Cinnamon Swirl Bread, delicious with coffee…toasted and spread with real butter.

It takes a coating of cinnamon and sugar (I like 2/3 brown to 1/3 white sugar) to the flattened dough, a triple fold over on to itself…then smash it flat (I don’t use the rolling pin, just my hands) and then another coating of the cinnamon & sugar, then just rooooll the dough up like you were making cinnamon rolls.  And roll it as tight as you can get it before dropping it into the bread pan.

When folding and rolling use thin coats of cinnamon & sugar with no butter to get great looking (& tasting) results without your bread ’separating’ while slicing after you are done cooling it from baking in the oven.

Eddie, the baker, is on vacation for the next two weeks…and this being the volunteer organization it is, well, I guess I’ll be covering that position the next two weeks as well as mine.

We are down a few people in the galley but a few more are coming in. Although you lose a lot in transition because of the experience that just left and the new training that needs to be done for new crew.

I fully expect to enjoy myself baking though…I’ll be taking pictures and discussing technique when I get a chance.

Steve, over at Round The Chuckbox Observations of Life and Faith from a Camp Cook (also linked here under culinary minds) has a wonderful blog and I think I am just going to use HIS self descriptive text for it -

For 37 years I’ve had two culinary careers — one that paid the bills and the other imagined. Growing up in Fresno in the 1960s, I attended Camp San Joaquin in Sequoia National Forest. To me the cook and his assistant had the best job. Where else could I pursuit my passion for cooking and my love of the mountains at the same time, I reasoned? With retirement nearing, ambition may soon turn to gold, Lord willing.

Great insights, personal views, and some great recipes from another ‘foodie’ & cook…check it out.

ANYWAYS, Steve asks a good question:

Hi: What do you run for breakfast and lunch (and night meals?).

Well let me explain first that the menu shown on the ‘menu’ page is always the Evening Dinner or Supper listng.

Dinner (or the Lunch meal), is usually a homemade soup, meat and cheeses cut for sandwiches, and different fresh veggies and fruits with the salad ‘bar’. Leftovers from the night before are ‘re-packaged’ as a new dish or just heated up (some foods just don’t re-package well)…if there are not a lot of ‘hot’foods left from the day before we default to the above mentioned items. Meaning that hot foods (excluding soup) are only a bonus for lunch but are not guaranteed.

Breakfast is usually ‘do it yourself’ Mon-Fri which can include several different things: several different cereals, breads, oatmeal, jams, jellies, yogurt…but also we have cold cuts, cheeses, and a few other options for teams that work off ship during the day can ‘bag’ a lunch. Although the Europeans (and others) also eat these things for breakfast. There are toasters, juice, coffee, tea, hot water…all the condiments you could think of. The set-up for this is done by the Dining Room staff/crew every day.

Saturday breakfast is usually pancake day that is ran by volunteers who come make the pancakes.

Sunday breakfast is usually the above Mon-Fri with the addition of scrambled eggs, bacon/ham/corn beef hash (pick one) and sometimes other things like surprise cinnamon rolls or things like that.

The breakfast meal is done like this because of the nature of the job. Cooks (or the whole galley crew) work from 8am to 7am (or there about, give or take an hour) just to produce all the meals during lunch and supper, then a massive clean-up of the galley at the end of the day…so a hot breakfast everyday made by our crew would pretty much be ‘out of the question’ without trying to run a morning crew which we don’t have ‘bed allotments’ for…plus its hard to have full staff when you rely on being fully volunteer.

On a further note, Saturday and Sunday you must pack your lunch at breakfast time because we do not cook lunch those two days. Saturday the galley crew still works but the first part of the day is reserved for cleaning and then on to cooking supper (evening dinner). Sunday its up early to cook a ‘hot’ breakfast, then a quick clean-up of the galley then on to church or back to bed (depends on how you feel inclined) then back again after 1pm to start dinner/supper.

May sound hectic or weird, but it works good…and has been for years.

Here’s the process in case you ever wondered…our two dumpster’s or bins are JUST for Galley & Dining Room use.

Both bins need to be craned out to the dock.  Then the bins are rolled down to a bigger container for trash, emptied by hand, washed out, rolled back down the dock, and then craned back into the galley cargo hole (above).  It takes about one days work to fill them to overflowing again. BOTH of them.

This whole process usually takes minimum of 30-45 minutes and needs to be done everyday.

Its days like today that make me feel like packing in this blog.

The big boss man (my boss) is gone for an LOA. But that really doesn’t change a whole lot for me…work goes on, people keep eating. Its just that I have another blog that is more of a joint venture with my wife (tyroneandstephanie.com) where we both post thoughts and opinions on our days whether they be personal or work related. So I find myself split wanting to post this material over at the other blog because really thats what I do…but then I think, no, I need to have different new material. Wait. I don’t have anything new. Or - Wait, I don’t have time to post new material to each blog.

What also fuels these thoughts is the decision for our organization to start putting everything on a ‘navigator’ of sorts, so our organization is connected worldwide (using confluence) where now everyone looks at that for my weekly menu. Except of course for you outside folks that cannot ’see’ our international ‘confluence‘ website.

We also use it to update the FAQS (frequently asked questions) or just to share internal information about our departments that are not open for the general public.

SO these things really defeat the purpose of 50% of this blog now, and another percentage of it can be carried by my other blog (you know Rants, Raves, Reviews, and general knowledge of my day to day).

