Jersey (er.. Delaware) Fresh Dinner...

There's something about fresh summer vegetables that gets me all excited and inspired to cook. Good thing, too, since it's so darn hot out I need a little inspiration.

It's kind of sad when I think of how I never truly appreciated the summer vegetables that we would grow at home until I left. We had the biggest garden growing up... 70+ tomato plants (grape, cherry, plum & big boy) and all the veggies you could think of... corn, lima beans, string beans, squash, zucchini, bell peppers, cayenne peppers, jalapeno peppers, okra, sometimes eggplant, peas, watermelon or leaf lettuce, just to add a little variety. We would have a bounty of fresh vegetables for dinner every night - corn on the cob, sliced tomato with a little salt and pepper... fried okra (don't get me started on this stuff. It's so good).. I think the fact that I labored in that garden for hours every day in summer made me hate those veggies. Now I miss them. It is amazing how you can grow the most delicious things from a little seed.

There's something about slicing open a jersey tomato and seeing all that beautiful bright red center, and biting into your first ear of silver queen corn. So sweet. I love it.

So Father's Day was this past weekend, but Frank & I were away celebrating our anniversary, so I asked my parents to come over for dinner this week instead. I'm planning my menu, and since my Dad loves his veggies and would much prefer them over starches, I've got a semi-healthy but definitely deliciously-summery-vegetable menu planned.
Caprese Salad

Sausage-stuffed mushrooms (these are my Dad's favorite, so I have to make them)

Asian Grilled Salmon courtesy of Barefoot Contessa(see pic -I've never made this before so I'm really hoping Ina doesn't fail me)

Grilled asparagus with garlic, olive oil, and parmesan

Grilled corn on the cob

and for dessert...

Chocolate Lava Cakes courtesy of The Pioneer Woman (one of my fav food blogs. She has the best writing style!).  













Anyway, it should be a good one.. I'll let you know how it goes!

Day 9

It rained. All day. We shopped some more, Frank got a new "fancy" hawaiian shirt ("fancy" because it cost $70 from a "fancy" store)

and I was determined to get to Cuzzin's restaurant for lunch, because everyone said it was the best authentic caribbean food downtown. Sadly, we got to Cuzzin's and they were closed on Sundays. Boo. So I remembered the other place on my list, Gladys' Cafe.

Because it was a rainy day and there were a few ships in port downtown, everyone and their mom thought of Gladys' too. Boo again. But the waitresses there were hustling and we got a table very shortly after we arrived. I was excited because I had heard good things about this place too. I got jerk chicken, I think Frank got curry chicken. It came with a side of rice, fried plantains and macaroni and cheese.

Well, sadly, I was disappointed. Those fried plantains were nothing like Miss Lucy's, or the place at Coki Beach (neither crispy on the outside nor creamy on the inside). I don't know if you can see but the mac & cheese really left something to be desired (I have issues with mac & cheese that needs to be cut with a knife). The chicken was, eh, alright. But I was sad. I'm going to give Gladys the benefit of the doubt and say that it was because of the incredibly busy day they were having. Gladys herself was quite charming.

She serenaded us at the bar when we came in to an Ella Fitzgerald song. Can't remember which one. But I liked it. Too cute.

After our rainy day, we decided to make a reservation for Craig & Sally's (again). Our waitress recognized us and asked if we lived on the island. That made me excited for a minute. Do we really seem like locals? It was only because she knew we had been there before. :) I didn't take pictures or remember exactly what we had. I remember I got prime rib and Frank had a ribeye I think. Yes, I ordered beef for dinner three times on our vacation. Not sure why. Shouldn't I be ordering seafood? Who knows.

Anyway, for tapas we had three again. I remember there was this watermelon and brie thing with balsamic reduction. That was really good. We also had a mini baby back rib & cornbread. mmm. And the third one I can't remember.. huh. Oh well. I remember we ate all of it, whatever it was. For dessert we got some special kind of creme brulee (it might have been coffee, or chocolate) that was off the hook. And I'm not a real creme brulee fan so that means it was good.

