Boss Oyster in Apalachicola
Many years ago, Boss Oyster was our favorite place to go in Apalachicola. One time we went there and just ate oysters. Oyster stew, a whole variety of raw and steamed oysters, then some fried oysters. That was lunch. When dinner came, we didn’t even want any dinner, oysters are so rich.
This time, we didn’t pig out. 🙂 And we still love Boss Oyster 🙂
I don’t know any word to describe it but funky. It isn’t all modern and it is not pristine. It’s funky. It has character. It has charm. Some people would hate it, some would turn up their noses at it. Not us. We love Boss Oyster.
This is our table:
And here is what I ordered this time: Gouda Gouda Oysters. Oh Yummm.
I barely remembered to take a picture of the oysters. I totally forgot to photograph anything else. Sorry! We just got carried away having a good time!
Up the Creek Raw in Apalachicola
Near the Water Street Hotel was the Up the Creek Raw Bar, and we went there for lunch and enjoyed it so much we went back for dinner. GREAT oysters.
I don’t do raw, so I had mine steamed, but they were all good. My favorite favorite part was the Crab and Lobster Bisque. I liked the cup I had with my oysters at lunch, so I had the bowl for dinner. It was really that good.
The Crab and Lobster Bisque:
Oysters, Raw:
Steamed Oysters:
Grilled Grouper:
I loved the bisque. The place was jammed with people, having a good time. I don’t know why I didn’t like it better.
Where is Apalachicola, FL and Why Would You Go There?
We fell in love with Apalachicola, FL back when our son was in school at Florida State, and we would be in-country visiting him. During the day, he had college student things to do (like his own life to lead, LOL) so we would go out exploring, and one of our favorite places to end up was Apalachicola, one of the great oyster capitals of the world.
Where is Apalachicola, FL? (Hint: look down at the lowest point of land on this photo and you will see it; it is at the mouth of a wide estuary)
Apalachicola is another one of the oldest cities in Florida, and has a long history relating to shipping and warehousing. Before, we have always gone there to eat oysters at a really funky place, Boss Oyster. This time we actually took a tour on a golf cart, which was really fun, and took a nature hike, and ended up learning a lot more about a place we really like.
We went to Apalachicola, too, to avoid the Black Friday craziness that seems to have taken over. I know a lot of people are still hurting, economically, and it is painful to me to hear people being encouraged to CONSUME to the point of mindlessness. I understand some of the prices are unbelievably low, I understand that. It makes no sense to me that stores would be open all night, that they would require their employees to come in for an opening Thanksgiving night, or at midnight, or 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. That is sheer consumerist craziness, and I won’t have any part of it.
Apalachicola is just a lovely place. I want to share so me photos with you. This is approaching Apalachicola from the East, on highway 98, which comes in over a long long bridge:
The Apalachicola working boat marina:
An old merchant mansion, The Ormond House, now a State museum, beautifully decorated for Christmas:
The Nature Walk out to the Estuary is hidden behind the shrimp boat marina; you have to know it is there – as our guide did. It was a really nicely done walk, with just a few mosquitos (ouch!)
This is a detail from the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, the only place in the United States allowed to have this statuary just like the original monument:
Trinity Episcopal Church, founded in Apalachicola by John Gorrie, the same man who originated the thinking behind modern air conditioning. He had patients with cholera, and he figured out that they got better when it was cooler, so he designed ways to keep patients cooler in the long, humid, hot summers of Gulf Florida . . .
There are many beautiful old homes, and a lot of money going into restoring them to their old grandeur in Apalachicola. You can stay in many of them; they are now hotels and bed and breakfasts or inns. Many, however, remain private residences, and retain their allure.
Florida – Florida State Rivalry
When our son attended FSU. we wouldn’t even put an FSU sticker on our car because feelings run so high in Florida depending on which school you attended – or even whose team you support.
So you have to laugh when you see a good sport like this. I don’t know what the bet is, but it has to hurt to be sporting a huge Florida State flag for an indeterminate length of time (we’ve been seeing this truck for a couple months now.)
“How Was Your Day?”
We were all standing in line, a very long line, at Pensacola’s Greek Festival at The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church when my son asked how our day was. (AdventureMan and the Happy Baby were off exploring.)
“Oh, it was GREAT!” I enthused. “Time passes so much faster when you’re retired and you spend your time having fun!”
“So what did you do?” he asked.
