The Breakfast Club

Sunday July 14, 2013

During our few weeks here in the Rio Dulce, we’ve developed a bit of a breakfast club.  But to tell you how that came about, I’d have to back-up a little bit, and tell you about our dinner club.  Ever since the crews of Serendipity and Skebenga threw a dinner party for Luis at the ranchito last week, Matt and I have not had a chance to prepare a dinner on our own.  First it was ordering a pizza at the marina with Luis, where he told us more about his restaurants and all the special dishes he used to cook.  Then it turned into Luis wanting to fix us one of those dishes the next night.  While raving to him about his cooking skills, he’d tell us about the his next favorite dish he wanted to prepare for us the next night.  Throw that in with the weekly Friday pizza and movie special here at the marina, and we haven’t done more in our galley than heat up some top Ramen for lunch every day.

Through the dinners on Hydromax, we’d try to offer bringing sides or even money to cover at least our portion of the groceries.  Each time we were turned down for those but did turn into the official dishwashers afterward.  Our dinners saw us through the departure of Elmari as she left to spend the summer with family in South Africa, and the addition of a new friend at the marina, Ana Bianca.  It seems like everyone in our group, Luis, Luki, and even Ana Bianca have a special dish they like to prepare, and Matt and I have been basking in the fruits of their labor.  Work on the boat during the day, gather for dinner and drinks in the evening.  It’s been absolutely perfect.

After only a few nights of this dinner routine though, we realized there was a problem.  Between the five of us eating, there’d always be just enough food leftover to have no reason to throw it away, but no way to incorporate it into the next night’s meal.  This is how the breakfast club came about.  After one night of dinner, Luis started talking about how he could turn some of our leftover dinner into a delicious breakfast the next day and invited us to come over the next morning to enjoy it with some fresh Cuban coffee.  We thought it was a one time deal, Matt even dragged himself out of bed by 8 am for it, but that same night over dinner Luis began talking about what would be for breakfast the next day.  The tradition has been continuing and now we’ve all been meeting twice a day for good food and company.  Matt and I have finally been able to contribute something by brewing our Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee inside our Thermos brand French Press and bringing it over to Hydromax every morning.

 While eating one of our meals the other day, Ana Bianca mentioned she had a juicer on board and wanted to break it out sometime.  After a trip into town and a bag full of fruits and veggies later, we were ready to try it out this morning.  We made two different juices.  The first one was simple, but really tasty.  We cut up a pineapple and added some mint leaves.  It sounds like an odd combination, but it worked out great.  The end product was frothy and sweet, with just a little kick from the mint.

Our next glass was a combination of everything else we bought.  You name it.  Carrots, oranges, beets, apples, they all went in.  To me it didn’t seem like these should mix in any kind of way, but Ana Bianca promised that it would come out very sweet tasting and all the flavors would blend together.  We watched the liquid turn a bright red when the beets were added and after all the ingredients went in, filled four glassed and topped them off with ice.  Our apple, orange, carrot, beet juice was…not quite as sweet as I thought, but not too bad either.  I can see why people do this for it’s health value, but it still seems like a lot of work to me unless you’re on a real big health kick or trying to lose weight fast.  Just give me my morning coffee and omelette.  Or a pineapple mint juice.  I’ll still take that one.