A good end to another dreary day. We walked out of the restaurant with sad faces, knowing this was the last day of our vacation and maybe the last time we'd go to Craig & Sally's for a long time, maybe ever. .

End Day 9. Next post will be either a restaurant post or a recipe post, but I promise I'll keep up with it. Stay tuned!

Days 6,7,8

As I get to the end of blogging my vacation, I'm getting a little ADD about the one-day-at-a-time post, so I'm just going to consolidate it into one or two. Besides, the last day and a half of the trip it rained and there really wasn't that much exciting stuff to speak of. So, here's the cool stuff. Especially the food. MMM.

Day 6 (I think) we went to Magen's Bay. This is one of those "top 10 beaches in the world" places. It was pretty, but honestly wasn't my fave beach we went to. I wore my phillies shirt just to "put out the signal" as Frank says. I almost nodded off and I heard a "Go PHILS!" We met a couple guys from Washington Twp. They told us that the Irish bar in Red Hook - Molly Malone's - was a Philly bar. We then went over there a few days later to see for ourselves. Sure enough, yep. 

 

On day 6,  we also had a night snorkel scheduled with Homer's Snorkel Tours - after our day at the beach we were pretty tired and weren't really feeling up to it, but it was already scheduled and paid for so we knew we had to go. We got the call that we'd be snorkeling from Hull Bay - great news because it was close, and we could still make it to North Side Bistro for dinner afterward.

Hull Bay's waters are very salty and buoyant. It requires very little swimming abilities. We put on our wetsuits, snorkel gear and got into the waters.

The first thing I thought when I looked into the murky waters - flashlight in hand - was, "Oh God, I can't do this." It was so dark I couldn't see anything. We kept moving out further and the water cleared up... just floating on the surface scouring the ocean floor with our flashlights - and found some really cool stuff. A caribbean lobster, a stingray, a sea urchin, and this guy:

Homer was very knowledgeable about all of the sea life - he went down into the water and pulled up the lobster & sea urchin - and asked us if we wanted to hold the sea urchin. I said no way, but he made me hold it in the palm of my hand. It released its tentacles onto my skin and it felt like velcro. Crazy!

We went to Northside Bistro for dinner - had a great meal - I think I had steak (sorry no pics).

End Day 6.

Day 7 we went to Coki Beach. This was one of my favorite finds. Driving up to Coki, well, let's just say we weren't sure if we were in the right place. Lots of trash around the "parking lot" - a rastafarian came up and asked if we needed anything to rent - beach chairs, snorkel equipment, etc. We didn't, because the owners of the apartment provided us with all of those things. How nice. After navigating around the old tires and trash laying around, we came to this:

Just gorgeous.

This beach was much different than the two that we had been to previously - Hull Bay and Magen's Bay. There were locals with shacks set up on the sand and they sold food and drinks out of the shack. We set up right in front of this one.

 

A nice lady came up and asked us if we wanted a menu. Jerk chicken? Yes please!

This was amazing. The platter came with fried plantains, salad, rice and a hot sauce on the side. Delicious. We decided to snorkel a bit to work off the lunch. We had no idea what we were in store for! I put on my snorkel equipment and bobbed my head below the surface and saw this:

Millions of fish everywhere.

There were tarpin (sp?) that were about 4 feet long, too - I got them on video but not any good pics. I'll see if I can upload that. Frank was very excited.

We finished off Day 7 with another stop to Amigos for their $2 taco happy hour. I got a pulled pork taco and a chicken taco.YUM.

Day 8 was our last sunny day in St. Thomas. Well, it started off sunny and then quickly went south. Hurricane Bob (the guy who owned the apt. we were staying in) told us we HAD to take the car ferry to St. John. So we decided to go on Day 8 - Saturday. He also told us we should go to Miss Lucy's for lunch. I'm so glad we took his advice.

