September 9, 2012 Dinner- Grilled Rib Eye Steak and Eggplant with Cucumber and onion Salad and Bernaise Sauce

Suzette was attending to her booth at the Chile Festival in Los Lunas all day so I was free to do some shopping, so Saturday evening we decided to prepare a meal using as many of the ingredients from our garden as possible and we decided to grill a steak with slices of eggplant from our garden and prepare a salad with fresh lettuce and cucumbers and onion from our garden. 

In the morning I went to Pro’s Ranch Market and bought four large avocados ($.69 each) 2 lbs. of Mexican limes (3 lb. for $.99), a pound of brown onions (4 lbs. for $.99), ½ lb. of ham ($1.65) and 1 lb. of Mexican Sonoran Crema con sal ($.179/lb.).

Then I went to Costco and bought  a bottle of Rioja Tempranillo Reserva RATED 92 BY PARKER FOR $9.99 from Elciego, Spain, which is where the famous Riscal Winery is located , a rack of lamb that had been cut into chops and sold for the chop price of $7.99 instead of the rack price of $11.99 and four ribeye steaks, three of which were beautifully marbled and one that was a throwaway without marbling and a lovely piece of halibut.  Something I discovered at Costco today.  If you want only a portion of a package of meat, you can ask the Butcher Department to repack a package.  For example, the package of Halibut I selected had a lovely center cut steak and a small boney tail piece of fish and I asked the butcher to pack only the large center cut steak for me and he did it with only a small grimace on his face.  I did not have the courage to ask him to re-pack the steaks to get rid of the throwaway piece of meat.

When I got home I watched a little football and then went for a bike ride and then Willy and I drove to Los Lunas, to help Suzette with her booth and then to help her dismantle the booth and load it into the Land Cruiser.

When we got home Suzette was tired and sat for a while, while I peeled and sliced two lemon cucumbers and an Armenian cucumber and some red onion and dossed that with about 1 1/2 Tbsp. of Rice Wine Vinegar and about ½ Tbsp. of sugar and put it in the fridge to pickle a bit.

Suzette then came into the kitchen and asked what she could do to help with dinner and I said, “Grill the steak and eggplant.”  As she was doing that I started making a Bernaise Sauce by picking about two Tbsp. of fresh tarragon in the garden and plucking the leaves from it and then mincing a head of shallot that was about 1 ½ Tbsp.  and putting that in an enameled sauce pan with a little more than a ½ cup of white wine vinegar and 14 cup of white wine (California Chardonnay) with a dash of white pepper and salt and heated that rapidly until the liquid reduced by 2/3.  Willy sliced ½ lb. of butter and I added about half of that to the liquid, when I realized that I had forgotten to add the two egg yolks that would thicken the sauce, so I took the sauce off the heat and separated two egg yolks and Willy beat them briefly and I then added them to the cooled liquid and then put the pan back on a medium heat and beat in the last five or six slices of butter and when the sauce began to thicken I reduced the heat and after a minute or two more turned off the  heat  and stirred for another five or six minutes to allow the sauce to cool and not separate.   Miraculously, it held together although it did not thicken as much as it would have if the eggs had been added before adding any of the butter.  Suzette had asked me to tell her when the process was about ten minutes from finishing, which is when she started grilling the steak and eggplant.  So as I was completing the sauce, Suzette was grilling and Willy was sautéing 8 shishito peppers from our garden in olive oil.  When Suzette brought the steak and eggplant came into the kitchen, about ½ of it was still very rare and so we sliced it and put the slices into the pan with the peppers to cook a little more.

I poured the Bernaise into a pitcher to cool it and so it could be poured onto the food.  We then plated up the steak, eggplant, grilled peppers and put Bernaise sauce on the table with a bottle of Forefront Cabernet Sauvignon by Pine Ridge Winery.   The wine had a dark and deeply complex flavor that was perfect for the meat and eggplant eaten with pieces of pepper.

