Food on the Ocean

We just got back from a fabulous week away from real life with my dad and my stepmother, Carrie. And a few interlopers.

It was awesome.

It was not real life.

Real life began this week.
I prefer the beach.

Well, I probably wouldn't after a while. But for now...


When a family goes on vacation, apparently, they still need to eat.  There are a couple of options about food. You can eat out, you can cook a bunch of food and freeze and take, or you can cook while down there.

We don't particularly like to eat out, in general. That needs clarification. I love, love to eat out. But, for me to enjoy, my requirements are as follows:

• The joint almost always be locally owned and operated. Chains just don't produce a good product, by and large.  There are always exceptions, but.... 
• The food must be as good or better than food I can cook. 
• And there shall be no discipline needed during the meal.
• Or the joint be Krystal or Taco Bell or Cheap (Tex) Mexican.

The first qualification and second qualifications sound quite snobby, but when you like to cook, it's very painful to pay for food that costs more and tastes worse than what you can do at home.  And by 'very painful' i mean 'mildly annoying'.  Regardless, the fourth qualification should alleviate snobby accusations.

All that to say, eating out at the beach isn't really on my to do list.  It results in mediocre, over priced meals interrupted by "sit down, Eason."  "use your fork, Collins" "sit down, Eason""Ada - remember how we talked about facing the knife inward?" "sit down, Collins." "Paul - can you help clean up the water spill?" "sit down, Eason."  "Ada - No, I don't know the exact difference in size between large and jumbo shrimp"  "sit down, Collins."
And so on and so forth.  None of it is bad.  I do it most nights at the supper table.  Which is fine.  And good.  And part of an important proccess.

But it's not something I'd like to pay to experience.


I could cook and freeze.  But I don't like pulling meals out of the freezer.  I have a few things that work really well like this, but only a few.  And I cannot do a week of casseroles.

So, we cook down there.  Which I enjoy, and have learned to bring my knives and a couple of pans.  Note to self - next year, bring a cutting board and some kitchen towels.

So, what did we eat?

Saturday Night 5/28:  Spicy Spinach Lasagna
Sunday Night 5/29:  Went to see Paul Thorne sing.  He's awesome.  And Funny. And great dancing music. We ate a smorgasbord of left overs and vendor distributed hot dogs. 
Monday Night 5/30: Redfish Annalowrey 
Tuesday Night 5/31:  Carrie created some awesome roasted garlic french alfredo
Wednesday Night 6/1:  Chicken Romano 
Thursday Night 6/2:  Elite Style Cheese and Onion Enchiladas
Friday Night 6/3: Carrie made shrimp scampi, but I missed out.  I'm sure it was divine!

It was all good, and the only day I felt like I spent a lot of time in the kitchen was on Monday.  But it was Carrie's birthday dinner.  So it was worth it!

I measured out my spices and grouped all of my ingredients together before I left for the trip.

It's the way to go!  Prepare well before you go and then cook down there!

We had a great week.