Adventure is Out There: St. Lucia

This morning I told you there would be another post, and I wasn’t lying. Here it is. Whew ok good. Even if I don’t write anything else, I’m set. Just kidding.

What inspired this post, was actually an email from My Publisher, that my Aunt Megan loves, and she has been trying to get me to make a book with them because it’s so easy (it really is!). I got a coupon code for a free book (minus shipping) and was all over that. (Love that if you wait long enough you can get really good deals in your email from this company!) The book came on Saturday, right in time to celebrate the first anniversary and it was a great ‘buy’. Thanks Aunt Megan for the nudge on that one! I knew you’d be right, and I’m super glad I got that coupon too!

the Gros and Petit Pitons, trademark view of St. Lucia

If you read the post I linked to earlier here, then you know I’ve travelled a lot. I was really really blessed with that. You also know we considered a ton of places before finally settling on St. Lucia. The one island, lots to see and do, the fact I hadn’t been there before and it wasn’t experiencing a socio-economic climate we didn’t want to support (Dominican Republic, Mexico, Jamaica) sealed the deal.

Typically, on most people’s dockets once deciding on a location is to debate all-inclusive or not. This one was a no-brainer. I’m a firm believer in the idea that if I’m paying a lot of money to fly to another country, then I don’t want to pay a lot of money to be stuck on one very American-ized view of tropical paradise. If I want ‘American paradise’ I’ll stay in America, it’s much cheaper that way.

I’m an explorer, I like to immerse myself in the culture, and don’t like to feel like I spent so much money on the all-inclusive part of the stay that I can’t possibly leave the resort to go somewhere else to eat, etc. (Sure there are people who will spend a lot of money and still leave and explore, but I don’t make that kind of money to justify it [especially since it often means that you are still with the resort, just a traveling caravan of tourists], and there are also those who say the ‘all you can drink alcohol’ is worth it (which isn’t our cup of tea in the slightest, since we don’t drink) so it’s not for us. If you are going with a huge group of family, say to celebrate your grandparent’s anniversary (it happened, there were a ton of us and it was fabulous because there was something for everyone, and it was a painless way to make sure my Grandpop always got the check at the end of the meal instead of that silly game that’s played when everyone takes a  chance to snatch the check (at least it happens with the working/retired men in my family. Dad even got my brothers in on it at least once when they would snag it away from Grandpop… but on this trip, Grandpop paid (thanks Grandpop (and Nana!)

So, we were going the non-inclusive route. We wanted something a-typical, something ‘honeymoon worthy, but still luxurious. It seemed our options were quaint, but quirky bed and breakfast style places, or ginormous resorts. I’d rather be one of a crowd trying to find a spot on the beach, then one of the few guests staying at a B&B, so we were leaning towards a resort, like the Marriott and then we stumbled upon the best of both worlds (luxury and intimacy) in Villa Beach Cottages.

The Villa Beach Cottages (Image credit- Villa Beach)

Villa Beach is a slice of quiet paradise on a gorgeous tropical island. There are approximately 20 villas on the property, fully equipped with a kitchen, bedroom, large porch, access to two pools and two hot tubs. The beach was just a few steps down from the sea-wall, and it was family owned, and real small boutique adventure.  There used to be actual cottage accommodations, but over the years they have been upgraded into fancy wonderful villas, at least as nice as any fancy hotels I’ve ever stayed at.

View from our Bed

Our Porch – taken at night

And the price! The price was amazing for the amenities (similar style room and proximity to the beach at Sandals (just next door) would have been twice our entire honeymoon budget, and with Villa Beach we’d end up under budget for flights&rooms so there would be extra bits here and there left over to go out to eat (we were planning on saving money by stocking up our fridge and doing our own breakfasts and lunches whatever days we were around the resort ourselves) and sight-seeing around the island. Bonus- if we booked the honeymoon package they’d give us a fruit basket (fabulous tropical in-season fruit) and free use of the 2-person kayak (Bryan was in heaven, and since he was strong I hardly had to paddle).

