Mi Casa Isn't My House, It's a Restaurant

I met up with a high school pal who just so happens to live in the same town as my parents for dinner at Mi Casa Mexican Restaurant. I had one chili relleno and two enchiladas (one cheese, one beef). But none of the photographs make it look all that good. The pal had the plate below, I forget what it was but it looks much better.
The pal was very excited about the meal and took this photograph....or he simply was playing with the camera, whichever narrative you prefer.

Another Angle of the Lake

I call the bird below a 'hildango'.

Another Day

Another day after hunting the boyfriend's great uncle was kind enough to take us out to George and Louie's. A low key place where you order at the counter but they bring the food to your table. I had the fried green tomatoes and a country Greek salad.
I wished for more olives but it wasn't a bad salad.

Georgia, Again

After going to the island we needed to get back to Georgia for a dove shoot. This was one place we fished...all that reddish stuff in the lake was a heck of a problem getting through.
The day after returning to Georgia we went hunting and then we went to a good ol' Southern buffet. The photograph below is actually, I think, the boyfriend's father's plate. It looks better than what I ate so I thought I'd put it up.
I had sweet tea and loved its crazy sweetness. They had hardly identifiable fried things and green beans and mashed potatoes...it was good, if terrible for me.

St. George Island

After our breakfast we went to St. George Island. We drove past all the obviously new and rather ugly houses until we hit the state park. There we got out and walked along the beach for a bit. It was windy but pretty and not too cold. Warm enough, at least, for two little girls to be wearing bikinis...actually it wasn't warm enough and the boyfriend and I questioned their mother's parenting skills.


I collected a bunch of shells that I will clean up and put in a bowl. In the background of the shells is a dead jellyfish. We didn't eat it.

It Doesn't Get Better

So I thought I could fix this whole 'links, archives and frappr map at the bottom of the freakin' blog' thing by deleting the page elements and then rebuilding them. This was a mistake. I have now lost all my links (and am dreadfully afraid I won't be able to find them all again) and they would still be at the bottom of the page (I started rebuilding but once I realized the problem wasn't fixed, decided to grump instead). I have emailed two tech saavy friends about this but they have not, as of yet, gotten back to me. So if you are at all tech saavy (and by tech saavy I mean html/blogger saavy) please let me know. I am thinking about giving you all access to my account so's you can fix the damn thing. Of course if you're a complete stranger I may just take step by step directions. Until this gets sorted out there will be no links. Sorry.

Breakfast in Florida

Stupid blogger, this photograph really is nice if properly oriented. The boyfriend and I had breakfast at Caroline's Fine Dining before checking out of the hotel. I had the oyster cakes and eggs. I didn't like the cakes. I managed to eat most of one but the boyfriend had to eat the other.
The boyfriend had the white chocolate pancake and it was good. Very good. In fact I'm going to experiment a little bit and make my own some time soon.

Morning

These were our views from our second floor hotel room. The bridge did mar the landscape in one way, but it's also quite striking (if you ask me).

Penguins!

This was the boyfriend's and my attempt to take a photograph of ourselves. It didn't quite work out.

Sybaritic?

After our meandering we found a place to stay (this would be too pricey for us during the tourist season but was only a little over budget during the off season...$75), right on the river no less. After we dumped some of our stuff into our room with king sized bed and balcony looking out on the river, we we to Steamer's for a first round of food. We each had a dozen oysters then shared some crawfish. The oysters were good but I thought the shucker could have been a bit more vigilant in cleaning his knife....bits of mud and grit in most of my lovelies.
I'm not all that familiar with crawfish but I expected them to be slightly juicier than they were. My mother suggests that it wasn't actually the season, and I'll buy that, I did have fun, however, sucking their heads.
After that we took a small break in our room before heading down the stairs and over to Boss Oyster for another round of food. I decided to mix it up, relatively speaking, and try some toppings on the oysters. Boss Oyster has quite a selection of different ways to dress up an oyster. I chose the combination platter (a dozen oysters, four different toppings) with the Oyster Rockafella topping (pretty standard, grilled, spinach laden and cheese topped though dry and lacking hollandaise sauce...am I making up the hollandaise sauce?), some kind of oyster with capers and garlic (also grilled). On the raw side I had the oyster sashimi and the oyster japonais. These two were much more similar than I thought from the descriptions on the menu...but loaded to heavenly degrees with WASABI TOBIKKO! I was happy. If you were ever to order at Boss Oyster, I would go with the one with seaweed...(sashimi, I think).
I also had one soft shelled crab. More fried up than I genuinely like but still tasty. I don't think it's possible that it was fresh fresh but it was large and juicy.

Florida is Pretty, Part II

Once we decided we would no farther than Apalachicola, we meandered around. We stopped at a little park surrounded by beautiful houses and looked.

