Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 3.17.2008

I hope this finds you all well & you’ve all found your pot of gold today (or at the very least, a pint of grog)!! We are enjoying another laid back day. Since Michael is heading out of town we went up to Henderson’s, the local meat market, & purchased some chicken & a steak and are preparing for the St. Patty’s Day celebration tonight. The cruisers are getting together for dinner tonight with the theme “101 ways with potatoes” or “Anything green goes”. Michael has a favorite potato recipe that he’s going to make and I’m trying my best to make a batch of wasabi peas. Sure, it sounds easy enough to just go to the store & buy them…but not here in Mexico. I found a recipe online that sounds easy enough….except for the fact you start with dried peas. I couldn’t find any dried peas, so I figured, heck, it can’t be that difficult to dry peas! So we purchased frozen peas & I tried drying them. No such luck…they turned into unrecognizable shriveled up little specs that do not look appetizing in the least bit. Not to be thwarted, I scoured my stores on board and found a bag of split peas. They were doing real well in the oven drying out out after soaking & cooking them this morning...but then Michael needed to turn up the oven for his potatoes and my peas ended up being hard as a rock again. Bummer!! O-well, I guess Michael will have to pick me up some when he returns to the states...haha.

The party was a lot of fun. There were around 80-100 people there, with lots of wonderful food. We were asked to help out another cruising couple who had cooked about 2 lbs of corned beef & cabbage but had fallen sick and could not attend the party. There were tons of dishes - everything was fantastic. I had the pleasure of sitting with a 92 year old woman, Mike, who was down from the States visiting her granddaughter, who is out cruising on a boat called Eros. She was a lovely woman & had gone cruising with her husband when she was in her 50's. She was down visiting for one month and even went parasailing earlier this week!





I ended the evening sitting & chatting away with Anne, Danni & Chris, and Janet & Dennis after everyone else left, having a wonderful conversation. The bad thing about meeting all these cruisers is no one stays put for very long. Anne & Jeff are planning to leave in 2 weeks and Dennis & Janet are making the 'puddle jump' across the Pacific Ocean to the South Pacific in the next 10 days or so. I'll miss them all but look forward to meeting many more as they come in & out of the harbor.

I hope this finds everyone well! More to follow...

Rene