look up some friends that I haven't seen in 30 years. We sailed together years ago, and I met his family. It will be fun to get caught up. I looked back at my photos and have quite a few to share with you. I made eggs benedict midweek. I wanted to make them for Lorraine and they came out beautiful. They are already in the new book and we are just going through testing recipes. For the crew I served the eggs benedict on english muffins with the ham patties but for Lorraine and I I just served them on the ham patties with roasted spinach and homemade hollandaise. They were delicious. For supper we had meatloaf with gravy, mashed potatoes and kale salad. On Thursday night I made BBQ ribs with beans, cheesy potatoes, sauteed kate and rice. For Lorraine and I we had our ribs with the no sugar added to the homemade BBQ sauce which is in the book. It smelled so delicious in the galley.