Monday in Freeport

Happy 3rd night of Hanukkah!

I don't know how the weather is in Freeport, New York, but here in Freeport, Bahamas, it is raining. Actually, it's pouring. We don't really mind, though, because we had no plans to disembark and wander the streets. We've been to the Bahamas too many times to remember, did a little tour the first time, and never disembarked again.  Freeport is the most yawn-worthy stop we've ever cruised to, and  Nassau is a dirty, crimey, tourist trap. So these are the days we enjoy staying on board, eating a very leisurely lunch, reading, knitting, and people watching. It's a good day if you want Mongolian Grill for lunch (blah), or something from the grill (much better) and it is much easier to find one of the patio tables we favor on the Lido patio deck.

The view from our cabin

We are relaxing, which was the whole point of this Cruise to Nowhere Worth Seeing. We know this ship quite well; this is our third or fourth trip on the Sensation, and we sailed in her sister ship, the Carnival Ecstasy, so many times we lost count. The maitre d' knew us by name, knew our preferences, sent us a bottle of wine. The Ecstasy sailed out of Port Canaveral for years, and we were not the only locals who came to think of it as our "home" ship.

The view from the deck - Freeport

I don't expect this Fantasy class of ships to be around much longer. Most of them are 20 or more years old; the "youngest" two ships are already 17, our dear Ecstasy is 24!  If I remember correctly, all the ships have been refurbished at least once. This is the class I started cruising on in 2001; our very first cruise, which we took with our dear friends Bethe and Maurice Lipper, was on the Carnival Imagination. As you know, we were hooked.

The toast to Bethe and Maurice - although I've never had a mudslide garnished with fruit

From where I'm sitting I can also see the Port of Freeport with containers piled high and those huge crane things that are used to move them.  It looks like Port Elizabeth, New Jersey and that's not a compliment. I did get some nice shot of the MSC Busan, which is slithering right past our ship, and one of the tugs that is guiding her our of dock. Reminds me of the days when I helped my boss, Charlie Nutter, manage the insurance for companies like United States Lines, Central Gulf Lines,  and Texaco. Another lifetime.

It's been nice to sit still for a while, if only to ensure not falling ass-over-tea kettle. As I mentioned yesterday, the ship was pitching like Elvis' pelvis. At least I remembered to bring my cane; last cruise back in April, I left it home, and I had a dreadful time.  I don't know what made me think a cruise was a no-pain zone, but I found out it is most definitely not.

You know things are bad when the barf bags go up by the elevators

It is formal night, which means I wore regular slacks and blouse instead of jeans and tee shirt. For the first time, there were no lobster tails on the regular menu (!) but there was a new item - roast duck - and despite Carnival's well-earned reputation for so-so food, it was utterly delicious.  And speaking of so-so, the musical show, "88 Keys" was a big disappointment.

We are enjoyed this much needed break from routine. Hope your holiday preparation is going well.

Moving Towards Sunday Funday on a Funship - Big Fat Oatmeal Cookies with Pumpkin Spice Chips and Dried Cranberries

Lately, I keep asking myself the question, knowing what I know now, would I still have gastric bypass surgery? Not a day has gone by in the past 12 years, 6 months, and 5 days that I have not had some sort of trouble with food. Sometimes, even chocolate doesn't stay down. (For some reason, pickled herring gives me no trouble whatsoever.)

My entire life has been centered around food, and the surgery brought some profound changes to an otherwise happy relationship. I cannot eat 95% of what I cook. I became lactose intolerance. My tolerance for alcohol is practically nonexistent. Eating out in a restaurant is no longer fun; I cannot eat pizza or pasta or prime rib or even salad, which I dearly love. Speaking in general terms, my digestive system does not function normally. Long before fibromyalgia screwed up my life, I had daily pain, sharp and nasty. I keep bottles of Ranitidine (Zantac) in my purse, and almost every room in the house.

On the other hand, I could see my weight continuing to spiral upwards, bringing with it all the nasty co-morbidities of obesity, like diabetes, heart disease, and knees that go 'crack' in the night, not to mention emotional anguish. I can shop in the regular ladies department now. I can climb stairs and walk without falling down, which I did at least once a week. I can take a seat on an airplane without being mortified.  I no longer hide behind my son in family pictures. I own a bathing suit, and I do wear shorts ... if I'm on a cruise ship.

Speaking of cruise ships, that is exactly where Rob and I are heading. I'm already debating what sort of sandwich I am going to have once we reach the deli on Lido deck. Traditionally it has been bagel, lox and cream cheese, but I may change my luck.