Bryan paddeling us out to ‘Shell Island’

SOLD. We booked it. And we had a fabulous time. St. Lucia is this amazing island with a conglomeration of all things ‘tropically islandy’. It has rain forests, (massive trees that belong in Jurassic park, check!), a volcano (hot mud baths were enjoyed, check!) fabulous terrain (the Piton Mountains are a World Heritage Site, check!), and great food (inspired by British, French, Indian, African and Caribbean foods, check!

fabulous food at Ladera Restaurant

Bananas grown inside blue bags to protect them from bugs, and birds.

[Seriously, St. Lucia was fought over by the British and French and was 7 times a British territory, and 7 times a French territory, and with these different European reigns brought workers from India (English) and workers from Africa (French).]) Not to mention the water, gorgeous clear turquoise Caribbean waters on one side of the island with plenty of snorkeling and scuba adventures for us to enjoy, and crashing waves and carved rock caves on the Atlantic side.

Crashing waves on the Atlantic side

Crystal blue waters of the Caribbean side

volcanic mud (can go with the water pics right?) bath

Plus the fruit! Did I mention the fruit?? St. Lucia can grow any tropical fruit. And we were there when everything was in season. It was amazing. They have this law that says things that grow along the side of the road anyone can gather and eat. And thank goodness for that. Bananas, Coconuts, Cashews, Almonds, Oranges, Lemons, Limes, Calabash, Mangoes, Wax Apples, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cocoa, you name a tropical fruit/spice it was there. And we ate our fill. I’ve never had bananas as sweet, mangos as perfect, coconuts as juicy…I could go on and on and on.

We toured the island, enjoyed a Friday Night Fish Fry, sunset cruise with steel drum band, lunch on the side a mountain in a three walled restaurant named Ladera(loved by Oprah apparently), snorkeled between the Pitons, visited a cocoa plantation, swam, kayaked to a little island off the shore from our villa, swam in the pool, laid in the hammocks, visited the market in the capital (National Geographic lists that market as one of the ten best markets in the world) and basically had the time of our lives. I’m saving my pennies for the next big trip. I have 4,200 of them right now. 🙂

Sunsets in St. Lucia, photo taken from our beach with ‘Shell Island’ pictured

View from LaDera

post-scuba adventure

snorkeling between the mountains rising 3000 feet above sea-level

As for my reference to Up? I first watched Up when Bryan and I were in the midst of 4 months of not seeing each other while I was studying abroad. Basically it’s the story of us. I’m the outgoing loud one, and Bryan is the steady not so loud one, and we have dreams together. Dreams that someday, if my family history and his family history prove true means he will be moving our house to St Lucia with a bunch of balloons as a cute old man. Plus he bought me the grape soda pin in Disney World for my souvenir. Basically, Bryan is my Mr. Ferguson.

My Mr. Ferguson ❤

So basically, what I’m saying is save your pennies and book a trip to St. Lucia. You won’t regret it. It was seriously one of the best places I’ve been to, and not just because I was on my honeymoon, because this vacation, we were the ones paying, not our parents 🙂

 wow, how many parenthesis can I use in one post?? Obviously I have too much to tell you. hope you enjoyed the not-quite-a-year-late recap.

p.s. since this post is just going up-as is you ought to know I haven’t actually taken the time to correct the coloring in any of these photos, I thought most of them true to life, and I’m just feeling a bit lazy. Hope you can enjoy anyways!

Goodbye Bizarre Food

I consider myself adventurous. I love to try new things, just a month or so ago I cooked squid for the first time (ate it for the 40th time), last week I cooked and ate razor clams for the first time. I also have a long list of other crazy foods I’ve eaten, and never actually had a crazy food be something I didn’t like. Though some are a bit harder to convince yourself you should eat (like escargot)

This week, I opened my Gabe The Fish Babe box to find sea urchins. I totally flash-backed to all of the Top Chef episodes where chefs use them to add something new to their food, something briny, but rich, a pairing that evokes the deliciousness of seafood.

The little spines wave about circularly, and before long they were inching off of my cutting board. These particular sea urchins were dived for off of the coast of Massachusetts. I was slightly amused by the tiny waving spines and actually shot a video of it because it was that cool. (The live seafood we typically get are bi-valves-like clams and oysters and muscles and they aren’t nearly as interesting to watch)

Though I’ve seen chefs prepare this on tv, I knew that wasn’t enough so googled it. One youtube clip later and I realized it would be pretty simple. In spite of the scary looking spines all I’d need to conquer the sea urchins was a pair of kitchen shears, and a small spoon.

