Sandals Grand, St. Lucia. A review.

My Husband and I recently treated ourselves to a romantic trip to the island of St. Lucia. We wanted to go somewhere tropical, and beautiful, and exotic, and boy did we ever get what we ordered! However, even though we did extensive research before booking our trip, there were still a few things that I wish I would have known before we went, and there are a few things I learned that would be helpful to pass along.

If you don't want to read the entire post, skip to the bottom where I have compiled a list of things you absolutely positively must be aware of before you go on your vacation. 

The absolute first thing that you need to know, is that the bathrooms in the St. Lucia airport are NASTY. There are 3 stalls in the women's bathroom, the toilets didn't really flush so well. There were people on my flight who flat out refused to pee in there. It took us an hour to get through the customs line, and since I have a fear of airplane bathrooms, I had no choice but to use the airport bathroom. The moral of the story is, if you have to choose between the toilet on the plane, and the one in the airport, choose the one in the plane. Warning! Don't skip them both, because it is a 2 hour bus ride to the resort.

Our adventure began before we even left the airport. Sandals resort has its own lounge there, where you check in, and they put you on the correct shuttle to your hotel. It was here that we were told that our resort had been over booked, and that they didn't have a room for us. Imagine our glee! Fortunately for us, Sandals has incredible customer service. We were placed in a private car with a personal driver who took us to The Sandals La Toc, where they put us into a ocean view honeymoon suite. The La Toc resort was beautiful! The beach is lovely, the food was great! We have absolutely no complaints about our one night stay there. The next day another private car was arranged for us and we were taken over to The Sandals Grande.

The Grande was our favorite resort out of the 3 Sandals resorts on the island. The beach is white sand, and the water is so clear that You can see your toes when you are in over waist deep! I kept accidentally dunking my face when bending over to pick up shells because the water was so clear. The beach was so clean. There was really no trace of trash within the boundaries of the resort. I watched a guy rake the beach every morning cleaning up trash, shells, rocks, and erasing foot prints. The attention to detail at this place was amazing. They even had a guy on staff who walked around shooting birds with a super soaker to keep them from begging in the out door restaurants, and now that I think of it, for all the birds we saw, I don't recall seeing any poo. Huh.

We spent our days lying in the sun, walking in the surf, eating, relaxing, and drinking.

If you are a bit more adventurous that me, there are many many excursions that you can go on. (at extra cost)

We only went on one, the Carnival land and sea adventure tour, which is a tour given by a company separate from the resort, which you can book at a kiosk in the hotel lobby. 
This tour takes you on a catamaran down the coast to Soufriere. You get to see the  Piton Mountains. They take you by bus to the botanical gardens, and you get to see the Sulphur Springs “drive-in- volcano” *Note, its stinky. Its in Sulfur Springs. You do the math.   They fed us a lunch buffet at a local restaurant And on the way home, you get to snorkel. It took the entire day, but it was totally worth it. It was a good way to see a lot of the island in one shot.

Of note, one of the other things we wanted to do was take a few hours to go read to school children to promote literacy through the Sandals foundation. They only offer this on Thursday mornings. If you don't learn of it until Thursday afternoons, you miss out. Also, they ask that you bring a book from home to donate to the school library. I didn't learn about that until it was to late too.


If you are to cheap to spend extra cash on additional excursions, *a hem....* The Grande has a lot to offer. You can rent out a little hobie cat sailboat, they will even teach you to sail it! There are snorkeling trips and wind surfing lessons too. If you don't want to hang in the water, and just want to soak up the sun, the resort has a free library where you can trade in your finished books for new ones. They also have a group of young people called the "play makers" who are there to make sure that you are having a good time. They organize beach games, pool games, dance parties, they even tie dyed shirts. There was always something going on. Live music, Live DJ, and even a movie on the beach one night.

All in all our vacation to St. Lucia was a wonderful experience that we are never going to forget.


As promised, here is a list of things you MUST know before visiting St. Lucia.

1. Don't bother converting your money to EC. (East Caribbean ) money. Everything is done using us currency, everything is priced accordingly, and it just annoys the locals to have to convert it back.

2. When you come back to America, customs will confiscate any plants you have, which includes anything made from plants, which includes any and all super cool hats woven from coconut leaves, (even if they aren't green any more). So, save your money.

3. The dress code was really confusing to us. We weren't really sure what we needed to bring. Bottom line,
resort causal = cover up your swimming suit with a dress or shirt and shorts
resort Evening = dresses for women, long pants and button shirt for men and CLOSED TOE SHOES. For the love of all that's good, don't forget the closed toe shoes boys. If you do, you will not be able to eat at some of the restaurants. You can buy shoes in the duty free shop, but it will cost you $100. Just bring them from home.

4. before attending any of the dance parties, it is imperative that you know how to do both the shuffle, and that butt shaking / wiggling thing. I think I was born with to many vertibre to do either, so I was a dance party spectator only.