Yesterday was a nice send-off to our vacation, starting with my Tai Chi class, dinner at Morimoto's Asia in Disney Springs, and the series 9 finale of Doctor Who, which made up for last week's dreadful "Groundhog Day" rip-off.  It was the proper send-off for Clara, which after two doctors and three series (British for seasons) she really deserved.

Once on the ship, we fell into our usual routine; lunch at the deli, accompanied by a drink.We toast Bethe and Maurice, grit our teeth through the safety drill (me and Horatio Caine - and Rob, of course - no longer have to climb 4 flights of stair to the muster station, We get to take the elevator, and we are absolved from climbing another 2 flights for the embarkation station), and head back to the cabin while the ship takes off. But holy Mother of God, we were still in Port Canaveral and the ship started rocking and rolling like Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show! I wear those weird anti-motion sickness wrist bands, so I have no desire to barf, but the constant rocking of the ship has given me a headache. Fortunately I brought a 2 month supply of Advil, so I'll make do.

Tomorrow the ship docks at Freeport, and we'll find a table and chairs out on the patio deck and read, knit, and relax. Tonight though, we came back from dinner and found a surprise had been left in our cabin, along with tomorrrow's schedule and a towel puppy.

Carnival clearly understands how frustrating it is to have been born the day after Christmas, and gave me a birthday present nice and early. Actually, it was for sailing during my birthday month, and because we are Platinum, which in sailing terms is better than Titanium. This is something new, because we've been sailing during my birthday month for years and this is the first time I got a present. Two presents, two gift cards, one for the regular shops and one for the candy store. I'm going to be a kid in a candy store!

Last recipe for the rest of this trip - I snagged some pumpkin spice chips during an earlier trip to Walmart, and ended up incorporating them into this big, fat oatmeal cookie (my favorite type of oatmeal cookie) based on yet another recipe from Camilla Saulsbury's wonderful book. The shortcut here is a cake mix; other than that, this is a "from scratch" cookie.

Big Fat Oatmeal Cookies with Pumpkin Spice Chips and Dried Cranberries

1 - 18.25 oz. package spice cake mix
1/3 cup turbinado sugar
2 sticks butter, softened
2 extra large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
cinnamon and nutmeg, to taste
2 cups quick-cooking oats
1 cup pumpkin spice chips
3/4 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and prepare baking sheets with no-stick spray or silpat (my preference).

Place the softened butter in a large bowl along with the butter, eggs, vanilla extract, cinnamon and nutmeg.  Blend with an electric mixer. Add half of the cake mix and mix for 1-2 minutes until smooth. Add the remaining cake mix and blend until mostly combined.  Add the oats, chips, and cranberries and mix them into the cookie dough with a wooden spoon and/or plastic spatula.

Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup or scoop, portion out 12 cookies on each baking sheet.  Roll each cookie with your hands into a ball, and place back on the baking sheet.  Cookies should be about 2 inches apart.

Bake for 13-17 minutes until the cookies are set at the edges and just barely set in the center when touched lightly with your finger.  Cool for not more than 5 minutes on the baking sheets, then use a metal spatula to move the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling. The recipe makes about 24 big cookies.

Happy second night of Hanukkah!

Happy Hanukkah to the MOTs - Espresso Fudge Cups

Saturday - I went to Tai Chi class this morning.  Me, morning, early. Ha! But I made it, and glad I did.

And then I went shopping at Walmart, stuff I really needed.  It wasn't bad at all, except when I stopped by the women's department for some slacks and tops. Almost all of the clothing there was either super-sized or junior-sized. When I finally found my current size - medium, nothing exotic - all the tops were long-sleeved.  In Florida. What???

But I'm all set now, in fact, I'm packed. I'm never packed the day before and I'm still in shock. Must be the Tai Chi. I'm not kidding. Now I can relax and enjoy our dinner at Morimoto's, assuming we can get parking at Disney Springs. And after that, the season finale of Doctor Who. And after that, the Magic are playing the Clippers in L.A. Might have to miss that, since it starts at 10 pm. Way past my bedtime.

Another recipe for you, and then that will be all for a few days.  The one thing I am absolutely not going to be doing onboard the Carnival Sensation is cook. Or bake. Hopefully I have left you with enough of a variety of cookie recipes to augment your personal Christmas cookie agenda, and have also pointed you in the direction of several excellent cookie cookbooks.

Espresso Fudge Cups

These are from Marlene Sorosky, an excellent cookbook author and food writer. They are in the same little book as the Luscious Lemon Drops, which I received as a "thank you" after making a contribution to M.A.D.D.  In September of 1991, while we were living at the Simpson Ridge apartments in Kissimmee, while our first Hunter's Creek House was being built.  I really do remember some of the oddest things. I have made these many times since then, and they are always appreciated.  I love these - chocolate and pecans and lots of butter.  Smooooooth ...

