We received a notice that we will have to tender into port in Costa Rica. This is a disappointment as Bill has decided not to take the tender any more. I turned in his tour ticket but I kept mine. I will describe my adventure tomorrow.
At 10:00 this morning, I attended a talk about tomorrow’s port. At 11:00, we went to the Culinary Mystery Box activity. It was held in the Wajang Theater. Today, two
teams competed using a box of mystery ingredients. The assignment was to cook a
dinner in 30 minutes using only those ingredients with the addition of some
stock items. In each box, there is always one odd ingredient that the teams must
incorporate.
We saw the last competition so we knew the drill. I volunteered to be a judge. Last time, one team was from the beverage staff and the other from the bakery. They both used bribery. The beverage team served wine to everyone in the room. That’s not important to us, but the other team brought specialty cakes for the judges. I
really wanted to be bribed.
Well, no bribes this time. We actually had to judge the teams on their merits. There
were two people on each team. One team had a chef from the Canalleto and the
other had a chef from the Pinnacle Grill, which are specialty restaurants.
We had to judge on taste, creativity, teamwork, presentation and use of ingredients. The ingredients were lobster, vegetables, coffee, pineapple and starfruit. One team
had to include popcorn and the other had to use Goldfish.
It was great fun to be a judge. Team one was definitely the better team. It turns out that the Canaletto chef won the whole competition last time. I think he will win
this time too. The man can cook.
I’m not a big fan of lobster. To me, it just tastes like butter. This time, he cooked it
with thyme and oregano. There might have been some wine. He made a rice dish
that was underdone and not hot enough, so I marked them down for that. They
cooked the pineapple and star fruit together and then crumbled the Goldfish
over the top. I was surprised at how good that tasted. They used the pineapple
leaves to decorate the plate. It looked wonderful.
Team two overcooked the lobster and it lacked flavor. But, they did something with the vegetables that was tasty. They popped the corn and sprinkled it over the whole
dish which didn’t work well. They decorated the plate with the star fruit. It
wasn’t nearly as appetizing but the partner from the front office was a very
funny guy. He was so jovial that I gave them ten extra points for the
entertainment value.
I gave team one 95 points and team two 85 points. That is just about what the other judges awarded them, also.
We had good seats in the theater that we took turns going to lunch and then watched the daily movie. It was the latest version of “The Three Musketeers”. It was pretty silly. It combined the usual story with elements of “The Wild, Wild West” and
“Hidden Tiger, Crouching Dragon”. The art direction was phenomenal. I hope it
got an award for that.
The love interests were so young that I had to check to see if the young man had a
prominent Adam’s apple or a beard. I wasn’t sure he had passed through puberty
yet.
At 3:00, we went to hear the NASA lecturer. He gave us an assignment during his first lecture yesterday. He told us to go out on deck and walk toward the stern and
then toward the bow. We were supposed to look at the ocean askance (at a 15
degree angle) and record what we observed. The top ten written answers will
receive a free DVD. I entered the contest and will tell you tomorrow if my
answer was correct.
The lecturer is Larry Kuznetz. He helped to design space suits. The lecture today was called, “The International Space Station and Benefits from Space”. He took questions and we discovered that some people on the ship don't believe that anyone ever landed on the moon. He went through the ways that can be checked. And, he said, we did it 17 times. That's a lot harder to fake than doing it once. We also bounce signals off equipment we left on the moon.
Here is his picture from a book he wrote in 2011.
At 4:00, we met with our Cruise Critic friends to share the wine we received from the Captain. There are only ten in the group so one bottle was fine as we don’t
drink. Ted was the one who did the planning for our shore excursions. I took a
leaf from Susan and Erwin and we pooled our money to give Ted and his wife a
dinner in the Pinnacle Grill.
We had a great dinner and there is entertainment tonight. Nadia Zaitsev is playing the piano. She sounds good but Bill says he wants to pack it in for tonight.
