We got on the boat and headed north on a boat ride that was more fun than a roller coaster. You’ll know you’re seeing this on the slideshow when you get to a series of blurry, poorly framed pictures. On this boat trip, we made stops to take pictures of The Fountain Of Youth waterfall and the fishing village Castara.

We also made stops for the snorkelers to jump in and look at the reefs. Normally, I would be snorkeling, too, but unfortunately I had an ear infection.

It was probably due to the fact I didn’t jump in, but today was my first experience with sea sickness. They had cast a fishing line and were slowly creeping forward, and it really hit me. After that I felt so much better. We eventually headed out to No Man’s Land to have our beach barbeque. This was one of those beaches that comes out beautiful in every photo.

After the beach bbq, we went to Nylon Pool, which is a huge sandbar in the middle of the ocean. We all got out of the boat and walked around in waist high water. It was pretty neat.

For dinner, we went to Marcia’s. It was really good. Sorry for the blurry pictures, but I was too hungry to care!

Here is a link to the slideshow for all of the pictures.

mmmmmm....

Thank you, Joy the Baker. You rock.

We had a wonderful dinner. Everyone brought a dish and the Aslaksons made a tenderloin.

The food was fabulous. Below is the feta, sun dried tomato, basil, and orzo salad that we made. Also, you’ll see the pie that Alton Brown and Jon make.

We decorated Christmas cookies.

Then we had the gift exchange or gift grab or something like that.

Andy won us a pack of cards…

But we left with a marble cheese cutter. It was a good deal for us!

And the most important thing to know is: who got the angel? To be concluded soon…

It’s an involved process. It takes 2 days to make them. Day 1: make the layers, stack them, and put them in the refrigerator to rest. Day 2: Top with chocolate and cut into small pieces.

The layers are made of a cake-like mixture with almond paste. There is also a thin layer of raspberry jam and a thin layer of apricot preserves. The cookie is topped with a layer of chocolate.

I think these cake-like treats are called cookies because if you had a cake sized piece of this treat, it would be a hefty amount of calories.

Part of the fun was choosing the fortunes. I decided to use quotes from authors the audience would appreciate.

The key ingredient in these cookies is almond extract, and they taste wonderful. I have been wanting one since yesterday morning. (They are all gone.) I’m going to be making Neapolitan cookies next which requires a tube of almond paste so hopefully this will do the trick!

How about Crispy and Sticky Chicken Thighs with Squashed New Potatoes and Tomatoes or Potato and Chorizo Omelet with a Kinda Parsley Salad or even Balsamic-Baked Onions and Potatoes with Roast Pork, just brilliant.

I highly recommend watching this show it is so good. You can see it on Food Network at 9:30am on Saturdays.

Whilst we’re on the topic of food television, I’d like to mention another show that me and Darcy have recently started watching, America’s Test Kitchen. This is totally different from Jamie at Home. First of all it is on PBS and takes a more scientific approach at cooking and improving classic recipes. Their motto is “We make recipes 100 times, so you only have to make them once.” The show provides techniques and tricks to preparing recipes as well as equipment reviews and tasting panels. I encourage you to check it out. This one is on daily at 5:30pm on PBS (KTCA).

Well enough about food for a while, I’m gonna go cook some. I’m gonna make some zucchini bread, with a recipe from Elise at Simply Recipes.

One of the menu items that flew off the menu at me immediately was the Pear and Gorgonzola Salad, with its pear, Gorgonzola cheese, candied walnuts and balsamic dressing, almost the perfect salad. I didn’t actually try it this time, but it is on my list when I go there next. Once I do, I’ll have to compare it to my reference salad, the Pear and Ama Blue salad at Prescott’s.

We decided to go with 3 slices of pizza, each of us getting a slice of the Mediterranean and sharing once slice of American. The Mediterranean was brilliant, pesto as a base, with eggplant, kalamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and roasted red peppers, all topped with a good helping of feta. If I had one drawback with this pizza, it is that the eggplant is cut rather large and tends to come off all in one piece. The American was pretty good, basically a supreme pizza with some good tasting sauce. It is reminiscent of Papa John’s, but a bit less sweet and more fresh tasting. The thing that set this pizza apart though was the crust. Not too thick, not too thin, with a good flavor. It had a wonderful chewiness that I have come to love in a pizza crust.

All in all we will definitely be back, maybe not all the time, but frequently. One of the nice things about zpizza is the amount of seating, there is ample seating inside and even more seating outside in the mall area. Which makes it a perfect place for going and getting some lunch with our larger-than-usual groups, that we sometimes have.

Ratings (out of 5)
Atmosphere: 4.0
Service: 4.0 (the cashier was personable)
Food: 4.5
Fun: 3.5 (it’s a pizza spot, thats about it)

Overall: 4.0

It’s like making a meringue, except you would substitute gelatin for eggs. We learned all this from watching Alton Brown on Good Eats. Next time for us: amaretto marshmallows.

Somehow, one of our bags of fall apples is always left behind. Those apples are not made into apple pie, apple cobbler, or any apple whatever. Last year the bag sat in our fridge until we had to make room for the new season of apples. These apples weren’t honeycrisp or anything that would go bad quickly. These apples were good for long term storage…but still…it is definitely better to make apple chips out of them.