I had a few bites of Brie cheese after dinner with the wine and that was delicious and then a few chocolates that were okay also, although the heaviness of the wine interfered just a little bit with the flavor of the cheese and chocolate because it obscured their flavor because it was so heavy.   

Bon Apétit

August 27, 2012 Breakfast – salmon and herring, Lunch – hamburger, Dinner – Monkfish

August 27, 2012 Breakfast – salmon and herring, Lunch – hamburger, Dinner – Monkfish

This morning I got up and watched the sun rise.  Then at 6:30 a.m. went to eat my next to last plate of salmon and herring.  I swear it is the best herring I have eaten since living in Sweden and eating it in the smörgöstbord on the overnight ferry from Stockholm, Sweden to Torku/Helsinki, Finland in 1970.  After breakfast of a toasted bagel and lox and cream cheese and capers and sliced tomato and onion and salad and herring, we went out on deck 7 (the Promenade Deck, but no calls it that any more) and took two deck chairs.  I read The Vikings by Ferguson for several hours, while Suzette swam.   We saw a pod of porpoises swim by at around 10 a.m. 

Then around noon we walked up to the deck 12 to the Boardwalk Café for lunch.  The Boardwalk Café doesn’t really cook much of anything except hamburgers and hot dogs.  The rest of the food comes from the kitchens down stairs. There was a hot plate line with large containers filled with hamburgers and frankfurters, sautéed onions and mushrooms.  On a different line were cold items and at the end of the line were desserts and fruit.  I took some radicchio and lettuce salad and sliced tomatoes with a hamburger and sautéed onions and mushrooms with a cup of lemonade and some fried onion rings with catsup; a welcome back to the U. S. sort of lunch.  Suzette took the same except for fresh French fries and a beer.

After lunch we went to an abbreviated performance of Richard III by Shakespeare presented by the 6 on- board performers.  It was only 1 ½ hours long and bloody but satisfying, because the bad guy, the Duke of Gloucester, got it in the end.  

Then we went back to the room and packed up our suit cases and then went to our last dinner on the ship.  I was still stuffed from lunch so had a light dinner of caesar salad, chicken consommé, and a Canyon ranch entrée of steamed monkfish wrapped in a cabbage leaf.  Suzette took crab salad with avocado instead of the soup.  There is something strange about avocado on the QM2, there isn’t any.  The only thing like an avocado that is served is guacamole salad.  So Suzette’s crab and avocado salad was a scoop of crab salad and a scoop of guacamole on a lettuce leaf.  I don’t know if this is because it is faster to serve by scooping from a bucket of guacamole or if it is due to the fact that it is easier to keep guacamole fresh by keeping it frozen until it is needed and then to thaw it.  Either way, I never saw a slice of avocado.

Visions of Mexico.  We had Banana Foster for dessert.   Michael one of our dinner table mates, who taught mathematics, was celebrating his 71^st birthday, so we also had a birthday cake after dessert and sang Happy Birthday to him.

We went to the Purser’s Office and got tags for an earlier departure.  Then we went back to the cabin to sleep so we could get up at 4:40 a.m. to see our arrival in New York.

Bon Voyage

August 25, 2012 Breakfast - Poached Haddock and eggs, Lunch – Canyon Ranch Menu, Dinner – Lamb Three ways and Roasted Duck

August 25, 2012 Breakfast - Poached Haddock and eggs, Lunch – Canyon Ranch Menu, Dinner – Lamb Three ways and Roasted Duck

I started the day with a glass of orange juice with a bit of ginger in it.  Then after watching the sun rise through the clouds from the Terrace Bar on the 8^th floor, we went to breakfast in the Britannia Grille.  The Britannia Grille is the white linen and table service dining room where we take our dinners at our assigned table, but for breakfast and lunch the seating is open and you are seated on a first come first seated basis.  You can designate whether you wish to be seated with others or alone or by window, etc.      We each ordered poached haddock.  Suzette chose poached eggs and I chose an omelet with Swiss cheese, onions, spinach and herbs.  We both loved our moist flakey fish and eggs.

