WELL, someone overexerted herself yesterday! Despite being “rocked” to sleep all night long, my muscles and back are very sore! Time for some TLC today! I have a plan! In fact I foresaw this plan so many months ago I actually booked the massage appointment in advance – I am just SO SMART! Actually, not that smart – just lucky!
So Room Service showed up at 8 am as normal. Lynda had a very nice breakfast in bed, courtesy of Room Service and then her personal waiter, Andrew. More time on the heating pad was needed! At 9:45 am I rolled out of bed, way later than normal, and made my way down to the World Stage, as the Executive Chef Willem Waltheer was speaking about everything Culinary on the DAM ships! I was very interested in hearing this presentation. However, prior to going down to it, I had made an appointment with a certain clinic on the A deck – to see the doctor as the muscle spasms were a bit much! They could not see me until 11:30 am so it was perfect! Listen to the chef and then see the doctor!
Chef Willem did an excellent presentation on how a ship is provisioned, especially for a longer voyage like we are on. He was formally the Executive Chef on the Oosterdam and the pictures were from when they were taking on a heavy load of supplies in Brazil prior to a long cruise to South America. I took pictures of the whole presentation, however I will only include the pertinent ones here. Here we go!
Obviously, the Executive Chef will do some meal planning and put in the order for food through Holland America suppliers and the goods arrive at the dock. However he started with the goods arriving at the dock and then went into menu planning – sort of a chicken and an egg sort of thing I guess – which comes first! Anyway, when the goods arrive at the dock, they are first inspected by the local customs and security officers and dogs. Once that is done, EVERY pallet is put on the ground and the Executive chef and the sous chefs inspect every box on every pallet for freshness, quality and temperature. He later said that some inspections though are done within refrigerated trucks to keep the goods at temperature.
Next, once a pallet is inspected, it can be brought onto the ship. A stevedore is the name of the person who controls the forklift. There are actually 2 forklifts – one outside of the ship which puts the pallet down on the ships landing platform and then the ship has its own forklift driver who picks up the pallet and places it where it needs to go. Once the ship’s crew member has picked up the pallet – nothing on it can then be returned as it is considered International Cargo.
For a longer voyage, such as ours, they will take on more than 100 pallets of food – dry, vegetables, fruit, meats etc. It all needs to be stored somewhere and as the chef indicated, it is a good thing that the master storeroom clerk is skinny as the storerooms get VERY full! He then told a funny story about just after departing one day from port and missing his saffron seasoning and it took 5 chefs to find it in the storeroom – a little bottle as there were so many things that were piled high in boxes waiting to be inventoried. I could commiserate with this story as when we got on board, I was hungry and went to the Lido deck for something to eat as the Main Dining Room was not open. Confused as to where to get gluten free food (I missed the sign on the first go round of the Buffet) I asked the Chef standing nearby. He informed me that all the gluten free items are housed at the Italian station and I should go there. However there is currently not much in stock due to the load taken on in Seattle which included inventory of gluten free items and they would not make it up to the Lido for 24 hours! I ended up just having some roasted chicken and cheese instead as he was right – not much of a selection in the gluten free area!
The chef then talked about the different “storage” areas on the ship. As I mentioned earlier, some items come in at temperature – such as produce and fruit, which is really important that they arrive refrigerated and remain in that state going into the refrigerators on the ships so spoilage does not occur. It is amazing how many days at sea we were and the ship was still offering Caesar salads at dinner! They have lots of different walk in refrigerators on board the ship too in the storage area as he also talked about ingredients that cannot be stored together due to spoilage concerns from off gasses. He was a fund of information – in some ways I wish I had recorded the presentation!
All the meats which arrive at the ship are processed in the butcher department and then they are put into the fridges based on the menu plans. The picture below of the butcher area on B deck shows a man cutting up a beef tenderloin. Chef really liked this butcher as his nickname was “Tofu” which was quite funny considering is profession! Then you can see the meat bins in the meat refrigerator ready for cooking. Similar to meats, there also are fish and veggie prep areas on the ship too! He mentioned how busy the fish prep area has been due to all the fresh fish that they were able to buy in the Hawaiian Islands and in Fiji.
Next, we get into the gluten section aka Bakery! That is located on A deck and runs 24 hours a day! They bake bread and pastries 4 times a day – breakfast, lunch and then twice for dinner service! Apparently the area is quite small and the ovens are fairly hot so it is a pretty warm area to be working in – however the bakery section is very creative as I later found out they won the Pumpkin carving contest on board the ship which the different staff from the various departments participated in.
Next the chef talked about serving and menu planning – for serving, the plating of the dishes is done about an hour in advance of the meals and then they are stored in refrigerators with a kind of dumb waiter that rise as the trays of plates come out to be given to the servers. There also is a line for the hot food where the waiters line up and with the pre-garnished plate, the food selection is placed onto the plate – whether it be chicken, fish, roast beef, etc. I knew he was glossing over some key details here as I have worked as a waitress in a banquet kitchen, however for 80% of the people eating on the ship, this is how their food would be obtained. Lastly, came menu planning – which for me I would be doing first!