5. They are crazy drivers over there, and the roads are very curvy, so if you get car sick, bring your sea bands and Dramamine if you plan on driving anywhere.

6. If you want to wear a bikini, then for petes sake just do it. Trust me. It will be ok. I guarantee you that there will be someone who looks worse than you on that beach.

7. When trying to decide which resort to stay on, it goes like this. The Grande, then  La Toc, and if you have to stay at the Halcyon, maybe just go to Jamaica instead. Or stay at the Halcyon, but take the bus to the Grande and hang out there all day.

8. Be aware that if you aren't a 20 something newly wed. or a 50 something empty nester, you are going to be in the minority. Seems like everyone was there celebrating a milestone. We were just there celebrating being together.

Monthly Menu

When I initially created this blog I thought it would be a fun creative outlet for me. What I forgot is that it takes a bit of time, and life happens. So, between my last post in uh.... April... I planted my garden, tended my garden, spent summer vacation with my kids. Harvested my garden, preserved my garden, and winterized my garden. There have been a million things I could have blogged about, but... Eh. Such is life. Not sure my 5 followers even missed me.

So what made me break my silence you ask? Well, this week we had our monthly MOPS meeting, and the topic was once a month freezer cooking. Now, most people will agree, that if I can make something more difficult on myself I will. But our speaker seemed to have over complicated the whole thing to such a degree that even I couldn't follow her. It involved excel spread sheets, color coordinating, a 3 ring binder and a white board. What the hell? My way is SO much easier, and after the first initial weeks, our menu is basically on auto pilot.

Last august I got sick of menu planning. No one could ever decide what they were hungry for. We kept forgetting about favorite meals, we would eat the same things over and over again. My family got sick of me hounding them for dinner ideas and started answering my " what do you want to eat this week" thing things like, " Legos" Enough is enough.

I sat down with a notebook and listed out about 30 things that we really like to eat, and organized them into categories. We have Time consuming meals, left over meals,  easy meals, and soups. Then I listed them all out on a old school paper calendar. I scheduled easy meals on mondays and tuesdays because those evenings are the busiest for our family. I scheduled time consuming meals for the weekends, and leftovers in between. Every week we have one soup night. Once I had everything planned out, I plugged it into my Google calendar, and told it to repeat every month. I will never have to plan another menu again! This method has allowed me to make better use of my left overs. We have way less food waste, and have managed to shave about $100 off our grocery bills monthly.

So, here is a sample of our monthly menu:

Monday-left over chili
Tuesday-Macaroni and cheese
Wed-spaghetti
Thurs-Gumbo
Fri-tacos
sat-pizza
sun-brats

Mon-left over Gumbo
Tues-Gezpacho Cube steak
Wed- garlic potato soup
Thurs- Ham
Fri-Sandwich night
Sat- Margaritta Pizza
Sun-Enchaladas

Mon-Hot Dogs
Tues-Sloppy Joes
Wed- Augratin Potatoes
Thurs-Pancakes
Friday- Mac and cheese
Sat- sushi
Sun- Ravioli

Mon-Grilled cheese
Tues-Left over ravioli
Wed- Fried rice
Thurs-French onion soup
Friday- Alfredo
Sat- Turkey
Sun-Pork loin

Mon-left over turkey
Tues-Left over pork loin
wed- chili
Thurs-lemon chicken
Fri-Tacos
Sat-Left over chili
Sun- seafood chowder

Cooking each meal in bulk and freezing helps me cut down on prep time. I usually double a recipe and freeze half for next month.

What method do you use for meal planning?

Making Yogurt at home.

So it is Earth Day 2011. How will I be spending it? Well, since the high is 50 degrees, and its raining, and the ground is so saturated that our sump pump is running, I am pretty well confined to the indoors. And since today is also Good Friday, I am also stuck with my 2 school age children, and the baby. Sounds like the perfect time to clean out the laundry room. And make yogurt.

I started off on my home made yogurt making adventure about a year ago, after reading about a dozen blogs about how easy and cost effective it is. Now I will be adding one more blog.

Making home made yogurt really takes nothing more than milk, a little starter mix, a kitchen thermometer, a heating pad, and a lot of faith. And no matter how easy the other blogs try to make it seem, its way easier than that.

The basic procedure I follow is, heat 1/2 gallon of organic 2% milk slowly stiring occasionally, be careful not to boil, until it reaches 180 degrees, and let it sit at that temperature for 5 minutes. This sterilizes the milk. Then let it cool to 110-112 degrees.

While your milk is cooling, you need to sterilize the container you are going to be making your yogurt in. I use my pampered chef batter bowl
To sterilize, I boil water in a large soup pot and submerge my bowl for a few minutes.
When my bowl is cool, I add a little starter to it.

