Sunday, August 31, 2025

Quick update and a new recipe review to share

Hello readers and fellow travel lovers! I know it's been a long time since you've seen a new post from me. I apologize for the unexpected gap in sharing about our travels. I was incredibly touched when I came back to the blog today to see the amazing amount of new and returning readers that visited during my absence. Thank you for all the interest and love as my heart has been needing that hug!

We had three great cruise itineraries booked between my last post and now. In March, my dad and travel buddy had to undergo surgery and because all of those cruises were within a couple months of each other, they all got postponed. Thankfully we always purchase travel insurance and were able to get refunded minus the cost of the insurance. I am happy to announce that Dad has healed well and has been working hard all summer to improve his strength. I look forward to sharing all about our future travel plans in the coming months. Be sure to keep an eye here and on my social media for live sharing and updates.

To whet your appetite until I have more travel content to share, here is a rundown of a new recipe I made for Dad and I tonight. This recipe for Chicken Bacon Ranch Casserole came from Pillsbury's website. Disclaimer: I omitted the bacon since I didn't have any. 


This recipe is a bit time consuming to cook since you have to cook the pasta before adding it to the casserole. Who remembers those Pasta Bake kits where you could add uncooked pasta to the casserole dish and have it bake in the oven with the sauce and melted cheese?


My list of ingredients - I am partial to Sargento cheese because I find it melts better. Hidden Valley Ranch just tastes better than other brands to me. We use it for everything from salad dressing to dips. Kroger had a great sale on Barilla pasta the other week so I got several kinds for 99 cents a box. Kroger also had lots of flavored alfredo sauces so you can experiment and add a unique taste to the dish if you like a little more garlic or a little more spice. Note: The Kroger brand "cooked" chicken I used had no sauce. I did follow the package directions to microwave it for four minutes and shredded the chicken between two forks before adding it to the mixture.




Above: The cooked and drained pasta was returned to the pot where I added the alfredo sauce, ranch dressing, and shredded chicken before stirring it all together. 


I then poured the coated mixture into a 13x9 glass casserole dish. Next step was to sprinkle shredded mozzarella cheese on top before it went in the oven. This is also where you would sprinkle on top the cooked bacon. Wasn't really missed so this would be a great option if you wanted to save some calories or you refrain from consuming pork products.


Below: The finished product after 15 minutes in the oven and 5 minutes resting on the counter. The noodles remain loose aside from the melted cheese so it's best to scoop this out with a spoon versus a flat spatula. I added some grated parmesan cheese to the plates and it made the taste even better!



I was a little surprised that the ranch flavor wasn't more noticeable in the finished dish. It did seem though to lessen the heaviness of the alfredo sauce. We had plenty of leftovers so this would be a great option to feed a group or take to your next potluck. Most importantly, Mr. Picky Eater gave it two thumbs up!

Sunday, April 6, 2025

What a model! You should be in pictures!

 Ship model that is...


We loved checking out this ship model onboard located just across from the Wheelhouse Bar. I also love reading all the plaques on display from when the ship visits a new port for the first time. Our cruise had two such plaque exchange ceremonies. Check out my Instagram for photos from the Sun Princess' first visit to Puerto Rico.

Here are the first 7 daily schedules from the Princess Patter left in our cabin each night:



I'd like to thank the Sanctuary Manager Ivan Petrovic who gifted us a Princess T-shirt and this wonderful souvenir ship model on the last night of the cruise.

Prince S is happy to have a ship model that is more his size. I had to convince him it wasn't a bath toy!


Here is the second 7 days worth of Princess Patter daily schedules:



Thank you all for joining us on another Father and Daughter travel adventure. A great big shout out to the new friends and trivia buddies we met on this cruise. Hope we get to meet up again on another ship someday soon!

Until next time...











Sunday, March 30, 2025

Teppanyaki and Hot Pot - two ways to watch your food being prepared

Two new restaurants to the Princess Cruises fleet give you the opportunity to watch your food being cooked in front of you. Teppanyaki, a group shared table hibachi concept and Hot Pot, a cook your own meal in huge pots of broth at the table, share one restaurant space on the Sun Princess but require separate reservations. It can make for a very loud experience so if possible, time your Hot Pot visits so they don't line up with the specific Teppanyaki showtimes of 5PM and 7PM. We ate around 6PM and it was a good balance of watching the festivities and having some peace and quiet to talk to each other.