Yes, I am sure as some of you know it takes time and effort to keep more than one blog rolling with fresh material. I’ll keep you posted.

A continuation of past posts: Red Palm Oil, Banku & Kenkey, Sea Monkey & FuFu

This one will be a little hard to explain, well ok, not really. Its just it may be a little hard for you to replicate if you are the kind of person who needs a recipe of exact measurements.

Elements of this sauce are mostly the basics of a lot of stews, palava sauce (althought it can be argued like most everything food can be nowadays as to origin or authenticity), meat sauces, and other soups & sauces of the West African people.

First I will explain that you can’t really google (search) for this recipe the name is unique and created by a few West Africans and a North American white boy from southern part of the United States, Alabama & Georgia. Why? Because they didn’t know what to call it besides red sauce, which means many different things to many different cultures. And because it was finally nice to make it difinitive in our minds.

First the basics then the story:

Start with oil (red palm oil if you got it) don’t be shy, throw in chopped onions, diced/chopped/pressed garlic, saute till translucent. Add chopped bell/sweet pepper (green, red, etc…), fresh ginger, saute about 3-5 minutes longer (med high heat). Add in cayenne or local equivalent hot pepper ( use for amount of heat YOU can stand) tomato paste and some fresh chopped tomatoes. Tomato paste should be a good wooden spoon size dollop to start, more as necessary…fresh tomatoes should be about 5 or 6 roma tomatoes worth (so we are going for a medium size HOME pot worth of sauce). Let simmer, if sauce gets too thick water it down some more and let simmer. They usually let this sauce cook for at least a half hour and up to a full hour or more (depending what meats, fish, chicken feet, egg or other things they may cook in there with it.

And by the way, Chicken feet put out good taste for soups and sauces and if your not shy you can suck off whatever substance (meat & sauce) is left on them when your done cooking, its tasty.

The consistency has been between soup and a sauce most times when I have had it. Spinach and a few other ingredients can been added to make a palava sauce, goat meat for certain stews…it becomes endless the possibilities.

Check your seasonings, salt & pepper as needed, more cayenne or hot pepper? Need more sauce? Add more paste, tomatoes, and/or water (sauce should not take on a sweet taste from the paste, that would be entirely too much).

We (Reuben, Alex, Alex, Joe, Charles, Kafue, Frank…countries represented: Ghana, Togo, Sierra Leonne, etc..), loved the movie Cool Runnings and since it was one of the favorites on our small ship (Caribbean Mercy, now retired) we watched it over and over again when we got bored on a sail. In the story of the jamaican bobsled team that went to the Olympics was a team member name Sanka, and Sanka had a lucky egg. See where I am going with this yet?

Reuben made this sauce most of the time and everyone else stood around telling him how they thought he should be making it. But I think it was safe to say Reuben made it the best and he usually ALWAYS added egg in the sauce, like you would an egg drop soup. Mix egg or at least crack yolk. Drop egg into Sanka Sauce while it was simmering and then just stir around once or twice, then let it cook.

Meat or additional things could be added almost anytime taking into account you simmered the sauce long enough to cook what was in it, or if it was a bean or pea of sorts then it would go in when the fresh tomatoes and paste went in.

Sanka Sauce. Nothing more than the traditional West African red sauce with an egg thrown in, or not! [now maybe after I post this you can google search for Sanka Sauce and it may start coming up. SMILE]

* I am not an authority by any means on West African food or cooking, these are my personal views and experiences as they have happened to me and many of my friends who are from these regions of the world*

Do you get your ground hamburger or minced beef (Europe) in big round tubes?  Packed in a cardboard box?  Maybe 5 to 10 pound tubes of them frozen solid, or fresh is how they usually come.

First I want to say that YES, if you can mix spices, herbs, or your ’special seasonings/flavors’ into your beef, then that is the way to go…A lot of time I do not have this option (I have the option but not the time) so I move on to the next best thing for time, flavor, and mass production at a cheap price instead of paying for pre-patties and wasting a lot of freezer space.

I won’t waste a lot of time on describing how to do it, but rely on my pictures to tell the tale.

If you have a good slicer (commercial or restaurant grade of course) then set it to the width of burger you would like, take your defrosted ground burger/minced beef (leaving plastic wrap on) and start slicing your burgers.

Use large cambro’s or containers of your choice to layer the hamburger in, we separate our burgers with pre-sized parchment paper that comes large sheet tray size.  For the first layer of burger put your seasonings, flavors, etc…down in the bottom of the container.  Then from there just keep applying it to the top of each layer of burgers.  As the weight of the burger and release of more blood/water happen over a course of time it pushes the flavors down over the rest of the burgers or lends more time for seasoning to dilute and spread. OH!  And of course remember to pull that plastic ring off of the patty!

We just use that wonderful Worcestershire Sauce on each layer.

Later you can move the burgers to large sheet trays and cook them in the oven OR-AND THIS IS WHAT WE DO, sear them on both sides at a high heat poking them in the center on a flat top grill or brazing pan .  This releases juices fat/blood in the burger so it doesn’t swell up and turn into a meatball!!!  Then  continue on to layering them on the large sheet pans and finishing then in the oven as slow or as fast as you want to cook them.

The process I wanted to show you here today was more about creating the burger patties quickly with no filler and without wasting money or space by buying pre-made patties.

Pictured here in this post is Ernest from Ghana, one of our Galley Cooking Team Leaders.