How Not to Starve on a Cruise, part 2
We arrived at Catalina Island Tuesday morning, despite having returned to Long Beach just a few hours after leaving. A passenger had a medical emergency that led to the early return. Since Catalina is just twenty-six miles from Long Beach, it did not put us off schedule. Kathryn and I went to the dining room for breakfast. We had oatmeal with a baked apple and a banana. Once ashore, we avoided the photographers and took our own pictures with the statue of the seal. There we met Roger, a ninety-year old gentleman in a golf cart. He told us he had lived on the island since the age of six, in 1931. We asked him the best way to get to the Wrigley Memorial, and he offered us a ride in his jalopy. It was only about two miles, but it was uphill all the way. We enjoyed the gardens around the memorial, and walked back, downhill all the way. We stopped at the conservancy center on the way down, and enjoyed its exhibits. Returning to the town of Avalon, we stopped in a beach front cantina. I had a Lava Flow and Kathryn ordered a Bloody Mary, no salt. The Lava Flow arrived topped with a big pile of whipped cream. I asked the waiter if he could remove the whipped cream, and he kindly took it away and brought another without the topping. We ordered guacamole and soft corn tortillas as accompaniment to our libations, and had a jolly time people watching.
Wednesday found us in Ensenada Mexico. None of the shore excursions appealed much to us. Travel tip: don’t schedule a cruise less than a month after returning from a dream vacation to Hawaii. We walked into town, enjoying a lovely day, politely fending off all the vendors. We thought we might stop for a drink as we had done in Catalina, but we ended up not doing it. We are not big drinkers to say the least, and the average of one drink a day each we had on the cruise was above average for us. We took a few pictures and re-boarded our vessel. That afternoon, I played on the waterslide on ship. We took pictures and relaxed in the sun.
Thursday was a full day at sea, “SeaDay” in Carnival’s parlance. The Mardi Gras dining room served a special brunch in celebration. The menu included Eggs Benedict and Huevos Rancheros in a mother-and-child-reunion mode. It was a chicken quesadilla spread with beans, topped with eggs, sauce and cheese. The waiter, highly used to being agreeable to even the most difficult customers, could not quite contain his shock when Kathryn and I asked for two bowls each of oatmeal. “But they are this big!” he said, indicating a small ramekin with his fingers. This same fellow would have no trouble serving steak, eggs, bagel and lox, and multiple rashers of bacon all to the same, absolutely commonplace cruiser, but our oatmeal request astonished him. When I asked for a banana as well, he had to come back and admit defeat. Bananas were not on the morning’s menu, and he could only bring us items from the menu.
Feeling a bit like the Jack Nicholson character in the movie Five Easy Pieces, I asked him to bring me huevos rancheros without the chicken, cheese, or eggs; in other words, just tortillas with beans. Kathryn had noticed that the dish was served accompanied by salsa and guacamole, and we asked for that as well. The waiter brought me a plate containing two flour tortillas glued together by a smear of refried beans, then folded over like a taco. He asked, incredulously, if that was what I wanted. I said it was perfect. He went to fetch the same for Kathryn. We reminded him about the guacamole and salsa. Minutes passed, and I could only nurse my smeared tortillas for so long. They were long gone before another waiter came to deliver the requested salsa and guacamole. He brought them initially to the wrong table, to our neighbors, who had ordered several entrees each. They were baffled, at first, until we spoke up and claimed the condiments. Of course, there was nothing to put them on by then, so we graciously suggested that our neighbors have them if they so desired. The young woman kept one set and gave us the other. On tasting, we discovered that our loss was small. The guacamole was a commercial preparation tasting more of preservatives than avocado. We made our way up to the buffet on the Lido deck, where we found that both oatmeal and bananas were available in abundance.
After that brunch, we felt like working out. So we went to the gym and did forty-five minutes on the treadmills, followed by fifteen minutes of light weight exercises. Kathryn used eight pound dumbbells. Mine were only five pounds.
I took advantage of our leisure time aboard to read Glen Merzer’s novel, Off the Reservation. It is a very funny political novel, of the type in which a politician becomes unexpectedly popular when he starts telling the truth all the time. Some of the main characters happen to eat whole-food, plant-based. I don’t think the author beats the reader over the head with this, by any means. I might have enjoyed it just as much before I started eating this way. For the cruise, it not only entertained me but also reinforced my approach to eating, and to enjoying the cruise without compromising my dietary ideas.
We very much enjoyed the entertainment aboard the cruise. There was a Motown based song-and-dance revue, and a funny comedian named Lowell Sanders, and a “love-and-marriage” show. The latter featured three couples called up from the audience. One couple had been married for fifty-six years, one for twenty-seven, and one for under two years. Each couple was seated facing away from each other, and asked questions that seemed designed to either humiliate the man, or get him to say something that would get him in trouble with his wife. I was very impressed by the older gentleman’s diplomacy. When asked whether the previous night had been more like Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, or Memorial Day, he answered, “Labor Day.” When asked about his last girlfriend before marriage, he replied that his wonderful wife had made him forget all other women. When asked what their wives were wearing right now, the younger man was the only one to get it right.
By not making the cruise all about food, we had a great time. After a suitable interval, we look forward to another cruise, in which we will use this experience to have an even better time. We will plan on posing for photographs and dress for it. We may even purchase some of them, if they come out well. We will try for the early seating for dinner, or skip the dining room altogether. We will dance to the live bands. We will take the couples’ massage workshop.
So, we did not starve. Food-wise, we missed our desserts. Of course the cruise offered many fabulous looking pastries, but we knew they were beyond the boundaries of our very selective regimen. So, when we got home, I made some frozen banana ice cream. (For two large servings, just blend three frozen bananas with one or two pitted dates, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, a bit of pumpkin pie spice, and a couple ounces of almond milk.) That night, I made my “special occasion” fudge brownies. They have no eggs, milk, butter or oil, but they do have a lot of fair trade, organic chocolate and raw sugar, which is why I don’t make them very often. I had lost one pound in four days on the cruise, but quickly regained it when I went back to eating my own cooking.