The small flower like circle is the mouth of the sea urchin, by slipping your kitchen shear in and snipping around the top edge you open up the cavity and can pour out the sea water that is inside. What you are left with is then unappetizing photo coming up on the left. Weird. Using my tiny spoon I scooped out the orange ‘roe’ leaving the black stuff behind. Of course it sounds simple, and it really was, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I should be wearing safety glasses as every snip of the shears caused pieces of shell and spines to fly. They don’t show that on tv!
Once the orange bits were scooped out you rinse them in a bowl of clean water, this helps you double check that you don’t have any shell fragments or tips of spines in your food, and also that none of the black stuff is going to end up in your food. I don’t know what it is, and I kind of don’t want to. So glad I rinsed, and rinsed and rinsed. After the third time I got clean water running off and felt a bit more confident in the food I was going to prepare! I imagine having a sea urchin shell in your sauce would be akin to having egg shell pieces in your pancakes. No good.

Once all 6 urchins were cleaned out I prepared them using the basic gist of this recipe: Sara Jenkin’s Sea Urchin Spaghetti Of course you know I tweaked it a bit, never seem to be able to follow a recipe even if I’m a bit on edge because of the protein.

In a food processor I took several cloves of garlic and blended them along with the sea urchin, 1/2 cup of lemon juice, then as the machine was running I poured in 1/2 cup of olive oil to aerate as it blended and whip it together which really helps actually blend the lemon juice (water based) with the sea urchin (water based) with the oil, which is obviously oil based, and water and oil don’t mix. Then I tossed the sauce and a liberal amount of parsley and chives with spaghetti. Easy.

The lemon really complements the salty flavors of the urchins, the olive oil plays up the umami in the dish and the combination of simple sauce and basic pasta makes it a dish even the most stringent of seafood haters would enjoy. It’s light and refreshing thanks to the citrus, and savory at the same time without being overwhelmingly rich.

I was slightly nervous about eating sea urchin. Why? I’d never had it before. I was the one solely in charge of making sure we didn’t die of food poisoning (though it is commonly eaten raw, and these were alive before I went at them with my kitchen shears, thankfully they stayed silent, so I knew they were fresh and we could have eaten them raw, next time!). And let’s face it, instead of eating roe which is how it was described in the recipe, it is actually gonads. Google if you dare. Ha!

Photo Credit: Ellen Silverman Sea Urchin Spaghetti

So instead of reserving some of the orange sea urchin to add back on top like the recipe called for I blended it all into the sauce. So my spaghetti looked like it had a butter sauce on it, which really didn’t turn into a decent picture because all it looked like through my iPhone lens was wet noodles. Hence I’m finishing up my food post with a snagged photo from the recipe page.

So basically what I’m saying is this food that had me a bit scared to prepare was delicious, and Bryan and I were both glad to have some for lunch today. Trying new things is always exciting, and I’ll stand by sea urchin and declare them delicious, and totally worth the nerves and eye-risking snipping that went on.

I’m glad to add sea urchin to my list of bizarre foods, and will eat them again. Maybe next time raw. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? Would you ever try sea urchin?

New London Fall Food Stroll- The Breakdown

mysticcountryct.com

Three hours + Seven friends + 40 places to eat = Stuffed Bellies & Satisfied people

If you are local and you didn’t make it out last night you really missed out. What a great opportunity to check out new restaurants, and bits of their menu without a financial commitment, in this economy, let’s face it meals out are rare! Some places I will most definitely go back to, and others I may not.  The food stroll is put on twice a year, and I was told I’d never make it to all of the tasty locations, and that I’d run out of room in my belly to put it all. I really like to try new things, but boy were we all full and definitely didn’t make it everywhere (even the guys!) Hence why even though I’m reviewing the food stroll on a whole, I will in no way talk about all 40 places we could have eaten at. I’m only mentioning places I will return, even if I wasn’t that impressed with the sample dish.

To start, I thought it was great that New London Main Street offered a discount to a group of six or more. They also had a military price (same as the group rate). Luckily my friends like to eat so we took advantage of the group rate at $20 dollars a button (Instead of $30, day of). The button got us entry to all of the places participating and was well worth the 20 bucks! Not only were the streets bustling with the food strollers, there were musicians scattered around to add some fun ambiance. Nothing like a food festival to get people out and about. We may have even been seen dancing around as we went from place to place.