For lunch Suzette went to the spa to celebrate her birthday with a spa day.  In honor of Suzette’s spa day, I went to lunch in the Britannia Grille and ordered the entire Canyon Ranch Spa menu, which is only available in the Britannia Grille.  It started with a bowl of cream of carrot soup; then a roasted Cornish game hen served with two carrots cut in the shape of flowers carrots and a broccoli floweret, and a large section of turmeric rice, that I barely touched.   I cannot believe rice is on a spa menu.  Instead I had a lovely buttered whole wheat roll.  For dessert I was served a coffee flavored cream brulee and a cup of tea.  I cannot say enough good things about the custards on the QM2.  This one was just as it should be rich and creamy with an intense coffee flavor and a crisp caramelized sugar crust that had to be broken through to yield the delicious custard.

Suzette received a birthday card at the room today from Cunard and I made the maître de aware that it was her birthday.

The night before, we made a plan with our dinner mates to meet for a champagne cocktail in the Winter Garden at 5:30 p.m.  I was a little late getting back to the room, but showered and we grabbed a chilled bottle of Grenelle Rose Brut sparkling wine from Samur and ran up to the Winter Garden where Ida and Vic and Michael and Nourie were waiting for us.  We poured glasses of wine and toasted Suzette.  Each of our dinner mate couples was kind enough to give Suzette a small gift and then we went to dinner, because there was a reception for Cunard repeat customers after dinner and each of our dinner mate couples were in that category.

If I have not mentioned it yet, I need to mention that all the sparkling wine made in Samur and Vouvray we drank and purchased was just like champagne, except mostly made with different grapes.  Some wineries, like Cellars Bouvet Ladubay in Saumur even make sparkling wines that are almost identical to champagne in the sense that it is made with chardonnay and some chenin blanc and pinot noir grapes.  If I recall correctly a rose made by Bouvet uses pinot noir grapes from property owned by the French actor Gérard Depardieu.  All the sparkling wines we drank in the Loire Valley were produce using the méthode traditionnelle, which is the same method used in Champagne for making champagne where there is a secondary fermentation in the bottle, except the Champagne producers have successfully lobbied the French government to restrict the use of the words méthode champenoise only on bottles of sparkling wine produced in Champagne.        

Dinner was lovely also.  We each ordered cold cucumber soup, which was not as good as that made at the Greenhouse Bistro, but this one was interesting because it was flavored and colored with beet juice, which was very nice.  I had a Roasted Duck thigh and leg with a potato dumpling and vegetables. Suzette got the winner; Lamb three ways, hash, confit and roasted.  For dessert I had chocolate mousse which was a little where we were served a birthday cake of strawberries and whipped cream and the service crew sang “HAPPY BIRTHDAY”.  One of the interesting and weird things about the boat is that the food is first rate and there is as much of it as you can possibly eat, but the alcohol is strictly controlled and very expensive.  So we are feeling like we are saving a $1000 by having 6 or 7 bottles of champagne.

After dinner we went to the Commadore’s Club on the 9^th floor and watched the sun set over the Newfoundland coast.  Sunset was around 8:00 p.m. and it was really beautiful.   At around9:00 we went up to the lookout on deck 12 and watched the sky darken to night.

August 24, 2012 Breakfast – Salmon salad and herring, Lunch – Rainbow trout, Dinner – Sauteed Plaice and vegetables

August 24, 2012 Breakfast – Salmon salad and herring, Lunch – Rainbow trout, Dinner – Sauteed Plaice and vegetables

I have finally gotten over my smoked salmon and salad breakfast fascination after three days.  I promised Suzette to eat in the dining room tomorrow.  I could not sleep well last night so, since the weather cleared, I walked the deck this morning and watched the sun rise off the stern of the ship.  Beautiful.  We then took two deck chairs but the wind was blowing so fiercely, that we needed to cover up with a beach towel from the pool area at the stern of the ship, where we had watched the sun rise.  Still it appears I got a chill and am suffering from a sinus condition.   Suzette was wonderful to recall that I had said how much I enjoyed having a cup of beef consommé on board the U.S. United States in 1960.   

