Onboard food and more in Kalama

Breakfast was from the Back Porch Cafe today and I went for their breakfast sandwich option. I'm usually a pop a thawed Jimmy Dean biscuit in the microwave kind of girl so it was nice to see that they assembled one from freshly cooked ingredients. 

The lounge adjacent to the cafe always had pastries, coffee, and fruit. Plus a bar of self serve options like milk, tomato juice, orange juice, apple juice, and V8. Here is where you also could grab little packets of creamer, sugar packs, and condiments. I like the labels and dates method they were using for these carafes but I'd much rather have seen them left in the passenger accessible mini fridge so they stay cold between uses. 

One of the best outside the box ways of using a dip serving tray:

And you know I got the answer for the oft asked "What kind of sugar substitutes do they have on board?" question. The little Smuckers packs on the end are honey and there were several tiny jars of jam available.

One of the things I always notice is the types of cereal offered onboard. As you might expect, any cruise line that focuses on family travel will have those Lucky Charms right next to the Raisin Bran options. The more adult a cruise line, the more likely you'll find an assortment of bran, corn flakes, and any other sugar free fiber rich cereal you can imagine. Happy to see that ACL offered a mix of both:

Tonight's dinner menu:

Shrimp & Sausage Gumbo Soup - got a little bigger bowl this time but it was still mostly broth. Was looking forward to trying gumbo but I could barely find anything in the bowl besides broth and onions.

Braised Short Ribs of Beef with Whipped Potatoes, Broccolini, and Braising Jus. I seem to recall a similar dish on my ACL cruise in 2019 that featured this huge hanging off the bone hunk of meat that just fell apart the second your fork touched it. This version was more rationed with what appeared to be slices off a single short rib to spread among many plates. However, the meat was cooked well and tasted good.

Ended the evening with a portioned out bag of popcorn and the evening entertainment of Cowboys & Curmudgeons, the comedy and musical stylings of Kevin Neil. We found his show the most enjoyable of the guest entertainers and stayed for the entire performance.