If you've ever dined in a Teppanyaki or hibachi style restaurant in the past, you'd find some of the presentation to be repetitive but still a fun time. You get a well balanced meal of Asian flavors that even the pickiest eater will enjoy. The only option for this specialty dining is a shared table so you will be seated with strangers. They do accomodate for food allergies and dietary restrictions. At our table, one person was allergic to seafood so they cooked everything but the shrimp and scallops protein options on the shared grill surface so our table mate could be served their food before any seafood touched the cooking surface. 




Everyone starts with a serving of edamame and miso soup.



Then the hibachi chef gets the show started singing songs and cracking jokes along with the eggs.


We both chose the Tonkatsu starter - panko crusted pork, bbq katsu sauce, and shredded cabbage.


While we enjoyed our starters that had been prepared in the back kitchen, our chef prepared the vegetables and scrambled eggs that would be added to everyone's fried rice.


With the fried rice finished and gathered to one side in a giant heart shape, our chef moved on to making little volcano towers (sans open flame) out of grilled onions, carrots, and zucchini slices.


Chicken and steak protein choices hit the grill first. You could choose two meat proteins with a good mix of options including steak, chicken, salmon, shrimp, and tofu. You could specify the doneness of your meat as well.


After giving everyone a chance to catch a piece of cooked chicken flung at them, my first choice of Teriyaki Chicken was cut up and plated. We all were given a tray of three dipping sauces to use with all of our meal as desired. The chef tried three times to let me catch a piece of chicken in my mouth but all three pieces ended up falling into my cleavage. Pro tip - don't wear a v-neck blouse to Teppanyaki or find a way to grow a few extra inches taller before dinner. 



Now that we could safely cook seafood without contaminating the grill, the salmon, scallops, and shrimp were next to be cooked on the grill.


Cooked scallops


For dessert, we both chose the Mochi ice cream. Even the servers joked about how frozen solid this Mochi ice cream was when it was brought out. One of our tablemates bit the bullet so to speak and stuffed the entire ball of ice cream in her mouth to let soften but the bulk of us just made attempts to scrape bits off like a cup of Italian ice. 


For our Hot Pot dinner, we ended up being seated at a table meant for larger groups. There were two heating elements set into this table which meant we couldn't easily extend our legs out in front of us. Good thing I'm double jointed! 

Over each of these tables was a heating vent built into a hanging light fixture so the smoke from your pot rises up toward these vents.





Rather than a hot stone or griddle that most cook your own food places use, Hot Pot offers a variety of meat, seafood, and vegetables that are cooked in broth. They have a special stock pot with a barrier in the middle so it can hold your choice of two broth flavors. Our waiters advised that the most common choices are Princess Miso and the Kaffir Lime and Lemongrass. The other option is is a Classic Tomato broth so I can see why most people choose the two most alike options. 

Then once you have chosen what you want to cook in the broths, trays of the items are brought to your table to add as you wish. The waiters do give you instructions about cooking such as waiting for the broths to come to a boil, potentially designating one broth to be for meat and one for seafood, and for how long to cook each type of protein. They also brought out your choice of rice and/or noodles. The waiters will bring as many trays of the protein as you want. Easy to switch things up if you decide you'd rather have twice as much meat than seafood.

They bring you out a couple trays of dipping sauces (some spicy) and a tray of garnishes. The tableware is mostly small plates and bowls encouraging lots of small bites.



Fried rice

For the Platters section, I chose the Seafood option which normally has white shrimp, scallops, calamari, black mussels, whole clams, and salmon. I asked to make it only shrimp, scallops, and calamari and they happily obliged. 

Dad chose the Meat option which normally has pork belly, chicken breast, and beef striploin. For an extra $15 you can upgrade to the Premium Wagyu Beef Sampler. Dad chose to do the upgrade but we never saw the extra charge added.


These cuts of protein are intentionally cut thin so that they cook up quickly. We used my phone to set a timer for each time we filled the pots.

No that's not a bowl of snakes but rather a bowl of wide soft noodles that was suggested as a base for the meat.


Our chicken and vegetable sides:


Cooking away:



My first round of cooked seafood over the noodles:


Next we tried the cooked beef over the noodles:


Lastly the cooked chicken over the noodles:



Proof that we really did use the veggies as well:




The dessert options for Hot Pot are the same as Teppanyaki. Our server really pushed for us to get the mochi ice cream again joking that they'd let it thaw out better this time. We decided we were just too full for dessert tonight.