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Honeymoon Take 2 or How Beautiful!

Did you miss Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4?

Our honeymoon was absolutely amazing, and I can’t wait to go on another trip like that! Sandals was a beautiful resort that I’d recommend to anyone!

One of our favorite food items that we sampled while on our trip were what are called Jamaican Patties. They ranged in size from small (which they had at the resort), to HUGE (at the rest stop we went to on the way from the airport). When we got our last plate of them, Adam made a point to make them look pretty and lay them out and said “You’re going to blog this. They’re too good!” What are they? Well, this is what they look like:

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The ones with the pink dots were chicken, and the others were beef. They’re a flaky pastry crust filled with a spicy meat and vegetable filling that was reminiscent of empanadas or even a fried pierogi. The pattie is a true product of local food (the filling) combined with an English turnover that migrated with the settlers in the 1500s. We absolutely loved these, and I really hope that we can find a local restaurant that serves them! It would be far too dangerous to figure out how to make them!

To round out my series of Honeymoon recaps, I’m just going to post some of my favorite photos from the week… I’ll be back to food and cooking posts this weekend!

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Happy almost Friday all! Don’t forget to enter the Progresso Souper You giveaway! You just have to leave a comment!

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Honeymoon, Take 2 or We Went Chasing Waterfalls

Did you miss Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3 of our honeymoon recap? Go catch up… I’ll be here when you get back!

Now, where were we? Oh right, I had a sunburn, and after a day of pure relaxation including massages (i left that out in my Part 2!) we decided there was a need for just one more day at the beach before heading out on our scheduled excursion.

We spent Monday of our honeymoon at the beach on a pier jutting out into the Caribbean sea, soaking up rays, reading, and enjoying each others’ company. Dinner that night was an easy decision, as only 2 of the restaurants on our side of the resort were open, and we’d already been to one!

This restaurant was “Mediterranean” themed, and, much to my delight, many of the dishes on the menu featured some of the amazingly delicious and bright red tomatoes that were everywhere on this trip. First off was a trip to the “antipasto bar” which was a fantastic array of cold cheeses, salads, meats, and smoked salmon as well as a few focaccia type pizzas. I helped myself to a nice assortment:

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I didn’t care for the soup that night, so I ended up with another plate of green salad instead. My entree was one of my favorites of the whole trip: a grilled filet mignon atop a potato cake with fried onions and spicy tomatoes

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And, after a couple of days of trial and error, I finally found a chocolate dessert that was worthy of my chocolate-snob palate:

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And Adam got tiramisu.

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We finished off the evening with a “reggae” show. I say “reggae” because, well, when YOU think reggae, you usually think of this guy, right?:

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When we went to the “reggae” show, the performer we got was well, a lot more like this guy:

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Yeah, that’d be Carlton Banks of Fresh Prince fame. It was, though, without a doubt a very fun night! We decided to head to bed because we had quite the excursion in the morning!

At 7 a.m. Tuesday, we awoke and had a light breakfast, and by 8:30 we were aboard this gorgeous boat:

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It was a large catamaran that would take us along the northern coast of Jamaica to climb Dunn’s River Falls, go snorkeling, and then on the way back, turn into a “party boat”.

We had about a 20 minute boat ride until we got to the falls, which, at first glance were beautiful:

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Little did I know that climbing these 600-foot falls would be one of the scariest moments of my life! We were instructed by the tour guides to hold hands in a long line (about 15 of us) and we’d be climbing the falls together. I made it up the first level of the climb just fine, but upon reaching the 2nd level, the water fell a bit faster, the terrain was rougher, and the ground was harder to see. At one point, I was crying and yelling “This isn’t fun anymore!” BUT, after much thought about getting out and taking the stairs down, I toughed it out with Adam and we made it to the top!