At 6:30 a.m. I had a glass of fresh squeezed orange and carrot and a bit of ginger juice.  Then the salmon salad fix.  Then we went to two lectures.  The first was on cultural diversity by Ambassador Peck and the second by a British astronomer on Saturn.  The most interesting thing I read on the subject of the middle east was in my The Viking Age by Ferguson who said that the historical records shows that the Christian Europeans have been fighting back the Muslim tide in Europe since 775 when Charlemagne held them at Vienna and just north of the Erbo River in Spain.   So for over 1300 years the Christian/Muslim conflict has not been solved.  We as Americans are not used to seeing situations that are intractable.  We like teleological resolutions, but I suspect that this one will not resolve itself between the east and west, but instead within the Muslim world.  Much like the Viking invasion of England.  If you forget that the earlier invaders of England, the Angles and the Saxons were not heathen and were Christians, then the resolution of the conflict between the Christianized Angles and Saxons in the 800’s by Alfred giving the invading Norsemen East Anglia in exchange for them accepting Christianity was a kind of resolution that we can probably see work in the Middle East.  Let them keep the lands they control and we will say nothing about their conservative and oppressive social rules, if they suppress the Jihadi extremists who threaten us both.  

Lunch – We went to the Britannia Grille for a seated lunch and were seated on the sunny side of the boat.  We each took grilled rainbow trout amandine and vegetables.  It was delicious.  I took an apple tart, the thin flat French style one on puff pastry with a dab of custard under the thin slices of apple. Suzette took the red plum pie.  My tart was fabulous served on a bed of warm stirred egg custard.  Suzette’s red plum pie was not so good, because it had canned cherries mixed I with the red plums. 

For dinner I ordered lightly, a bowl of beef consommé with barley and root vegetables, a battered and sautéed plaice, and for dessert an apple tart, but this time cooked in a pie crust with a crumble on top and served on a bed of warm custard.   We then went to a wonderful show of acrobats and to bed.

August 23, 2012 - Breakfast, A Feast of all Nations, Dinner – Duck and Bouramundi and Stilton

August 23, 2012 Breakfast - a Feast of all nations, Dinner – Duck and Bouramundi and Stilton

We went to the King’s Court which is a series of buffet lines of cold and hot foods.  After initially taking a cup of tea and a pastry, I discovered that several more lines of hot and cold foods were open. 

I was very impressed with the cold line that included both a large pile of fresh salad and salmon gravad lax, with capers, sour cream, chopped fresh dill weed and thinly sliced red onion and hard boiled eggs next to German mackerel in mustard sauce and another in tomato sauce.  Next to it was cold cuts of a very German nature and next to that, cheeses of a French nature.  Around the corner I found fruits and took a couple of slices of honey dew melon and two slices of orange.  So I filled my plate with some of the salmon and other accessories and drank a lemon tea with it.

Later I noticed that there was a hot line with pancakes and waffles and omelets of salmon and goat cheese and bacon and wild boar and apple sausage and grilled tomatoes and British things like baked beans and oatmeal, so I took an omelet and a couple of sausages that I shared with Suzette and some mango and kiwi slices.  The fruit juices a sweetened beyond what we are used to in the U.S. 

So on a whole the breakfasts are better in variety in the King’s Court and we shall be eating breakfasts there a lot.

After a lecture on the conflict in the middle east where the conclusion is that there is little or no progress toward democracy of the type we think of in the West and little prospect for any real reform in the near future, we went to the pavilion to sit and drink Bouvet Brut from Samur.

