USVI-On-Line

This might be a dumb question but if you are staying on the Coral Bay side of the island for 10 days or more and you are cooking at the villa at least half of your stay, how do you deal with getting fresh meat and produce? Let's say you are NOT bringing any frozen meat from home (we prefer traveling light), do you just stock up at Starfish once or twice or do you make the way there more often? We've dropped by the stores in Coral Bay but have never seen much fresh at any of them. We enjoy cooking in as much as eating out. The convenience of getting to Starfish is one of the reasons we end up staying on the Cruz Bay side. "Maybe next year..." we always say that about staying in the vicinity of Coral Bay but so far, it hasn't happened.
The reason I ask is that I'm susceptible to motion sickness. Centerline Road often makes my stomach queasy. If we stay on the Coral Bay side, we wouldn't want to drive to/from Starfish more than really necessary.

The roller coaster, endless winding roads... ironically, are one of the characteristics of St. John that I love - even with my queasy stomach.

That's what I'd do. I'd go to Starfish or Dolphin and stock up (you could freeze the meat) a couple of times during the week. You should be fine. It's really only 30-45 minutes and if you get motion sick do the North Road. It's prettier anyway.

We're staying in Coral Bay for our first trip to STJ. The villa owners offered provisioning services prior to our arrival, for a $35 fee. I think this is a fairly common service and might work for you if you don't mind letting someone else pick out your groceries. (I like to pick out groceries myself, but I've used PeaPod and WebVan in the past at home with good results.)

You can stock up once in the beginning then go back if you need to.

Lily's Gourmet Market sometimes has chicken breasts.

You figure, you're only gonne need a few days of actual meat for dinners. You'll go out for a few dinners and breakfast & lunch usualy doesn't involve steak & meat.

Don't let steak keep you from staying in Coral Bay!

I vaguely remember reading about a stand/vendor (or something) that sells fresh vegetables in the Coral Bay area. As I recall, it’s not easy to be found. Am I confused or is there a stand like that in Coral Bay?

Doesn't Josephine's Gardens sell greens???

Josephine's has wonderful greens and they seem to stay fresh for a long time. We have a boat in Coral Bay and what we do is to stock up at Dolphin or Starfish in one trip and then pick up what we need on the Coral Bay side. We don't have freezer on the boat and this makes it a little difficult. You probably will have a freezer at the villa so it wouldn't be a problem to buy meats and then freeze them. I did buy frozen snapper and chicken breasts at Lily's and that worked out well. That little vegetable stand that used to be across from Guy Benjamin hasn't been there for quite a while. The produce at Lily's is sometimes a little wilted but if you hit it when they get a new shipment it should be ok.

Friends of mine who live in Coral Bay pack all their perishable items in a cooler for the trip to Coral Bay. I guess ice cream is a problem, though.

The "PeaPod" reference made me laugh. This is completely off topic, but check out the PeaPod Story.
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/artic ... eBusiness/

According to Wikipedia,
"Worldwide grocery giant Royal Ahold bought 51% of Peapod's shares in June 2000. In August 2001, Royal Ahold bought out the entire company. As a result, Peapod cancelled its contracts with all grocery companies except for Royal Ahold's two main American chains, Stop & Shop and Giant Food."

So I guess we won't be getting PeaPod unless we get a Stop & Shop or a Giant Food. Unlikely. Andy and Tom Parkinson rock, but not on THIS rock!

-Ruth

You know, it' funny. We talk to a fair number of folks that live in Coral Bay that say that food is so pricey at Starfish, etc that it can actually be cheaper for one person to eat out most of the time then to cook. Some say the same for two people. It used to be that way, but at 9 bucks for a burger at Skinny's, 12 bucks for the quesadia at Island Blues,etc I would make a trip to Pine Peace/ Starfish and get a couple hundred bucks worth of groceries and live off of them for the times that we don't go out. I often make a pot of rice and do fried rice, also get tortillas, meat, veggies and have friends up for tacos and Margarittas. We will freeze a couple of meats for a dinner. We eat a lot of PB&J sandwiches on our beach trips. We always bring enough coffee and sugar with us for the trip. And a few spices. Honestly, we ain't loaded, but we decide to go, and we hustle hard to have enough jingle before we go, so as to not stress about it too much though.