I’ll start off by saying the food stops are listed in the order we tried them, not the order of favorite dishes!

We started with Jasmine Thai Restaurant and Sushi Bar. We had no idea what to expect and were amazed to walk into a veritable buffet with mini egg rolls, (veggie) sushi, Pad Thai, green chicken curry, rice, and salad. (To save room I skipped salad & fruit.) Thoughts across the board? Amazing. This will definitely be a place to come back to.  There wasn’t a thing I tried I didn’t like. The mini egg rolls were crispy, the Pad Thai yummy, and the green curry had a good amount of spice! Definitely where we will have to take Bryan’s brother (who studied in Thailand) when he comes to visit.

Bean & Leaf as far as I knew was a coffee shop that recently changed locations. They must do food as well because we had the choice of a Ham and Lentil or Spicy Veggie Soup. Both were good, but nothing spectacular. Definitely a great vibe to hang out with some coffee and friends. I’m sure we will be back to try some fancy coffees and teas.

Gaspar’s New American Cuisine offered an amazing ravioli. I believe it was homemade, like most of the things they offer. Most definitely will be back. It has an old world feel to it, reworked in a funky new way. Definitely new American and we loved it though. How can you not like pasta that is technically well done? The dough wasn’t heavy, the filling was balanced. Good eats are most certainly found there, just like they claim on the website. This is also on our must return list!

Dev’s on Bank Street  served Happy Panda Noodles and won first place! The presentation was great for a food stroll, they had the cup of fine noodles, bean sprouts, scallions, and small bits of beef in a cup and that was ladled over with a light beef broth ‘to order’.  It was warm and light and deliciously spiced. We were greeted by Bunny, one of the two owners. Dev’s serves a Mediterrasian tapas menu. Yes. That’s correct. mediterr- and -asian. The very idea is intriguing and we loved it. I can’t wait to go back and look forward to ordering dishes from two very different ends of the earth. Review? Great. We even came back to Dev’s to end the night. Great atmosphere and yummy food means we will be coming back all the more.

Sweeties Bakery & Café serves breakfast and lunch. I’m regularly here grabbing lunch for my boss or a sweet treat, since I work half a block a way, so I knew they had great food and desserts. They came up with a brilliant menu, visitors could choose a mini apple or pumpkin pie, and either butternut squash or tomato soup. The pies were delicious, and while I chose the spicy tomato soup, it was a bit to salty for my taste. The butternut squash was nice and creamy though. Off menu for last night, but I know that somethings they make well are quiche, and mac and cheese. They also make homemade ice cream, pickles, dressings and more.

Mambo Bar & Restaurant definitely has a bar vibe from the exterior. Probably why I’ve just never gone in. I was surprised though when we went in that there were kids eating with their parents. They had Jamaican Rice and Shrimp. It definitely had island flavors and with the shrimp was mostly rice in a small amount of a clear broth. It was good though, a pleasant surprise on Bank street. The view off of their deck of the river at night was fabulous. The menu may be just enough to tempt me in and eat on the back deck.

Chaplin’s Restaurant is the one restaurant Bryan and I have actually tried. Rumor has it the chef has auditioned for, or was asked to be on the Food Network show Chopped. Whether this is true or not, I can’t say. One thing I do know is their food is great. I ordered the bouillabaisse when we went there for dinner  a couple months ago and Bryan got the special. Both loved it. Last night the choices were Shepherd’s Pie or Seafood Bisque. If you’ve ever read this blog before you can probably guess I went for the  seafood. The soup was great, the large pieces of seafood were plentiful even in the tiny serving.

Of course we had to stop by Studio 33 Art and Frame Gallery, the place I work part time. Funny story: Studio 33 was supposed to be hosting Mariah’s Chow Chow Relish. For reasons unknown to us at work, they backed out the day of the stroll three hours before they were to be setting up. For whatever reason Yummy Hummy came to mind and we called them to see if they would be available or interested in being a part of the Food Stroll with us. They were glad to, and we got to sample the roasted garlic, and pretty beet hummus. Both were delicious and Sara’s Mojito Green Tea Punch (non-alcoholic) was nice and refreshing after all those hot soups!