At 2:15 we went to the Theatre to see a presentation of Chaucer’s Tales originally performed at the Royal Shakespearean Theatre.  Then back for a nap and a shower and off to dinner.

At Dinner I chose a duck breast salad; thin slices of duck breast served on an Italian salad of string beans, peas and mayonnaise dressing.  Then I ordered bouramundi with a dab of baba ghanoush, on a bed of mashed potatoes.  The fish was very firm as if overcooked, so I asked for it to be undercooked and the waiter and the kitchen was kind enough to do that.  I learned two things from this experience.  First, the bouramundi fish is a very firm fish and it never gets soft, because the second time it was served almost raw and it still had a firm texture.  Second, all the fish is fresh on the menu.  What a nice surprise.

The menu has a cheese course in the desserts section, although you can have both a cheese course and a desert.  In fact, you can have anything on the menu and if you want more you can order two of an item.

The ship board food is plentiful and delicious.  What is dear and tightly controlled is the alcoholic beverages.  The Britannia Grille has a rather limited wine menu and it is quite expensive.  I would judge that Cunard marks up the wine about 4 times. The cheapest wine on the menu is a Cunard varietal at around $30.00 and things go up from there. 

Also, our wine steward, I would never use the word sommelier, seemed to be a Russian woman, who clearly had been given instructions to pour as much wine as possible into the glasses so one would need to buy more wine.  We spent about $250.00 for the five or six bottles of wine that we bought on the trip. What was done that I did like was that they would store the wine with our name on the bottle from meal to meal, so after we got used to the system, we simply bought a bottle of red and a bottle of white and drank glasses of each as we wished.  So we would have a glass of white with a fish appetizer and a glass of red with a beef or duck entrée.

After dinner, we saw “Hunger Games” in the theatre.  I really liked Woody Harrelson’s performance, but the plot was somewhat juvenile and so was the rest of the acting.  It was great to see a movie I would not normally pay to see in a theater but wanted to see, because Willy had recommended it in a theater,

Bon Appétit

August 20, 2012 Lunch – Rennes Airport, Dinner- Hilton Hotel, Southampton, England

August 20, 2012 Lunch – Rennes Airport,  Dinner- Hilton Hotel, Southampton, England

We got up and had a Continental breakfast at Hotel Lichen, with the wonderful apple compote tht is packed in small plastic containers that are about the same size as a small 5 oz. yogurt container and then drove to Rennes in about 2 ½ hours from Batz Sur Mer.

When we arrived at the airport at round 11:00 am, we parked our car and took our big box and three suitcases into the airport, which was a little extra exercise that I would have wished.  Apparently there are no baggage handlers at the small regional airports.

There was only a small restaurant in the airport and it was crowded with the usual cross section of travelers ordering coffee, tea, champagne and sandwiches and pastries.  I asked the lady if lunch would be served and she said, “Yes, at around 12:00 noon.”  So we waited at a table for a while, but finally broke down and decided to have a champagne each.  Then at around 12:15 I could wait no longer and ordered two Croque Monsiers, which in this case were two pieces of thick white bread with a piece of ham and cheese between the two slices and some grated Gruyere cheese sprinkled on the top of the top slice and then toasted for several minutes to melt everything.  The result was a brittle edge of toasted bread wherever there was no cheese.  Not very appealing, but we still had a little of our wedge of our lovely cheese we had bought in St. George and we spread that on the inside and top of the sandwich and the sandwich was so hot that it melted into the sandwich, and made the sandwich edible, especially with our glass of champagne. 

After lunch we checked in with Flybe (our Air France regional carrier) and checked in our big box for an extra 37 Euros (about $50.00), which made our purchases of wine and salt a little bit more expensive.  Then at around 2:00 p.m. we finally boarded for the 45 minute flight to Southampton, England.  It is always fun flying across the channel.  I was able to see St. Malo and Dinard as we left Brittany and the Channel Islands and then the white chalk cliffs of England pretty well because the smaller prop plane flew only about 8 or 10,000 feet above the water.

