welcome Angie & the Maho breakfast power cookie

Maho Bay's Pavilion Restaurant welcomes, Angela Foster to its current team of volunteers. We've introduced her to our restaurant as she comes to us with quite a background in baking. She says "what could be better than spending the day doing what I love in an open-air kitchen with panoramic views of the Caribbean" Well honestly we don't know, Angela! After graduating from pastry school in her home state of Michigan, she cut her teeth as a pastry cook at the Ritz-Carlton outside of Washington D.C. The Delaware beaches then lured her to enjoy a more relaxing life as a pastry chef, baking whatever the area restaurants needed in crocs and shorts instead of a chef's jacket. Baking naturally led to Inn keeping, living in such beautiful and touristy areas of the Mid-Atlantic, so after running a B and B for a year, she now works as a chef at the Delaware Inn in Rehoboth Beach. Angela will be with us through the end of November. Luckily that scone recipe she whips up for us freezes really well. And that means figgy scones for Christmas, everyone!!!

While Angie isn’t willing to share her recipe for those awesome scones we have included the Maho Bay recipe for Breakfast Power Cookies. Enjoy!!!

Maho Bay Power Cookies

2 cups dark brown sugar 3 cups AP flour

2 cups granulated sugar 2 tsp salt

3/4-cup butter softened 3 cups uncooked oats

1-cup vegetable shortening 2 cups coconut

4 eggs 2 cups raisins

2 tsp Vanilla 1 cup chocolate chips

2 tsp baking soda 1 cup chopped pecans

Cream together brown sugar, granulated sugar, butter, and shortening. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Combine baking soda, flour, and salt and beat into first mixture. Mix in remaining ingredients to form an evenly mix dough. Drop by heaping tablespoon, 2 inches apart on a greased baking sheet. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for approx. 8 minutes or until cookies are starting to brown. Let cookies cool on baking sheet for at least 5 minutes before removing to a rack to cool. Store in an airtight container. Makes 7 dozen 4-inch cookies or 3 dozen 8-inch cookies.

Best Results Tip: Drop dough onto trays and chill for a minimum of 2 hours. Then take pans straight from refrigerator to oven..

It may be overcast and windy today, but its a happy day for many of us living and vacationing at Maho Bay this week.........the pavilion area of the restaurant is open again! We spent a bit more time than expected between waiting for the material, getting scaffolding installed, and finally cleaning the entire underside of the roof and all the tables and chairs for the area. But all of the effort put into getting the dining area restored will be very much appreciated this coming season as we enjoy each sunset.

Circle of Life: Wine Bottles

This is not a story about a lion and his dead father. It is a story about a wine bottle and its fulfilling life that doesn't have to end in a landfill. There is nothing that makes this wine bottle special or unique or makes it more worthy to not enter a land fill than any of the other bottles. It just happens by fate to have ended up at Maho Bay Camps where we are trying to find new ways of keeping our trash from being, well, trashy. We think used wine bottles can be quite classy and a wonderful addition to homes, businesses, and even parks as benches. Some people are more visual, so we have compiled a story board of pictures to better explain The Circle of Life: Wine Bottles.

1. Birth: Bottles are made and filled and presented on Pride Rock.

*Suggested Listening: Lion King Theme Song
2. Entering Society: Bottles are released into the great yonder to reach their main purpose in life, bringing beverages to you. Not all bottles make it this far, some do in fact break and spill their contents to never reach their potential (don't worry, redemption is possible).

*Suggested Listening: I Believe I Can Fly (..i believe i can touch the sky) (Seal)

3. Life lesson: We don't need you anymore. During this stage in life the bottle is discarded, never to be thought of again. This is a very emotional and trying time for the bottle. Their self worth is severely damaged. They are destined to spend their days at the landfill, to be forgotten about. Maybe a photographer doing an expose on landfills might capture them if they happen to be sticking out just right and the light catches them in that artful way.

*Suggested Listening: Hit The Road Jack (Ray Charles)

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On St. John this has been the end of the story for far too long, three parts and that's it. (Que Paul Harvey voice) And now, the rest of the story....

