Location: Australia and Asia
As you all know, we are currently en route (and very close!) to the Maldives, and you may also be aware that the Maldives is a Muslim country. While we did know this and knew that they did not eat pork, we just found out that we are not allowed to import any pork into the country. Therefore, we have to use up all of our pork products (ham, salami, bacon, ground pork, pork tenderloins) before we arrive in the Maldives. And to make situations direr, we have been having an awesome time with all of the sailings we have been doing, so we are on course to make it to the Maldives a few days ahead of schedule, giving us less time to complete the great pork consumption. So, last night, we began our mission to think of how to incorporate these items into our menus over the next two days. A great topic of discussion for my 12 to 4 am watch last night; we decided that the lunch of chicken fingers should become chicken Cordon Bleu, stuffed not only with ham but also bacon and salami (don’t worry, our Pescatarians will be enjoying eggplant in lieu of the mountain of meat. Also, please do not be concerned that your children will be coming home with coronary blockages – our lunch yesterday was chicken with carrots, broccoli, and potatoes, and the day before, a delicious quiche with a fresh salad – we promise we do not eat like this every day). Our watch team also has started asking questions about the next watch time when we wake them up to ensure that they are fully awake before we leave the room. Today’s question was obviously, “What would you want to wrap in bacon?” The best answer belonged to first mate Jack, who responded, “More bacon.”
We didn’t go quite that far, but this morning, chefs Morgan and Mandy took the galley and created our delicious meal, which looked like a bacon-salami-ham-and-cheese sandwich with two pieces of chicken for the buns and, of course, the eggplant sandwiches and some fresh fruit as well. Shortly after their consumption at lunch, Annie began work on croissant dough so that we could enjoy some freshly baked ham and cheese croissants for breakfast tomorrow (yum!) I have faith that we can accomplish our mission, and it will be delicious. In addition to the amusing culinary spin to the day, we also continued sailing, kept watch, and had OCB and MTE courses. Today was one of my favorite OCB lectures to teach, as we were learning about the phylum Mollusca, which includes the voracious cone snails, the colorful nudibranchs, the amusing swimming scallops, and, of course, the intelligent octopods. In MTE, the crew continued to learn the rules of the road, today covering sound signals used by boats in all conditions as well as in foul weather. Everyone is now cleaning up after dinner with a lovely sunset in the background. Then we will briefly reconvene in the saloon to hear a destination presentation by Hunter on the Maldives. We feel as though we are so close and are all extremely excited to learn more about our next destination!