When we arrived in Southampton, we took a cab to the Hilton Hotel where we had a reservation.  The Hilton is located near both the airport and the Cunard (Queen Elizabeth II) (ship) Quay.  It was around 4:30 when we got settled in.  We asked the Maitre D’ when dinner would be served and he said beginning at 6:00 p.m., so we went for a walk around the property, which did not have large gardened but was in a densely wooded area and had lot parking areas surrounded by woods so you could get the feeling of seeing some nature.  Quite frankly, we did not want to get very deep into the woods, which were very dense and because it was drizzling a bit.  For those who live in New Mexico, it is hard to understand how green England is.  It rains quite a lot and the foliage is dense and very green.  The closest thing I can compare it to in the U.S. is a Deep South forest covered with vines of green foliage, like kudzu.

We were hungry after our meager lunch, so showed up a few minutes before 6:00 pm. And were graciously shown to a table at the window overlooking the forest and near a corner of the large dining room.  The menu was typically British, but we ordered a fixe prix dinner.  I can only recall the paté, which was like the pork liverwurst we buy in the U.S. rather than the lovely French duck liver pate.

I think I had a flounder that was lovely and I forget Suzette’s appetizer and entree and our desserts.

After dinner we retired to the lounge next to the restaurant and I wrote some blogs while Suzette worked on her phone and read.  The bar was shoulder to shoulder and the lounge next to the bar was filled with about 100 conventioneers.  This Hilton Hotel was quite large, with meeting rooms, a coffee bar, a full service bar, extensive sitting areas and the large dining room.   I pushed myself through the gayly mixing crowd of conventioneers to the bar and ordered a draw of apple cider.  British bars and pubs always seem to have at least one apple cider on tap and they usually serve it in pint glasses just like beer for approximately the same price (around 3.5 pounds or $5-6.00).  They often also serve bottled apple and pear ciders, if you have a favorite, like Bulmers’.   I did not get much typing done because there was a Premier League soccer game being broadcast on the large screen T.V. in the lounge and several persons were watching it.  A perfect ending to our first day back in England;  a pint of proper English cider and a soccer game.         

Bon Appetit

 

August 21, 2012 Winchester, Lunch – sandwiches and Dinner – Queen Mary II

August 21, 2012 Winchester, Lunch – sandwiches and Dinner – Queen Mary II

We decided last night to go to Winchester today, rather than waiting in the hotel until departing for the ship at 2:15 p.m. 

So at 9:00 a.m. we crossed the highway to the bus stop at Chitham Roundabout and boarded the bus to Winchester.  When we arrived at the Bus Station, some friendly folks directed us to the tourist Information office located in the Guild Hall, where we were given a walking tour map of the downtown.  We followed the route up the high street past several lovely bakeries with appealing sandwiches toward the West Gate.  Winchester confronts one with up to a 1000 years of English history at every turn, starting when one walks out of the Bus Station and is confronted by the statue of King Alfred who united England after the Middle Ages and made Winchester his seat of government.   Winchester was the seat of government of England during the 13^th Century also when King Henry of Blois came to rule.  Winchester’s fortifications were started by William the Conquerer after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and for many years Winchester was a fortified walled city.   It has built and destroyed several times over the years and now very few of the original walls remain other than those between the west gate and the council hall which was part of the original fortifications dating from the 13^th century. 

We followed the guided path through some of the remaining sally ports below ground where the soldiers could leave the fort and cross the dry moat to attack besieging forces.  When we walked into the Council Chamber, which was the largest building in the 13^th century fortress still intact, we were amazed to see on the wall the Round Table, build by Henry II in the 13^th Century.  We were confronted by a real table of real historic significance that we thought only existed in legend and fiction.  At dinner two of our dinner mates from England (Michael and Noni) said that the legendary round table pre-dates the Norman invasion, but it is not clear to me if the legend preceded the real Round Table or the real Round Table influenced the literary legend.   The real table built in the 13^th century has the names of 24 of King Henry’s knights and their crests painted on it with his picture in the center.  Very, very cool.

