Our take on Tonga Toast

So we went grocery shopping yesterday and decided we wanted to get the fixings to make our favorite breakfast on the Disney trip. It's served up for breakfast at the Poly in either Kona Cafe or their quick service called Capt Crooks. We went to Kona and tried it and it was one of our favorite breakfasts. I had done some research and knew the ingredients that went into this yummy, sinful breakfast.

So I started out making the strawberry compote they serve with the Tonga Toast. It's pretty simple ingredients. It's 10 strawberries, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/4 cup sugar. You cut up 6 of the strawberries and put it in a pot with the vanilla and sugar. Cook on med-high heat until it boils. It only takes a few mins. Then you cut up the 4 remaining strawberries, put it into a food processor and add in the cooked mixture. Blend until smooth and voila, a very yummy strawberry compote.

Then we started whipping up the batter for the tonga toast.

You will need 4 large eggs, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 cup milk.

We bought a loaf of sourdough bread at HEB as it's the most recommended for the recipe. You cut it into 3 inch slices and with a pairing knife cut a pocket on one side. Then you take a banana and cut it in half and then again cut in half but this time lengthwise so you end up with two half pieces. You stuff the banana's into the pocket you just cut in the bread.

Then you dip it into the egg mixture coating all four sides. We put it into the deep fryer that we had canola oil in set at 350 degrees. They say you can do it in a few inches of oil in a pan if you don't have a deep fryer however make sure you have a candy thermometer because if the oil gets too high above 350 it will burn.

You cook it on each side for about two mins, flip, cook another two mins and then take out and put it into a sugar and cinnamon mixture. We did 3/4 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoon's cinnamon. Coat all four sides of the bread and enjoy. We top ours with the strawberry compote because it helps offset the sweetness. Plus who doesn't like strawberry and banana's. yummmy... I might try another person's recipe for it next time because our mixture was a little wetter than I think it should be and this other recipe doesn't call for any milk.

Here are the rest of the pictures from our breakfast.

One last change

So we received our money in our bank accounts and we were sadly disappointed. We received a lot less than what we figured because we forgot about the percentage they take out for the 401k before they tax it at the high rate for income taxes. So we had to cancel the Magic as it was higher than we wanted to pay. The 8 nighter was going to be about 2100 after the taxes and that was prior to tips for the staff. We were both sad but we figured it was the grown up thing to do.

We are still going on a cruise for our anniversary but we reverted to going on the Princess one I had mentioned a few posts ago that I deleted. It's going to Belize, Cozumel, Costal Maya and Roatan. So on the big upside is we have been wanting to try out Princess and we get two new ports. So yay for that! I'm going to watch the prices and if the balcony's go down we will upgrade to that. Right now we are booked in a gurantee inside so it's possible to get upgraded to a balcony anyway without paying the upgrade fee's.

It sets sail on our anniversary too so I'm going to book the steakhouse for that night. Hopefully we get our luggage quick as we will have to dress up for the steak house. Then I think we are going to hit up one of the lounges for some dancing. It is our anniversary after all. LOL.

We got it for a great price too so if anyone is interested let me know. We managed to snag the inside for only $1500 and change. That price is for the both of us by the way. Anyways thats all for now. Take care!

~Hugs

Final Changes

So we received an interesting bit of news that had us change our plans but once tomorrow comes there should be no further changes.

I was speaking with a travel agent and found out that the Disney Magic will still be sailing from Galveston in Jan. So when Ian got home last night we discussed the itinerary and have decided to go with it. It's an 8 night cruise for only 200 more than we paid for the 4 night one on Carnival. We get to hit up Key West, Grand Cayman, Costa Maya and Cozumel. So we get 4 great ports as well. One we have never done anything in before or been to. Grand Cayman we will probably go to 7 mile beach and shop. Then Cozumel we will just shop at the pier area and in Costa Maya we will probably just stay on the ship or get off in ship in the pier area as well.

If anyone wants details on the trip just let us know. We always love company on trips like this. We are going to book an inside room to save a bit of money. Especially since on this ship we will be participating in the various activities. Plus lets not forget you don't have to pay extra for sodas as it's included in the price where on other lines you pay typically 7 bucks per day per person for the soda pass. We don't typically drink enough to warrant it but we still like to have an occasional soft drink at shows, or by the pool. I'm really excited about how everything turned out and hope we enjoy the ship. We booked a room in Galveston for the night before the ship departs. It will leave on Friday Jan 4th and get back on Sat Jan 12th.

Not much else to post about right now.

~Hugs

Deleted post

I am deleting this post because we made final changes. Please see the post above this for the final details and changes we made.

ch ch changes

removed as we are no longer going on this cruise. =(

Ugh...changes yet again

So as the title says there were changes yet again. After we talked it over we don't really want to blow all of the profit sharing checks on Disney after everything that has happened recently. We talked about some various things we could do locally or nearby and have decided to book a quick 4 night cruise out of Galveston. It just goes to Cozumel and we can utilize the same dates we were looking at for Disney. However the 4 nights didn't have one the week we originally put in for. So we have moved it to the week after instead.

We will be sailing on Thursday June 14th and get back to Galveston on Monday June 18th. That gives us a few days at home that will allow us to do various fun things around town now as well. We will have a nice chunk we can put aside by going this route. Since its our last big vacation besides just going to visit family we decided to splurge on a premium balcony. I'm actually ok with our choice to change it to this and Ian seemed pretty happy about it too. Now tomorrow I get to call in and cancel the other stuff.

We have pretty much decided we are going to just shop in Cozumel, grab a bite at one of the good Mexican resturants near the pier and then relax on the ship and utilize the pool. We talked about going to Nachi like we normally do but we have done it so many times and we want to really just enjoy the trip and not necessarily have to worry about catching a cab and tipping the waiter, etc. Plus lets not forget it will be in June that we are going so no telling what the weather will do to us yet.

That's all for now. Hope everyone is doing ok.

~Hugs