Andrew & Cristina

In case the photos in the sidebar are not obvious enough, I’ve become quite obsessed with food and cooking since we moved to this tiny island. That’s quite a change for me from my Arlington days when I lived on Lean Cuisine dinners and pasta. That habit was short lived here on Saba where there’s so little to do that cooking dinner quickly became my big accomplishment of the day.

This wasn’t even as difficult as I thought it would be. Every Tuesday evening I scour Allrecipes.com in search of highly rated recipes. If they sound appealing and reasonably easy to prepare they get added to that week’s menu. I occasionally modify a recipe to suit our taste or because on occasion I may not be able to find a particular ingredient. So far everything has turned out great in spite of my self proclaimed inability to cook. I’m so modest, too.

Last night I felt a tad bit lazy and took the easy way out by fixing this Tuna Fish Special. I was initially surprised to see the somewhat long list of ingredients but the salad turned out so good and it was so easy to make that it was quickly added to our list of favorites. Tonight’s recipe is a Chicken Tortilla Soup. It definitely sounds more complicated than most recipes I’ve tried so far, but hopefully it will turn out alright.

Grocery shopping on Saba is not as easy as back in the States but definitely not too bad either. The boats bring fresh groceries to the island every Tuesday evening and that makes Wednesday morning my big shopping day. That’s when I stock up on fresh veggies and fruit and buy anything else I might need for the week. During our first couple of weeks here we used to shop on Saturdays, mistakenly thinking that the stores are stocked twice a week. Needless to say we found almost no fresh veggies and I remember complaining left and right that I could never find tomatoes on this God forsaken island. People here have warned me to check the expiration dates on everything I buy, but that hasn’t been a problem yet. What I find interesting is that a larger size product rarely ends up being more economical to buy than the smaller one. That still puzzles me because I instinctively reach for the larger size product, knowing that in the US the cost per unit is usually lower. Not so on Saba.