4. Redemption: We need a new place to put our wine bottles once they have attained step 2. We need a counter top. We need a counter top and to change the Circle of Life for bottles. We need a recycled glass counter top. Redemption is a multi step process.

*Suggested Listening: Redemption Song (Bob Marley)

4a. Crush em up: In order for the Circle of Life to continue it is imperative for the wine bottles to learn to work together (we know how wine can be a bit elitist at times). Not much of a choice though when you are thrown into a glass crusher with the rest of the clan.

*Suggested Listening: doesn't matter, you can't hear it over the sound of the crusher anyway.

4b. The Bonds that Tie: Cement. Nothing brings bottles together in a usable form like white portland cement. Steps: Add a little water, shaken (not stirred), poured into a form and (insert catch phrase such as Bam!! or Presto!! or BaddaBingBaddaBoom!!): Counter Top.

*Suggested Listening: I Get By with a Little Help From My Friends (Joe cocker version preferably)

(This is Dan grinding away excess cement)

4c. Spit Shine: Now that the wine bottles are firmly in place and doing what they need to do to help the cement bond, we need to polish them up and get them back out into the world to once again give meaning to their existence.

*Suggested Listening: Fancy Was My Name (thanks Reba)

5. Re-entering Society: The Wine Bottles are now ready to be fully enjoyed by any and all who need some kind of surface for resting things. The first place you can see our new counter tops is at the new Concordia Eco-Studios.

working in the sun

Today I was walking down the main boardwalk on the way to the store when I stopped and noticed Dan grinding and polishing concrete under the shade of a canopy while wearing a really cool straw hat - we tend to do everything we can to stay out of that noon-day sun! Apparently I wasn't the only one interested in what he was polishing........check out the two iguana's in the bottom left of the picture and notice how their purpose is to either be directly in that hot sun, or they're really interested in what Dan was working on, little did I know he was offering demonstrations! Tomorrow we'll let you know exactly what it is he's working on.

2010 Love City Triathlon

Each year in early September a group of individuals somehow have the energy to swim a 1/2 mile, bike 14 miles and run 4 miles around this island, all in one day. The individual awards are made of hand-blown glass made right here at Maho Bay Camps. Love City Triathlon website

Beach Cleaning

7 of us started the day off right today, by picking up trash at Big Maho beach! The massive rains earlier in the month, along with the random usual trash gave us more than enough work for the hour or so we spent meandering down the beach. Most interesting find: a Lionfish marker, which means that someone tagged the Lionfish at Big Maho and before the National Park could come get the little bugger the current or waves washed the marker ashore and onto the beach. This also means I know what I'll be doing after work this afternoon........snorkeling Big Maho and finding that Lionfish! Most annoying find: lots of rusty old scrap metal. Once again I thank the 7 volunteers that helped walk the beach and collect those 4 bags of trash this morning!

Goodbye's and Hello's

This season we will be saying goodbye to some old things, and hello to some new things around camp. In our restaurant you will notice that we have a new selection of juice from the Nantucket Nectar http://www.nantucketnectars.com/ line that comes in glass bottles that we can recycle here on property through our Glass Blowing Studio. We are replacing the previous line we carried which was in plastic bottles. Along the same lines, we have removed 20oz Coke & other soda bottles from our store. Last season alone we sold 9,360 bottles of 20oz sodas! If we can get most of those converted to aluminum & glass we can recycle and reuse whatever we bring to Maho, since St. John does not have any recycling available on the island. However, we are able to recycle the aluminum soda cans on St. Thomas when we make trips to Home Depot and for other supplies, and as mentioned previously we crush and reuse clear glass for our Glass Studio (more details in a later post!). For the past few years we haven’t carried a 16-20oz bottled waters in our store for the same reason we are removing 20oz sodas, but we have found a new company that uses a bottle made completely from plants and is not petroleum based, http://renewal-water.com/ . They also use spring water instead of filtered city water like some companies. We hope to be able to have it in stock in just a few weeks.

We are working on providing more natural and organic products in our store, which proves a bit difficult at times on the island. If there is not already a distributorship set up with a wholesaler then it is very difficult to get items we would like to carry such as Tom’s of Maine and Dr. Brommer’s soaps. We hope you enjoy some of our new selections this year, but more on that later.