Eating in a box

Our third stop was a two day port call in St. Petersburg Russia. This is a new port, the ship terminals were brand new and very clean. They have an internet cafe after the checkpoint in which does have fast wifi (it's how I managed to get the other posts uploaded) Everyday the Cruise Director (JC) and the Activity Manager (Mark) put on a show (they tape it the night before) basically telling you about the day ahead facts about the destination, stuff happening on the ship and of course they read our letters. It's always entertaining and they've managed to put it up on youtube. Anyhow, this particular day they did warn us about the passport people when you enter the country. Unlike the rest of the trip in Russia in order to go out of the terminal you had to pass through customs and passport checks and you had to be part of a tour in order to do this (no tour = no leave ship). Apparently the tours take responsibility and have a visa deal with the government. The passport ...

Day 6 of our adventure. Today's big thing was the coffee plantation tour at Mountain Thunder located in Kailua-Kona south of where we were staying. Before that we had a bit of time to burn. So we started with breakfast. Here's our view from breakfast. We stopped by Island Lava Java Cafe. Nice breakfast joint that features 100% Kona coffee (as opposed to the places that serve "blended" Kona) The view was spectacular and they had a guy singing up front part time ukulele Hawaiian music and part time Christmas melodies. Breakfast was pretty straight forward the only thing unique about my breakfast was that it was served with some Portuguese sausage, it's slightly sweet and red from the paprika (not spicy at all). My wife ordered the "Oatmeal Brulée" (pictured above). Plain oatmeal topped with vanilla yogurt and bananas dusted with brown sugar and sugar burned by a torch. It certainly a unique presentation and very tasty. We went and shopped aro...

Three Day Shortribs. I know it's a repeat of a former bento but I didn't name that one three day shortrib err. oh wait.. well nevermind, better come up with a new title. Anyhow, it's been a while and I don't believe my current crop of bento-ers have had the chance the taste possibly the most wonderful thing that can come out of my sous vide machine. Outside of the fact that I wanted to do my short ribs again, the inspiration for the bento is the nice cool weather we've been having, it makes you wanna have something that hearty and "sticks to your ribs" if you'll allow for the pun. Besides, Thanksgiving is around the corner and I wanted to test out this sweet potato dish. So um. Fall Short Rib bento it is! I promise to work on more cohesive themes. Three day short rib, what's there really to say? It's meat, lots and lots of meat slowly cooking for three solid days in a water bath. Why three? It's some sort of magic number. See one day just ...

I had the fortune to be invited to a special blogger event at the Carillon to celebrate their official "hard launch". I've been very curious about this place ever since the "soft launch" was announced about a month ago. The restaurant is located on campus over at University of Texas at Austin and seemed to be an unusual place to find fine dining. As an alum, when I hear UT and restaurant I instantly flash back to my dorm days eating in the dining hall, or the bevy of fast food cheap eats around campus. This was clearly *not* the case. The Carillon is located in the new AT&T executive education and conference center, which is actually a hotel, classroom, conference center and restaurant(s) all rolled into one. It was neat seeing fancy dignitaries intermixed with grungy college students. This restaurant is a pretty classy place, far bigger than I had imagined, but they did a good job at segmenting the large area to make it feel more cozy, but it definitely sti...

Yes, I'm posting a bento solely around the entree, I've been wanting to work with short ribs for some time and my recent purchase of a nice dutch oven pushed me into action. The rest of the items in the bento really were, "what can I put in with short ribs?" so there's no real point in trying to fabricate a theme. This bento did include yet another coworker from my work, he's been standing in line asking when I'd bring the bento goodness to our work. I'll admit I was a little intimidated to cook for him, he's very well traveled, well knowledged about food, and has eaten at some of the best places, and has a brother that's a chef. I cringed as I put the bento in the fridge this morning. Hopefully it is to his liking. Ok let's just lead off with the entree. Short ribs, it's one of those things that if I see it in a menu there's going to be about a 95% chance it'll be what I'm having for dinner/lunch/breakfast whatever. Why th...