For a cruise like ours, they basically set out 28 days of menus and then have the “standard” items on each menu which are Caesar salads for appetizers, chicken for dinner and ice cream for dessert. Then they add either a “chefs plate or port plate” depending on the day, to the menu – one appetizer and one main meal. The chefs plate is something the chef decides to feature, where the port plate is a local cuisine. White the chef indicated they do not repeat any meals, I disagree! I saw a lot of repeated meals (outside of chicken) on this cruise – which was both good and negative – good as I could have something I liked previously however the negative meant it limited the types of dishes that I could select from as often the repeated dishes contained red meat or some type of gluten item that could not be separated out.
Lastly, in his presentation was a slide on serving the 35 nationalities of staff on board the ships – they have 3 different buffet lines of meals that they serve – Asian/Indonesian, European and North American. He said that keeping both the guests and staff happy is his ultimate goal however he finds that the cooking for the Asian/Indonesian population of crew. They like their spices and their food HOT which he is not used to as a chef! As he said, that is why he has Sous Chefs to specialize in those areas of cuisine.
After Chef Willem finished speaking, he then took questions from the audience. Franklin, one of the art studio crew was one of the people with mics walking around to help people with their questions so the Chef and others could hear them. Franklin knew I had a questions and guess who was up first! Me! Yikes! I mentioned that I have Celiac Disease and then thanked him for all the wonderful meals that I have been served on the ship that have been made gluten free for me. My question was though about the gluten free products on board – I was finding that they are just not available and are hard to get such as bread with dinner (I mentioned I was served the first piece of bread after 21 days last night) and other items like muffins and cookies that just round out a meal. He thanked me for the feedback, however he was surprised by my question as he said they had taken on a lot of GF food in Seattle. He then asked for my suite number and said he would follow up with me. I thought Franklin knew where I was staying however I guess not – apparently Franklin had to search for me for the next 3 days to find what cabin I was in as the Chef wanted to know! Anyway, my feedback was provided and he heard it.
Another lady followed up with similar feedback – she is wheat allergic and she said her meals were fabulous however she was not aware that she could order in advance or that she could have her meals customized as I had mentioned! The Chef said anything is possible and that please write down what she wishes to eat and try and order the gluten free food! At least one person benefited from my question albeit 3 weeks into the sailing!
Next I went upstairs to Deck 9 – the Spa to meet Patricia – the lady who had previously given me a Swedish Massage to give me yet another massage! She was NOT impressed when she saw me hobble into the spa in pain though! She was so sweet and said that she would help me and focused on my spasms and worked away at them for 50 minutes and I was in HEAVEN! What a luxurious experience having a massage is! This was a Deep Tissue/Swedish Massage combo she said she did. I had told her about my experience in Thailand with the lady walking on me and she laughed! She is from the Philippines and she said that she just massages people – she does not walk on them – too dangerous on a cruise ship!
Now with my massage done, it was time to relax for an hour until I went back to the Spa for another pre-booked procedure – a manicure! I said this was going to be a day of relaxation and it was! Kristina did my nails again – this time only my hands and she is a perfectionist! My nails looked so beautiful once she was done! They are shellac nail colour and pretty red to match my toes – I just hope that the sea water when snorkeling tomorrow will not affect them!
While I am still sore, I promised Ben that I would pay him a visit in the Shore Excursions department to let him know how the “Jewel of Fiji” tour went the previous day. I had done a stupid thing which I later regretted – I had downloaded my pictures onto my laptop last night like I normally do so they were no long on my phone! Here I was and I had nothing to show him! I had him again tell me what his impression from the tour operator was of what I was to expect on the tour (flat to get into boat, about 18 steps to waterfall and could swim instead nearby, and 24 steps up to the community hut) and then I explained what reality was and he was quite surprised! I think he thought I wanted a refund, however I did not as I did enjoy myself and so did Andrew, it was a great experience, however the expectation setting by the tour operator was a problem. He said that I was so polite (funny having a fellow Canadian say that to you) and that most people would have been really angry etc. I told him that it was an excursion that I really wanted to do and I am a determined person at times and while I was not impressed with Holland America and their accessibility and tour information, it was a positive experience in the end. I then promised to bring pictures when I was next up to do some art (the Excursions desk is on the other side of the ship from the Art area).
Then down I went to our stateroom to relax! While I was there we went through a VERY black cloud and there was no balcony sitting for me! Yet another rain monsoon! We decided to watch a movie on TV and have dinner in our stateroom – there was no going out for me! Thank goodness, as I order my meals the night before, it is not really an issue to do this – Andrew just had to order off the regular Room Service menu!
Tomorrow we will solve the Mystery of what Mystery Island entails!