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

2 eggs

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon instant espresso or coffee granules

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup chopped pecans

24 pecan halves

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in the microwave; stir till smooth. Let cool slightly. Whisk in the eggs. Stir in the flour, coffee powder, and sugar.  Mix well. Stir in the chopped pecans.

Line 24 mini-muffin pans with paper muffin cups. Spoon the batter into the cups, filling them almost to the top. Place a pecan half on top of each. Bake for 18-20 minutes until the tops are set and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.  Cool for 2-3 minutes in the muffin pan, than remove the cookies to wire racks to finish cooling.

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, and I would like to wish all my Jewish friends a very happy, healthy holiday. Pray for peace in Israel and may another miracle happen there.  If you need a latke recipe, use the blog's search engine.  Most importantly, enjoy the company of family and friends.

Desperately Seeking Sanity Chocolate Chip Fruitcake Drop Cookies

Today is Friday, still my favorite day of the work week, even though I no longer have a work week. Especially this Friday, as it signifies the beginning of what I hope will be a lovely weekend - dinner with friends both tonight and tomorrow night, the "Doctor Who" season finale Saturday night, and then we start our cruise on Sunday.

Yesterday I overdid seriously and stupidly and suffered accordingly.  But geez, that stuff had to get done. I can't leave everything for Robert, as good as he is.  It's not right.  Same thing for Cory.  Anyway, I was in bitter pain by the time I tried to creep into the car on my way to Tai Chi class. I admit to taking a single Meloxicam, an NSAID that goes by the name of Mobic. I was prescribed these by the orthopedist after that bad fall I had taken at work last year.  Blessedly it started to take the edge off the really dreadful pain, and that allowed me to participate in class, and the Tai Chi took care of the rest. Really. Surprised me a bit. The exercises, properly done, will help to relax you, and I even derived the benefits when I was able to get out of bed this morning with only minor aches.

Continuing down a path lined with fresh-baked cookies, I made some ricotta cookies yesterday, and carrot cake cookie jumbles today, both recipes from Camilla Saulsbury's book.

This is something I sort of made up; it is still overwhelmingly a chocolate chip cookie, crisp and just a bit fruitcakish (if that's even a word.) There are no nuts, which I thought would make them more available to me during my dentally-challenged moments, but as it turns out the fruitcake mix firms up a bit, just enough to require I glue in my choppers. But that's my problem; these are delicious.

Desperately Seeking Sanity Chocolate Chip Fruitcake Drop Cookies

1 - 16.5 oz. roll refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough

1 1/2 cups fruit and peel mix

1/4 cup chopped dates

1/4 cup dark raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare a baking sheet (I use silpat).  In a large bowl, break up the cookie dough and let stand for 10 to 15 minutes until somewhat softened. Add the fruit and peel mix, the dates and the raisins, and with a rubber spatula work them into the cookie dough.

Using the 2 tablespoon scoop, place 12 cookies on the baking sheet.  Roll each cookie with your hands into a ball, then place back on the baking sheet.  Bake for 12 to 14 minutes until the cookies are golden brown around the edges. Let the cookies sit on the baking sheet for 5 to 10 minutes before removing them to a wire rack to cool.

I baked all day. I can't even remember how many, but boy, they were good. Tomorrow I'll give you the recipes for the Espresso Fudge Cups and the Big Fat Oatmeal Cookies with Pumpkin Spice Chips and Dried Cranberries.  Right now, all I can think about is Mexican food. Oh, and that the Magic won last night, making it FIVE IN A ROW.  And that by this time on Sunday, I will be done with the damn safety drill and free to enjoy the rest of our cruise.

One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest - Pistachio Jam Cookies

Lost in the mists of my law degree and my years in marine insurance is the fact that my undergraduate degree is in psychology, and that I was halfway through a graduate program in psychology when I decided that particular program was not what I was looking for. So I remember the move towards community mental health, and the move away from the ginormous state psychiatric hospitals, which was already in progress while I was a student at Stony Brook. I did not know exactly why, but the local psychiatric hospital, Central Islip State, was utilizing only a small number buildings while the rest of the campus was falling into disrepair. During one semester I did volunteer work on one of the wards, and I still have nightmares. That then begs the question, where were the rest of the mentally ill people going, if not to C.I. and Pilgrim State and Kings Park and Creedmore?

