All We Need Is a Golf Bag, Contraband and What Else?

A crazy set of circumstances had us making plans within a month to spend a good chunk of April gallivanting around to 3 destinations -- San Diego, Barbados and Miami. It's a long story how that came to be, but don't worry, a tale will be told.

Marc's friends from high school and college, Greg and Kate, live and work in Barbados, and have extended many invitations for us to come down. So when the opportunity presented itself, we coordinated and made it happen. 

Greg is avid fan of some of the things that we have cooked and posted on Facebook, so I knew that we needed to figure out how to make something epic. The problem is that even though Barbados is a tropical island, fresh produce and good meat is scarce. Hmmm. To further complicate things, I was told that Fed Ex'ing items in would be likely confiscated by customs. Drats.

But not to be deterred, I launched "Operation Duck Confit" and proceeded to assemble items to make a cassoulet to smuggle down to Barbados. We were bringing my large golf travel bag anyway, which can fit a body in it in addition to my golf clubs. All we needed was some frozen ice packs and A LOT of luck.

We obviously couldn't fly direct to Barbados, so we had to connect via Miami. So not only did we have to make our connecting flight, but our checked bag had to as well. Then we needed to get there on schedule so everything didn't melt. And last, but certainly not least, we needed to get through customs at the Barbados airport without my bag being inspected, particularly by dogs.

Greg and I were exchanging emails about what I *MAY* be bringing over, but I wasn't telling him what. I just promised him that it would be worth it if he had to bail me out of jail with the contraband and that it was all legal in the US. But I kept inquiring about the customs piece and how to "move things forward". Finally as we were sitting in the Miami airport waiting for our connection, Greg finally sent over a message that had something "actionable" in it for handling customs.

Of course, Marc wanted nothing to do with this so I was on my own when I filled out the customs form. I may have inadvertently left things off due to "jetlag" as we did red-eye over from Seattle. Oops. 

We get through immigration and I see a number of valets waiting for new arrivals. Marc conveniently hits the bathroom. Wimp. I ask a gentleman to help us with our very large bag and say that I need to get this through customs. I MAY have also prematurely tipped him for his service. Come on, have some faith. The valet goes and talks to someone else working at the airport.

Magically my bag appears outside of a side door. OK, good sign. The bag made it all the way from Seattle. Now for the walk outside. The valet smiles nicely as the customs agent, who looks more like a flight attendant with her uniform, waves us through. Ah, thank goodness for premature tipping! 

We see Greg and meet his older son, Conor. Greg asks us if we want to go to the beach. Sure. After we drop off a bunch of stuff off at his house and he may want to tell his wife, whom I haven't met yet, to clean out the fridge. We get to the house and I start chucking stuff to Greg to throw in the fridge, which included artisan cheeses, meats, all ingredients for a cassoulet, chocolate and stuff from Trader Joe's.

"Operation Duck Confit" was an amazing success. BTW, my golf bag weighed 71 lbs on the way over. It weighed 31 lbs on the return back to the States.

Oh, and the cassoulet? Totally worth all of the effort.