Out next stop was Hot Rod Café . The boys were glad to be getting something other than soup, however I was disappointed not to eat wings, what they are most known for, and for good reason! Instead we tried their new appetizer, a skewered chicken with some  garlic seasoning, maybe with a hint of lemon. I didn’t particularly care for it, though there wasn’t anything wrong with it.

We started our dessert’s for the evening with a stop by Daniel’s Dairy Downtown. Here we started with a miniature cone of soft serve vanilla ice cream, a sample of whatever flavor fudge we wanted, and a mini scoop of whatever flavor of old fashioned scoop-able ice cream we desired! Daniel’s Dairy makes all of it in house. Definitely a place to try to get some delicious fudge, or get the after dinner bite!

Captain’s Pizza is way down Bank street, almost to State Street. Their set-up was way up on their roof-top deck that overlooked the whale-tail. They had a great Irish band, and the food was good too. I was impressed at the quality of New England Clam Chowder we were getting from a pizza joint, and the pizza was great as well. The best part was the surprising view, and great music! Captain’s is a great place to go for a slice of pizza with some friends.

Just around the corner down on State St. is the Stone Fleet Tavern. The tavern is the closest restaurant to both the train station that services NYC, and the Ferries that take patrons to Block and Fisher’s island, so they tend to cater to a fancier clientele. That being said we had east coast quahog stuffies there. The stuffing with herbs had a good bit of clams chopped back up and mounded in. Not like some stuffed clams that seem to be all filler. The stuffing had a great crispy outside, but was moist inside.

We hit Pinc! hosting You Take The Cake next. The cinnamon apple cupcakes were good, the flavor was yummy. It really did seem as though apples were really incorporated into the batter, thankfully without chunks though! I thought they were perhaps a tad on the sweet side, but not overly, who doesn’t like a sweet dessert?

I’m glad I now know that there is good Indian food in New London. Northern Indian Restaurant served a Chicken Curry with Peanuts. While peanuts are not something I typically choose in foods I thought the crunch added a nice texture, and the essence of peanut was only just there, hinted at, without being too peanuty. I’ll definitely go back for some of my tried and true Indian favorites. It was a real reminder of my time in London UK!

A private, member’s only place, the Thames Club was offering a grilled cheese crouton, and tomato soup. This was by far the best soup of the night, and the grilled cheese, was fantastic. To bad it’s a private club, I’d like some more of that!

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies.  Can you even imagine how great that would taste? Little Sister’s Bake Shop made these amazingly spiced pumkin whoopie cakes, and the cream in the middle was delectable. Best dessert of the night. A few of the guys who worked at EB were wondering if their food truck would ever swing by the office. Who knows, maybe they will. Their food is fabulous.

Eventually we got to 2 Wives Brick Oven Pizza, by this point we were going to pop anyways, but we tried a slice of their Thanksgiving pizza. It had turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. It sure didn’t work for me. Without the tomato sauce and cheese, maybe with gravy it would have worked, but those flavor profiles just didn’t match. It was a great try though and it really was creative. Unfortunately, nobody in our group really cared for it. They have a great little restaurant and make lots of other yummy pizza so I’m sure we will be back, just not for the thanksgiving pizza!

The last place that was truly memorable was the Garde Arts Center hosting The Cake Lady. They must have had over 25 flavors of cupcakes. It was like a smorgasbord. (Except we only ate one a piece) I chose a cinnamon iced chocolate cupcake (stellar) and Bry had an oreo with mint frosting. Truly a great way to finish off the night.

In one food stroll, and three hours our palates were paraded around the world. There was definitely a theme in soups, as almost every other place offered a soup (if they weren’t offering dessert). It was well worth the 20 bucks in terms of food consumption, and it was a great way to scope out the area’s restaurants and see what the various establishments are like! Would I do it again? In a heart beat. Where am I going to eat first? Dev’s, or Gaspar’s, or Chaplin’s for dinner. Little Sister’s or Sweetie’s from some treats.

Will you sign up in the spring? Which dish sounded best to you? Did you actually survive my nearly photo-less 2000+ word blog entry? I hope so.