We saw these birds and didn't know what they were.
We saw this, and many others, boat on land.
Apalachicola is definitely a cute town. And definitely a summer destination. There's a very fancy pantsy downtown crossroads with chichi stores selling furniture and doo dads. But the town hasn't been completely gentrified (that is probably not the right word, but it kind of is). Just a block or two down from the shops we saw buildings like this.

At one time, as you can see, the streets were paved with oyster shells. I hope they ate them before they paved them.
We saw many pelicans...that I will, from this point forward, refer to as 'penguins'.
This was an old factory (I assume a shrimp processing sort) that was for sale. I don't know what the deal is with blogger and vertical photographs...tilt your head to the left and you'll see the dock falling into the river.
Three penguins in a row.

Florida is Pretty

The blog flurry is taking its toll on me...I'm getting sleepy, hungry and a bit antsy. So this might be the last installment for the day (I'm in the university library). After Tallahassee we drove on down 319 until we hit 98, the coastal highway. And drove through towns with names like Panacea and Carrabelle. Brightly painted houses on stilts looked out on the Gulf of Mexico...or a bay that eventually led to the Gulf of Mexico. The boyfriend's father referred to the area we were in as 'the redneck coast'. The communities consider themselves 'the forgotten coast'. But the real estate signs around every bend in the road were indicators that people are remembering this area.

We were going to drive to Port St. Joe but since we had time limits we decided to stop at Appalachicola, so we could enjoy some daylight hours. As we turned around (we drove through the town before definitively deciding to stay) we saw this:
Just hanging on a guard rail on the side of a major road. We named him Empty and I, at least, am pretty sure he wouldn't get along with Holey or Stumpy.

Oysters at Barnacle Bill's

It was nice to see the boyfriend's family, especially his older sister who (somehow) I hadn't seen in a year. But it was also nice to get away, just the two of us, even if it was only for less than twenty four full hours. Where did we go, you ask? Well we went to Appalachicola, with a pit stop in Tallahassee. Both in Florida. We stopped in Tallahassee to get our first of many oyster fixes. This fix was provided to us by Barnacle Bill's, and was a lovely beginning to true gluttony. Once in Tallahassee we got into some pretty rough traffic. The boyfriend became grumpy and grew a second set of teeth (and a mean little man on his shoulder). The traffic ended up being a consequence of a million marching bands making a bit of a parade...it was inaugaration day...I'm not quite sure who the lucky guy was.
At Bill's we ordered two dozen oysters and their 'fried dill pickle chips'. Our shucker ended up giving up thirty oysters and we loved every one of them. The pickles were not as great. I think that the Red Hook Diner's version (spears instead of chips) is far better.
My favorite quote from their menu: Why do we serve oysters year round? Because they're delicious. Hell yeah they are. This place was unfancy but in an appealing way. The oysters were shucked right in front of our eyes and placed directly on the bar...who needs ice when they're coming directly from ice to your mouth? Not me, that's who.
Two dozen oysters, two beer and the pickle chips were about twenty five dollars. Can someone say deal?
I was a pirate and blogger is stupid.

Vroom

This was my third visit to the boyfriend's family's Georgia living. In the past I would go on the occasional hunt (wagons, dogs, whistles and guns) but hardly ever tried taking a shot. This year I got a bee in my bonnet and decided that I really wanted to shoot something. So I got out a lot more and found that the hunts are a bit more engaging when you're actually doing what the thing is all about. I did not, however, hit anything...other than skeet. But my confidence and understanding of the entire process has definitely improve and one day...one fateful day, sigh...I'll bag me a bird and then I'll eat it.

Target Practice and Chocolate Souffleé

The boyfriend's two younger boy cousins were learning how to use a bow to hit a target.
I didn't shoot this quail (or any quail) because I have bad aim. This was a girl quail because she has a brown face. I think the boys are prettier with their white faces.
The boyfriend's cousins made chocolate souffle and we (eight of us) ate it very quickly before settling down to watch a movie. Luckily the grown ups were having a bit of a get together but were not eating all their chocolate souffle...so we got it instead....mmm, souffle.

It Just Didn't Stop

The weather was, for the first week at least, extraordinary. I would write after breakfast while the boyfriend went out on one expedition or another. I usually found time to take at least a small walk around the area. I once walked a wee bit down one dirt road and decided to sit there and read a book (by the guy a SAIC friend and I will be reading with in April, by the by) in the middle of the road. Which was very nice until I was seen twice by the boyfriend's family...they thought it was weird that I was sitting in the middle of the road...but the thing is that they're roads traveled by very few people and I could see them coming a mile away. That's neither here nor there however. Breakfast was good.
It was followed by a walk on roads like this. I saw birds.

And flowers.
For dinner I tried a new thing: "backstrap". Backstrap is a very tasty piece of deer. This backstrap had been grilled with a piece of bacon wrapped around it. I also had a quail that I liked very much, very moist and tender...not at all tough or gamey. Grits and beans as well.