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I’m pretty proud of myself for doing the climb even though I didn’t feel up to it at the time, but I have to say, I don’t know if I’d do it again! Maybe I’d take the stairs…

We hung out on the party boat and relaxed, and then a group of the people went snorkeling out on the reef. I was too shaken up (regrettably) to go, but Adam went and had a ball. Upon returning to the resort, we were just hungry and tired… so we ate and napped… ah vacation…

Dinner though, was quite fun! Coincidentally, Adam’s sister and brother-in-law were on their honeymoon too at the same resort! We didn’t think we’d overlap at all, but when our trip got bumped up a few days, we had a couple days together. We all decided to do one dinner together at the resort’s fancier Asian-style restaurant.

We started with a shrimp and scallop skewer on garlic noodles: DSCN5403.JPG
I got a spicy pumpkin and green bean soup (my favorite of the trip)

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And my entree was a sweet and sour duck breast with veggies:

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Dessert was a coconut cream cake:

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It was definitely nice to have dinner with another couple, and great to see Riv and Alex again! We hadn’t seen them since our wedding!

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The final installment of our honeymoon recap will be tomorrow, featuring our favorite-by-far food from Jamaica, and some beautiful scenery.

Don’t forget to enter the Progresso Soup giveaway!



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Honeymoon, Take 2 or Ya, Mon! Goes International

Did you miss Part 1 or Part 2? Catch up!

On our third day, we spent a good amount of time hanging out at the main pool, which conveniently had a swim-up bar. Just check out this scenery:

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It was quite possibly the most relaxing day at the pool I can remember in a long time! I tend to associate spending time at a pool with spending time with 12 screaming four-year-olds, but this was just relaxing. And it helped that we both had cocktails most of the day as well!

Our third night’s dinner was at the “Caribbean” themed restaurant where we were treated to some more “traditional” Caribbean food. It was beyond dark, and I couldn’t capture a picture of many of the dishes, but my meal included:

  • cod and tomato terrine
  • fresh vegetable salad
  • fish chowder
  • snapper and eggplant seasoned with cinnamon and hot pepper
  • “black cake”, a small gingery cake dotted with mango sauce

We had a fun time at this meal watching the little geckos skitter around the tables

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I awoke the next morning a bit before Adam and took advantage of the light to take some photos of the view outside our window. This is my favorite:


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Ok, and this one too:

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I really couldn’t get over how lush and green it was there! After breakfast, we decided to spend the day at the beach and take advantage of a couple of the activities the resort had to offer. First, we chose to ride the giant aqua-trikes. What is an aqua-trike you might ask? This is an Aqua-Trike:

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The one we rode was blue and green though, and it terrified the heck out of me! It worked a lot like a typical paddle boat, but made this awful clunking noise every third or fourth paddle. We “rode” out about 50 yards, then turned around and came back. We did manage to get this adorable picture though:

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We then proceeded to relax on the beach the rest of the day. I finished reading Julie and Julia and now look forward to seeing the movie! Upon returning to the room, I realized that, while I applied sunscreen, I apparently didn’t apply enough… I was quite red!

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Adam was calling me the reverse raccoon!! It was slightly painful, but luckily almost all the redness was gone by the next morning. We changed into nicer clothes and went to dinner at the nicer of the restaurants, and Italian-style place. We had a small wait, so we took advantage of the photo op:

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Dinner was quite delicious, and I finally decided to suck it up and use a flash to capture some of the food we were eating. We both started with a ricotta and spinach ravioli with a creamy walnut sauce. I think this was both of our favorite dishes we ate on the whole trip!

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Continued with a chicken and meatball soup:

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Caprese salad:

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Crispy snapper on fried polenta with yellow squash and garlic cream:

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Adam got salmon in a tomato sauce with scallops:

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Dessert was non-bruleed creme brulee:

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And Adam got an apple tart:

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It was a delicious meal, and while not “Italian” as I know it, the food was definitely good!

Make sure you come back tomorrow for part 4, in which we eat Mediterranean food, watch a “reggae” show, and have dinner with another couple!

Thanks for reading my spread-out recap… it’s helping me cope with going back to work!





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Honeymoon Take 2, or This Chicken is a JERK!