Benefits of New England Coastal Living

Relative Closeness: Looking back over the events my husband and I have gone to in the last month or so we’ve been driving all over the place. Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York City are all within 2 hours of us. We’ve been to Newport twice (1 hr. away), to see friends and watch an America’s Cup Race, we went to Rhode Island for a Hot Air Balloon Festival (30 minutes away). We’ve also visited a friend’s summer house (25 minutes) twice. And the Rhode Island beaches, with waves unprotected by Long Island (20 minutes!) We’ve driven all over coastal Connecticut checking out local attractions and historic sites. Even heading out to Chatham Mass, at the very elbow of Cape Cod is only 2 hours and 20 minutes. It’s hard to believe the diversity of all we can see and do (and how many states we can visit in the same amount of time it took me to drive from home to college (or less!). And sure, towns back home do have exciting things, but maybe I just didn’t hear enough about the new things, because the states up here really publicize their events. Technically we live in a city, (though it really doesn’t look much like it on our street) and there are tons of events to prove it.

Local Seafood: When you live a 10 minute drive to the beach, or 5 minutes away from good fishing areas it’s obvious there is going to be fresh seafood. Well, in the few months we’ve lived here we hadn’t actually bought anything from the grocery stores that fit in the seafood category other than bagged frozen tilapia fillets. Why? Because whenever the various fish would hit a price I’d feel comfortable spending, or we just decided we’d make it work in the grocery budget the fish counter in the local supermarket would not be something you’d want to order from. So instead we’d get our fish when we went out to eat. Still yummy and fresh, but not cooked at home (which I think is fun too!)
So when we heard that the local co-op grocery store (that you don’t have to be a member at to shop at) was adding another csa to the options (farm produce, chickens and eggs, beef, etc) and it just happened to be seafood we immediately looked into it. Sure it was on the pricey side, but we knew we had a lot more allotted to groceries than we were using and if we would be buying less beef or chicken it would end up being the same amount give or take five bucks. This csa is Gabe the Fish Babe. They only get it locally. They only buy from daysailing boats. That means it’s fresh, fresh, fresh! Plus, it allows the fisherman the ability to sell a variety of things, so not everyone gets the same thing each week. They had two options, fin fish only, or shellfish and fin fish. We choose shellfish and fin fish. (What can we say, we love all seafood!) Each week we get 18-22 oz of fish, and 2-3 dozen shellfish unless they are oysters when we will get 12. We could also get crabs sometimes. As an added bonus they include a recipe for the type of fish you get. We made the assumption that the recipe would be great because they certainly don’t want you to have a bad experience with their product, or you might not sign up for another share! (Shares run 4 or 8 weeks)

So we took the plunge. Last week we had 22oz of cobia (yummy warm-water fish tasted very mild, but had a sort of tuna-steak texture) and 25 cherrystone clams (bigger than littlenecks, and yummier too! recommended to eat raw as they are so sweet!) both came with delicious recipes I immediately filed in my recipe box. (Someone else posted they got oysters and shark last week!) This week we got 3 dozen mussels and 3 whole (but cleaned) porgies. The mussels we’ve already eaten. In the past, I never was a mussel person, and even though I knew they could end up in our box I was a bit disappointed when I saw them. However, they were absolutely amazing. Seriously so good. Bryan declared them the best, and finished off the sauce they cooked in. Literally not a drop of leftovers, and I wasn’t a food pusher!

Next up: porgies. Recipe by Anne Burrell (tv food celeb and great chef). Thursday night have transformed into Christmas. Plus, I don’t have to think up what we are having for dinner. Because I pick it up on my way home and the recipe is already found.

We will be signing up again! And good news for anyone super interested but not coastal. Starting next week they will be able to overnight ship your fish to you. SO…feel free to take the plunge! You won’t be disappointed! And the good news is, we crunched prices to see if it was worth it (figuring we’d add in a couple bucks over market price to pay for local or whatever). Our bucket of clams and cobia last week? We got $32 of clams, and $22 dollars of fish, which means we spent $40 for $54 worth of fish!

So, I’ve only managed to get out two benefits of living here, but there are more I promise! Maybe that will be my next post! Just FYI, I was not paid for the endorsement of Gabe the Fish Babe, I just couldn’t help myself. I’m that impressed.

Any of my readers ever interested in a CSA of some sort?