Starter is the gift that keeps on giving. I have heard that you can use store bought plain yogurt, but I have always used starter powder that you can get at the coop or at the health food store. Once you have plain home made yogurt, you can reserve some back to use as your starter next time. I usually save about a half a jelly jar full or so, keep it in the fridge and it will be ready for you the next time!

So, now your milk is cool, add it to the bowl containing your starter, and mix it up gently with a wisk.

Now your work is done. All you have to do is keep your yogurt at the right temperature and wait for it to ferment.

This is where people make it way more difficult than it needs to be. I have heard of doing it in the oven, in coolers, dumping out water, adding water, using special expensive yogurt making machines... I use a heating pad. Similar to this.

Just wrap it around your bowl, and then I wrap large bathroom towels around it for insulation. Don't forget to insert your kitchen thermometer before wrapping everything up, so you can monitor the temp.

Then you let it sit. At least 8 hours, keeping it around 110-112 degrees.  The longer you let it sit the better. I usually let mine go over night. When the time is up, just unwrap everything, and put your bowl in the fridge. You are done. Nothing to it! Your end product won't be quite as thick as the store bought version, but what ever. Its way healthier. I usually eat mine with frozen berries and a bit of honey to sweeten it up.

So, lets analyze a little bit.

ingredients in yoplait yogurt: Site your source! :-)

Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Low Fat Milk, Sugar, Strawberries, Modified Corn Starch, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Nonfat Milk, Kosher Gelatin, Citric Acid, Tricalcium Phosphate, Natural Flavor, Pectin, Colored with Carmine, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3.

Yummy! If you know what Tricalcium phosphate is, please let me know. Acutally, don't. I don't care. I'm not eating it. Oh! and look! Sugar AND High Fructose Corn Syrup. Nice.
 
One Cup of Yoplait yogurt comes complete with a plastic container, foil lid, and goes for the whopping price of $.79

Ingredients in Stonyfield farms organic yogurt: Site your source! :-)

CULTURED PASTEURIZED ORGANIC LOW FAT MILK, NATURALLY MILLED ORGANIC SUGAR, ORGANIC BLUEBERRIES, PECTIN, NATURAL FLAVOR, ORGANIC ELDERBERRY JUICE FROM CONCENTRATE (FOR COLOR), VITAMIN D₃. CONTAINS OUR EXCLUSIVE BLEND OF SIX LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES: S. THERMOPHILUS, L. BULGARICUS, L. ACIDOPHILUS, BIFIDUS, L. CASEI, AND L. RHAMNOSUS.

One cup of Stonyfield farm Organic yogurt, complete with plastic cup and foil lid is about $1.29

Cost of home made yogurt,
1/2 gallon organic milk = About $3.50
Starter: Free! It was waiting for me in my fridge! But, if you have to buy starter you can get it for about $11. for a whole bottle that will last you for forever, or at least a good long while.

Ingredients in homemade yogurt?
Milk. My starter powder contains nonfat milk solids, whey, and 3 kinds of the probiotic bacteria.


1/2 gallon is 64 ounces, and a typical cup of yogurt is about 6 ounces, so I will have about 10 servings of yogurt per batch, for a grand total of about $.35 a serving. And since I am not a math wiz, I will spell it out. That is about 1/2 the cost of conventional yogurt, about 1/4 the cost of organic. Talk about bang for your buck!

Garden Plans

Gardening.

This time of year the dirt starts to call to me. I have this desire in my soul to get out in the yard and play in the garden. It is usually to frozen / muddy to do much of anything, but I go out there anyway, get messy, and dream of the summer time and the food that I am going to grow in my garden.

In my quest for more sustainability, I have commandeered my flower beds, and turned them into vegetable gardens. I am planing carrots, and onions where my morning glories and sweet peas grew last year. When my bulbs are finished blooming I will be planting peas, and watermelon  I planted blueberry bushes in the landscaping in my front yard, and my garden... oh its gonna be a treat!

This year I will have strawberries, raspberries, and rhubarb. Can anyone say jelly? Yum! The rhubarb is already peeking up through the mud. I can barely stand it!

Sitting in my south window are rows and rows of seedlings, just getting ready to go. Beef steak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, and acorn squash.

I have visions of rows and rows of home made garden fresh canned goods lining my laundry room walls next winter. If anyone knows how to can... let me know. I have a pressure canner on my wish list.

The winters are so long in this area of the country. I have to make the best out of the 3 1/2 months or so of nice weather we have!

Family Garden Coop

It is 35 and rainy out today, so of course I have gardening on my brain. Soon it will be time to plant. I am planning on Mothers Day, 25 days, but who's counting?

