World Cruise Day 57/152 - Sea Day - Peanut butter and culinary creativity

Cruise day: 57/152

Ports days: 18
Sea days: 39
Countries: 6
Continents: 2
Ports: 11

Peanut butter.  In our house, it is a staple.  We eat peanut butter nearly every day.  That's a problem when cruising because many cruise ships don't seem to have decent if any, peanut butter.  We were thrilled when we discovered that at breakfast, not only did Viking have peanut butter, they had Jif - our favorite.  Well, almost a favorite as they have creamy and we're crunchy folks, but still, it was Jif!  It was available in single-serving packets, which we thought took a lot of packaging, but we understood.  Then, they shifted to larger tubs of Jif, passing it out in dollops in small bowls.  Great!  Same tasty peanut butter and less packaging waste - a great solution.  Then this happened...

The Jif was gone and has been replaced with this from Hellma.  Technically, it's peanut butter, but wow it isn't edible.  And, they are reporting that this is it until Sao Vicente in six days - pretty obvious since that's our next port.  Oh well, we'll have to make do with fresh eggs, sausage, bacon, French toast, fresh fruit, sticky buns, and all the other terrific choices available for breakfast.

After bridge today, we were treated to a culinary event, with a twist. Officers and crew from housekeeping cooked an impromptu dish, competing against a team from engineering, maintenance, and support.  To be clear, none of these folks are chefs.  Each team had the benefit of a chef to provide some advice, but the chef wasn't allowed to touch anything.

It was great fun and the crew seemed to really enjoy getting outside their comfort zone and trying something new.

 The navigation crew did a great job steering us around weather in the area.  There were several rainstorms that could have put a damper on the day, but we had nice sunshine and upper 70s to low 80s all day.

We scored again in trivia today, taking second only because I made a bad choice in a tie-breaker.  Our misses:

• For what movie did Tom Hanks receive his first academy award nomination?
• Big - we guessed Philadelphia
• What is the national summer sport in Canada?
• Lacrosse - we had no idea and guessed baseball
• Tiebreaker - In minutes, what is the runtime of the movie, The Shawshank Redemption?
• I could swear it was over 2.5 hours and answered 155 minutes, the other team said 151 - it was 142 minutes - my bad

Arlona was back in the art studio today and produced this stunning sunset in acrylic.

Mid-afternoon, Viking arranged a digital scavenger hunt. We formed teams of four and ran around the ship taking digital photos of the 16 or so items that we had to find. It was fun and made you pay more attention to your surroundings.

Tonight's dining theme in the World Cafe was Pan Asian.  We both enjoyed a stir-fried noodle and shrimp meal cooked on demand.  It was tasty.  We spent the meal with Jim & Nancy (Jim was raised in Muskegon, MI), and fellow Villagers, Dave & Sue who are also from Muskegon.  Arlona was in her element having grown up in Muskegon and they all compared notes about people and places.  It was great fun.

Tonight's entertainment was ventriloquist, Don Bryan, and Noseworthy.

It was a very entertaining show and based on the reaction from the audience, everyone enjoyed it thoroughly.  It is nice to see something different in terms of entertainment.

So even without decent quality peanut butter, we continue to have a terrific cruise and are enjoying each and every day.  Four more sea days to go before we see land again.