Travels of Jackie and Randy: 12/15 At sea and in the kitchen

We are still enjoying the breakfast buffet; with all the choices, our breakfasts are getting a bit random....

Today was really windy. The ship was rocking significantly and the outer decks were closed due to the high winds. That's OK, we had an indoor event planned: we met at 10:30 on deck 5 for the kitchen tour. It started with Mimosas that didn't agree with my cough drop, then on to the tour.

Our guide told us that the kitchen hierarchy is reflected in the neckerchiefs: yellow indicates a 1st tour, blue is more experienced, and red is for the section head.

They cook their bread fresh, which is why it tastes so good. Can't imagine how much bread is needed to keep all these passengers happy.

I may have to try the popovers, now that I know they are made fresh.

The ship has a capacity of 2,600 people; this trip there are 2,360 people aboard including 850 employees (150 of them are kitchen staff). That may be why they use 7,000 eggs a day! During the cruise there are no days off for the staff, although they may get a shift off.

We learned about the plate warming machines, which help keep the meals warm during the walk from the kitchen to the dinning room. And the areas where fish and raw meat are handled are off limits to most of the staff, except for authorized personnel.

There is more than one kitchen on the ship; this particular one that supports/preps for Windjammer because it's a huge operation and could not keep up if they had to cook everything there. They wisely use pictures and descriptions of the ingredients, garnish, and allergens, to make sure every plate served looks exactly like it should. Randy did this in his kitchen, too.

There seems to be a lot of scratch cooking going on; here a chef was creating soup stock from bones and cooked carrots.

Because it's so windy today, the wine has been moved off shelves and onto the floor. There was concern about it crashing to the floor!.

After the tour, as we walked through the center atrium where the staff had an event to honor veterans, including singing the national anthem and a big cake decorated like the US flag.

We had lunch in the 4th floor restaurant again, then I headed back to the cabin to try to nap away my cough.

In the evening I joined everyone for dinner but didn't order anything. Too bad, tonight was lobster night!