Did you catch Part 1 of our honeymoon update? I’m trying to come up with more fun names for each part than “part 1″ and “part 2″, but this is most definitely part 2.

Where’d we leave off? Oh right, we’d landed in Jamaica, gotten cold drinks at the Sandals lounge, I’d changed into flip flops and we got into a bus to take the 90 minute ride to our resort. I tried to get pictures out the bus window for you all, but only managed a couple of random ones:

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The bus ride was bumpy, and in Jamaica, they drive on the “wrong” side of the road, so picture-taking wasn’t faring well for my slightly travel-upset stomach. I decided to just sit back and enjoy the fact that we were finally there!

When we finally arrived at the resort, our bags were taken directly to our room, and we were asked to fill in some information on a form. We were then handed our keys and escorted to our cottage room. The resort was interestingly laid out. There were two sides: the Manor and the Riviera. The Manor was the side that had the main pool, and the Riviera side had the beach…and we were on the Riviera side! The rooms were in two main types of buildings: typical “hotel” types and the cottages. Each cottage had 4 rooms separated by hallways; two upstairs and two downstairs. I loved how tropical our room was!

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We got a different towel sculpture on our bed each night, but this was my favorite. Once we got the air conditioning going, we both realized exactly how hungry we were for dinner! We quickly changed and went to the nearest and most easily accessible of the 8 restaurants in the resort. There was a little bit of a wait for a table, so we enjoyed our first piña colada and waited while watching the ocean.

Since it was 80 degrees outside, we got to eat outside by candlelight, which made for great atmosphere, but as was the case the rest of the trip, I would find, made for terrible food pictures! I had to use a flash a lot, so please excuse the über-bright pics.

The restaurant was lovely

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and had a 5-course menu… but we didn’t figure out until our 3rd night that we were supposed to order one of each course for EACH of us, not to share. The appetizers were about 3 bites! We shared this shrimp spring roll:

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Then Adam got soup and I got an “antipasto salad” which had one of my favorite presentations of the whole trip:

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That’s onion, lettuce, eggplant, zucchini, fresh mozzarella, yellow squash, and tomato.

Adam’s entree was herb-crusted lobster with ravioli, and mine was a mini rack of lamb on ratatouille:
  

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Both tasted quite delicious, especially in our super-hungry state! We topped off the evening with desserts. I had a piña colada cake, and adam got a pineapple upside down cake:
  

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Then it hit us… we were exhausted! We went back to our room, and after emailing to let our families know that we’d made it, we passed out!

We awoke the next morning bright and early (8 a.m.) and went in search of breakfast. I have to say, the breakfasts were one of my favorite food things at the resort. There was a fresh fruit bar, omelet station, hot dishes, and a porridge/oatmeal bar complete with toppings. Regrettably I never got a picture of it… but trust me! It was stellar.

After breakfast our first full day, we spent most of the day outside looking at this:

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and this:

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And when lunch time rolled around, we were treated to a special Christmas lunch (oh right, it was Christmas day!) full of local foods, including Jerk Chicken.

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That was my plate, which had (from the bottom left) jerk chicken, jerk beef roast, sweet mashed yams, chicken skewer, and this stuff called “fried festival”. It was all fantastic! Expect to see many jerk-seasoned dishes on this blog in months to come!

Dinner was delicious and served out on one of the piers on the beach. It was a Mexican/Southwestern themed restaurant, and I ordered a grilled sirloin which was cooked to perfection… but one candle on the beach didn’t make for enough light for a picture… So I’ll leave you tonight with pictures of Adam and I AT dinner on the pier:

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Part 3 Tomorrow, in which we ride floating tricycles, visit the main pool, and eat Caribbean food!


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Happy New Year!

Well, Adam and I FINALLY made it to and from our amazing honeymoon in Ocho Rios, Jamaica… and while I wish we were still here:

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I’m also glad to be back and wishing all of you a very Happy 2010! This is going to be a great year!

I’ll be recapping our trip in the next few days, but in the meantime, have a wonderful New Year’s Day!



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