St. John is about 50% occupied by a national park, so compared to St. Thomas' population of  50,000, St. John is about 4,000. It has a completely different feel to it. There is none of the commercial touristy downtown like St. Thomas (although there are downtown shops, they are mostly occupied by local artisans).

We passed this little guy on our way out to to the east end of the island (there's only one road).

There was clearly no way to get lost on the way to Miss Lucy's. You just keep going until you get to the end of the road. Chickens greeted us at the parking lot, which is adjacent to a handful of patio dining sets set up outside along the waterfront. Charming. It was looking cloudy but we decided to park ourselves under one of the trees for what we assumed would be a typical tropical passing shower.

The waitress handed us menus and I began to peruse. The a la carte sides got my attention: sweet potato stuffing, fried plantains. MMM. I had to have them. We ordered both, and an order of their chipotle wings and a chicken roti with mango chutney. Having never had a roti before, I wasn't sure what to expect. It was chicken curry with veggies (potatoes and a few other things I believe) wrapped up in a wheat tortilla with a side of this chutney that was out of this world.  This was unbelievably delicious. Those fried plantains that were crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside, and that chutney - I've never had anything like it. I could smear that stuff on everything. The wings were incredible, too. A very memorable meal.

Our trip to St. John was cut short when we realized that the passing shower was not passing, but lingering. So we took the 3:30 ferry back to St. Thomas. I was secretly excited, because this meant that we may be able to snag a reservation at Thirteen - the restaurant on the Northside that was acclaimed for its innovative menu and reasonable prices. I crossed my fingers that we'd be able to get in.

We called as soon as we got back to the house and I found the number (not an easy feat, as they have no website and barely any listings at all online - this place is completely word of mouth). They told us we could get in at 8:30. Great.

It wasn't easy getting to this place, either, as the GPS here doesn't understand the post office addresses that most St. Thomas places have. We basically drove into a couple people's driveways (which we thought were roads) on the way. It was extremely foggy (we are up in the mountains) and rainy and difficult. I was afraid we weren't going to find it. But sure enough, we did.

I didn't take a lot of pictures while we were there. I think because I was so enamored by the food that I got a little distracted. I had steak (again) with garlic truffle fries (phenom!), broccolini (I love broccolini - it's got more crunch than broccoli I think and it's easier to manage) paired with a nice Malbec. I used to be a Shiraz fan, but now it's Malbec. Frank had the mahi mahi. One of the best parts of the meal was the dessert. Here it is:

Warm fudge brownie with cayenne ganache, crushed pretzels and bacon. Yes, I said bacon! It was to die for. Spicy, salty, sweet, creamy, crunchy. Just delicious.

I can't think of a better way to end a rainy day.

Day 5 - Wednesday

We didn't have any plans for Wednesday, so we decided to go downtown. I should have checked the cruise ship schedule first. I think there were 5 cruise ships in port.

As a background, Charlotte Amalie is a bustling tourist shopping district with about a million different jewelry shops and 25 tourist souvenir shops. They also have some nicer upscale clothing shops as well. We were burnt (again) so we figured we'd enjoy the a/c and shade. Besides, we had plans to go to Paradise Point for their Wednesday night sunset party so we figured we'd stay downtown and check it out.

We shopped around a bit, but after being hounded by jewelry shop owners I was pretty much over it. We drove up to Paradise Point (they have a tram that will take you up the side of the mountain for $18 pp, but you can drive up the mountain for free on Wednesday nights). It was really busy. They have a sunset party every Wednesday, and you can see here why:

The view was spectacular. This is above the restaurant - in a gazebo overlooking the harbor (yes, I'm wearing the purple dress again. Love it). We could still hear the music playing below and no one was around, so, we danced around a bit.

 

Then, for kicks, we did a few crane kicks, which I plan to submit to the Crane Kick Chronicles:

All in all a good day.