I have been rolling this idea for a Family Garden Coop around in my head for a few weeks now, trying to form a vision of how I would like it to go, and I came up with a brilliant idea! It stems partly from the rise in food costs, partly from my desire to avoid chemical additives in my families food, and partly from the book I read that prompted my Tech free week, Better Off

I am looking for 4 or 5 families, that live locally, who are willing to plant a garden and share their surplus harvest with the group, in a weekly produce exchange. You know, all those tomatoes and cucumbers that you have no idea what to do with, that just go bad because you can't eat them all. I would like to meet on Friday evenings this summer, to do a produce swap. If you bring some produce, you can take some different produce back home with you. Fridays are the day before the farmers market, so we can swap for free, and then buy what we still need the next day at the market. We can meet at different parks around town so the children can all play together.

In order for this to work, we would each have to plant a few extra one or two items with the intent of having a surplus. Something you are especially good at growing. I can keep a list of who would like to plant what.

In addition to a produce swap, I would like to offer up my kitchen for mass canning production. I think it would be great to all get together and put up our produce for winter. If you have a clue on how to do that, I would like to be mentored on how! Ideally I think it would be fun to do a Jelly making session, a vegetable canning session, and apple sauce/butter/pie filling session.

  So, if you are interested in my experiment of FREE local organic foods, and increased sustainability, please let me know!

My Tech free week 4-3

Day 7. I made it. I was very unsure about this whole thing just a week ago. It amazes me how far I have come.

I have found that I simply can't live without the internet. Its where I have my fun. Its where I go to learn, socialize, and I have some work on there too. On the other hand, it is a incredible distraction. I have also found that it can bring people together, but if you aren't careful, it will come between you and those you care about.

I have caught a lot of grief from friends and family this week. In my experience, if you are being made fun of, you are on the right track. They say that I have to live, I can't deprive myself of everything I enjoy. So, I thought on it for a while. (Lots of time for thinking this week)
Is vegging out in front of a TV really living? I feel like I have lived so much more this week. TV is such a distraction. Not to mention the fact that there is so much on there that I don't care to have my family exposed to. All the advertisers trying to turn my children into mindless consuming machines. There is also the subject matter. Even on prime time. Too much sex, and other adult themes I don't care to have to explain to my 8 year old. There is just to much ICK out there. I know they are going to be exposed to this crap at school and other kids houses, but that doesn't mean I have to invite it into my home.

If you are what you eat, then are you also what you feed your soul? I don't want to feed my soul garbage.

I have found that in this week of no TV or internet that I feel like I have lived more purposefully. I have been more in tune with my family. Less distracted. I have been less frustrated with my children, and more satisfied in my roll as a mother, and wife. I have moved closer to God, partly because I am more in tune with my thoughts and feelings, and partly because if my increased time for prayer.

So, now that the week is over, I find myself as scared to turn the tech back on as I was to leave it behind.

 I am scared that if I let it back into my life, I will slowly become more and more lax until I am right back where I started. So, now the time for negotiations begins. I am not the only person living in this home. I also have to take my husbands feelings into account, and he is not as into this as I am.

While I am full on ready to get rid of the TV completely, he would like to watch it occasionally. The one in the bedroom is definitely going. The one in the basement will stay off, except for an occasional family movie night, maybe once per month or so.

Computer games are a thing of the past. no more farmville. No more cityville. Facebook will be limited. I will allow myself to check it in quite alone moments, but the computer will remain off until the kids are in bed. I need to always maintain my focus on my family.

There have been a few events in my life recently that remind me that life is just to short. I don't want to waste a single second of it. I want to live intentionally, enjoying every last second!




So, there it is. My Tech free week. as of today, 4-10, we are still TV free. We did have a family movie night last night, we watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It was fun. The kids loved it. It was the first TV we had watched in 13 days, and it went right back off afterwards. I have been able to cut my internet use way down, and have gotten a lot more odd jobs done around the house. We are settling into a routine, and it seems to be working out nicely! I have to say, that giving up the TV is one of the best things we have done for our family! And it really wasn't as hard as I feared it would be. 

My Tech free week 4-2

This week of blog entries was written as a daily diary, the old fashioned way, in a spiral notebook, to be entered into the computer when my tech free week ends.


Day 6




Today is Saturday. Our first day stuck at home as a family. A normal Saturday would involve some sort of sports programing while my husband naps in the afternoon.


Lucky for us, the weather was beautiful. Shortly after breakfast was cleaned up, we all poured outside. We got the bikes out and cleaned out the garage. I took the opportunity to organize my garden stuff. That is about all I can do at this point since it will be to cold to plant for another 6 weeks at least.


It was fun to watch the kids play outside. We have been cooped up in the house since October. They were in absolute heaven! Riding bikes, skateboards, flying kites. The Boy even made his first ever bike ramp , and The Girl, not wanting to be outdone, promptly followed on her pink sparkly barbie bike.


At the end of the day we read books, did baths, and were so exhausted we didn't even think about the TV. This week has just blazed by!