When I got to graduate school, I got the answer: community mental health.  This article from the Wall Street Journal gives a good historical perspective on how we got from Over the Cuckoo's Nest to weekly massacres. I remember how, back in the late seventies while I attended grad school, the idea of community mental health did not make sense to me - set all those really disturbed people out on the street? That was also when I could not help but notice how the homeless population in New York City was increasing at an alarming rate. More alarming was when I started to see so many clearly mentally ill homeless on the previously pristine street of Orlando. And now, all these years later, I can see how the whole concept of community mental health, initialized by President Kennedy and pushed along by President Reagan, has so seriously weakened the fabric of American society as to cripple us all. We are being attacked from within. There is no gun control law in the world that can stop an at-large schizophrenic from doing exactly what he or she want to do.

"From the beginning, it was clear that CMHCs were not interested in taking care of the patients being discharged from the state hospitals. Instead, they focused on individuals with less severe problems sometimes called "the worried well." Federal studies reported individuals discharged from state hospitals initially made up between 4% and 7% of the CMHCs patient load, and the longer the CMHC was in existence the lower this percentage became.

It has now become politically correct to claim that this federal program failed because not enough centers were funded and not enough money was spent. In fact, it failed because it did not provide care for the sickest patients released from the state hospitals. When President Ronald Reagan finally block-granted federal CMHC funds to the states in 1981, he was not killing the program. He was disposing of the corpse."

I mentioned the Cuckoo's Nest (Jack Nicholson's finest performance), because there is no question that those state mental hospitals could be terrible, evil places. Their greatest virtue was keeping dangerous mentally-ill people off the street. Somewhere out there must be a plan or procedure for getting these people off the streets and into humane facilities where they can receive whatever treatment might help them, and the daily care they will always need.

I'm going to tuck my soapbox back into the corner and switch gears to cookie-baking. The pistachio jam cookies are coming along nicely, with the first batch in the oven and the second batch being set out on a silpat. The problem is - and there's always a problem - is that in the middle of preparing the dough, I started to clean the floor in the kitchen, dining room, and entranceway.  The truth is that my pets, although pee pad trained, miss their targets more often than not. To exacerbate the problem, my dining room floor is scattered with large plastic file boxes full of photos and whatnots and thatches and other stuff I should have put away a long time ago, and so when one of the boy pups feels the need to lift his leg, those boxes make a splendid target. Without going into too much detail, I realized there was a pressing need to move all of those boxes to dry locations, covered with clean pee pads, and to apply the cleaning formulas best suited to removing the offending build-up.

So after I cleaned out the litter box and mopped in the kitchen, I attacked the other two rooms, and they attacked me right back. I lifted things and moved other things and I probably should have known better, especially after I dropped one box on my big toe. Fortunately it was not from a distance, but it still hurts. Oh hell. Everything hurts. I mopped all of the offending spots with clear water and with the exception of the kitchen, left the second mopping-with-chemicals to my dear husband.  Although the dining room is still a visual mess, it is quite a bit cleaner than it was, and that, as Martha would say, is a Good Thing.

My Florida retirement quest is rocking along, but that's a story for tomorrow.  Today I am (finally) going to give you another fabulous recipe for cookies, namely the pistachio jam beauties I prepared. I have it on good authority from my Chief Taste Tester that these are fantastically delicious. Bake them and judge for yourself. These are known as Karithata in Greece, their country of birth.

1 cup of butter (2 sticks), softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup shelled, roasted pistachio nuts, finely chopped
1 jar seedless red raspberry jam (you will have plenty left over)

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, sugar, honey, vanilla, almond extract, and salt until light and fluffy. Beat in the flour, 1/2 cup at a time until there is just 1 cup left, and stir that in by hand. Stir in the pistachios. Cover the dough and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using silpat, no-stick spray, or butter, prepare a baking sheet. Portion the dough onto the baking sheet, using the smallest scoop. Place 20 cookies at a time on the baking sheet.  Roll the dough with your hands to form balls, and arrange back on the baking sheet. Using your pinkie finger (I used the bottom of the handle of a wooden meat mallet) make a deep indentation, almost to the baking sheet, in the center of each ball. With the tiniest spoon you have (I used one of Cory's baby spoons) carefully place a small amount of jam in each indentation.  Bake the cookies for 8 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Leave them on the baking sheet for a few minutes, then use a metal spatula to move them to wire racks to cool. I think I got a little more than 4 dozen cookies.

Once I was properly outfitted with dentures, I tasted a cookie, and as George Takei would say, oh myyy!

I am off to my Tai Chi class.  I seriously messed with my chi during my cleaning adventure; let's hope I can repair some of that damage.