Next we walked down from the fortress area and back into town through old streets of really old houses, most of which are maintained by the Winchester City Council. and over to Winchester Cathedral and were amazed again.  Winchester Cathedral was also begun in the 13^th century and is a beautiful high gothic cathedral.  It has the longest nave in England and its barrel vaulted gothic ceiling towers high above its high clearstory windows.  Its scale is so imposing that it is hard to describe, so here are several pictures.

We saw a famous illuminated bible from the 13^th century and two globes from the 16^th century, one geographic showing California as an island and the other astronomical showing the constellations in its library.

We returned to the High Street after the Cathedral visit to buy several sandwiches that we wanted to eat on the bus back to Bassett where our hotel was located.  In one particularly appealing bakery we bought a hot ham and pineapple pizza and a cold egg, bacon and salad sandwich and a blackberry juice and took them back to the bus station.  When the bus arrived we ran up to the top deck and sat in the front row and ate our pizza pie and sandwich and drank the juice as the bus drove back toward Southampton.

We arrived at the hotel around 1:30 p.m. and at 2:15 our taxi arrived to take us to the Queen Elizabeth II Quay to board the Queen Mary II.  We boarded around 3:00 p.m. and were greeted by a complimentary 1/2 bottle of Pol Acker champagne, so we unpacked our clothes and then poured a glass of champagne and went up on deck to watch the ship disembark, but there was a technical problem and the ship did not leave until after 6:00 which was when our first seating for dinner was scheduled, so we went to dinner.  We are seated at a table for 6 persons, Michael and Noni are retired teachers from England and the other couple’s husband is a college professor of design and architecture.  They are all very friendly and intelligent so it is interesting to talk to them.

My first impression of the food is that it is just okay.  Suzette ordered gazpacho that was sweet, yuch.  I ordered tomato bisque, which was okay but not nearly as good as the delicious chunky roasted tomato bisque with fresh herbs at Suzette’s restaurant, the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery.

We each had a salad that was fresh and pleasant with a few canned artichoke leaves and we each ordered the mushroom stuffed guinea fowl with duchess potatoes and sliced snow peas and one stalk of asparagus and a bottle of Spanish Viura ($34.50).  I requested and was given more steamed asparagus.  The guinea fowl was tender and delicious with that characteristic wild game taste of pheasant.  I liked it a lot.  The mushroom stuffing was not so good.   It was rather dry and tasteless.  There was very little sauce and it had very little flavor, so on balance about a C+.   

For dessert Suzette ordered the Canyon Ranch Cranberry Strudel and ginger ice cream with a nice combination of slightly crunchy apples and the bit of tartness from the cranberries, with a light crème anglais sauce with a scoop of Ginger ice cream.  I had the profiteroles which were small and filled with egg custard and topped with a chocolate sauce, plus the waiter brought me three scoops of ice cream: one coffee, one the ginger, and one vanilla.  The ice cream was fresh made and good and the ginger one with bits of candied ginger in it was great.  I can tell we are going to be eating in the special Todd English dining room some, if we want exceptional food.    

After dinner we wandered into the Clarendon Gallery to see its offerings of art and drink a glass of champagne.  I saw one pastel I liked by an artist named Simon Kenan.  All the rest was junky.   The art assistant signed me up for a lecture and some special information on Simon Kenan.  Then we returned to our lovely state room and our comfortable bed.  Suzette briefly opened the door onto the balcony to breath the fresh air and was almost sucked overboard by the air coming under our door from the corridor and because it is windy and the boat is going about 30 knots; so much for a romantic evening on the balcony of our cabin.

Bon Appétit