“Oh! We went to water aerobics, and stopped by the bank to cash a check so we would have money for the weekend. Then your Dad vacuumed so I can mop the floors tomorrow, while I cleaned upstairs, dusted, did the bathrooms, etc. At lunch we went to Chow Time, and drove down here to check out parking, and then I had a quilting meeting this afternoon, and then we met you!”
As I finished, their faces were somewhere between blank and confused . . . and I realized my idea of fun was a relative thing.
Here is what is fun. Fun is getting to CHOOSE when you vacuum or mop the floors, or wipe down the blinds, or clean the bathrooms. Fun is having the time to do it even on a weekday, not having to scramble on Sundays to get it all done, like we used to. Fun is not having gobs of money, but having enough that we can go to the bank and take some out when we need it for the weekend. Fun is meeting up with our son and his wife and our grandson because our schedule isn’t full with business meetings, and working late at the office. Fun is having groups we belong to because we really want to.
The truth is, in many ways, we are busier than we ever have been, but it is busy-ness of our own choosing.
Fun is even babysitting your grandson when he gets sick, just because you can, or helping carry him around a big festival, taking turns, so everyone gets to eat. It’s fun because we can, and because this is what we have chosen.
EnviroGirl and I picked up the dinners while AdventureMan and L&O Man scouted for seats in the tent so we could sit and eat dinner – moussaka, chicken, lamb, all kinds of specialities. There was also a very long dessert line – this festival is all about the food, and the music and dancing. I’ve taken some photos for you, but once we had the food, I didn’t get a chance to get any more photos. We only had to stand in line about thirty minutes; although there is a huge crowd, there is also a system, and they get people in and through the serving lines very efficiently.
In the Garden
The temperatures have fallen, and even ten degrees make all the difference. You feel like going outside again. The heat doesn’t slap you in the face.
Sure, with temperatures still up in the 80’s most days you still work up a sweat if you are digging, planting and weeding, but being outside on the cooler days – and there have been a couple – is sheer joy.
We’ve done some work in the garden, and had some work done with Garden Gate, who are such a delight to work with. They have a landscaper, Carole Simpson, who when we first moved here advised us to do nothing big for a year, but to live with our gardens and see what was working and what we wanted to change.
As it turned out, we have one garden that is nearly perfect – save for the weeding, but even the weeding in that bed is not that hard. We knew we wanted a native plant and grass area, and we had an area where we were concerned about erosion, so we asked for some help with that. I wanted to try some hydrangeas near our back fence. Carole had a couple other ideas, and we liked them, and added them in.
This is our new herb garden, designed to help the area not to erode – and for the sheer joy of the herbs and flowers. 🙂 Two kinds of rosemary! Sage, thyme and oregano!
These are the new hydrangeas; the center back one is an oakleaf hydrangea and the three surrounding it are more compact. I am hoping they will grow into big sprawling shrubs like I had in Seattle.
This is the grassy area, which will take a while to establish and fill out. Years! But we have the time . . . 🙂
This is a vine in its second year in out backyard; it is so happy. The flowers are white. We like it so much we have planted a second one to keep it company on the fence.
AdventureMan has his own project – a butterfly garden. He found all the right plants at Garden Gate and planted them in an old wheelbarrow we found at a yard sale. The very next day, we watched a butterfly come and lay eggs in the milkweed. Since then, AdventureMan has checked the results daily (sometimes hourly, depending on the stage.) We have watched the eggs develop into hungry, hungry caterpillars, and are now watching the caterpillers attach to the underside of the wheelbarrow to become chrysalis, and we hope to be able to see one (or more) become full Monarch butterflies.
When we planted the pomegranate tree in the Spring, we never dreamed it would put forth a fruit the first year, but we are watching our pomegranates (we have two on our small tree) with the same joy we are watching for the butterflies.
Today we awoke to clouds and drizzle – perfect weather for helping our new additions settle in comfortably, establish their roots, get comfortable. We need a good spell of moderate weather before the colder weather sets in.
Hemingway’s on Pensacola Beach
“How about Peg Leg Pete’s?” I asked, as we were contemplating where to eat lunch.
“We haven’t eaten at Hemingway’s for a while,” he responded, “let’s go back there.”
I had to grin. There is so much that goes into where a person chooses to eat, and I suspect my husband is yearning, on some deep level, for some exotic taste of the life we left behind. Hemingway’s is built like a lodge, could be a hunting lodge in Montana or a hunting lodge in Africa, you know, a lot of wood, open construction, heavy wood beams in a high gently peaked roof, a vast balcony (like where you could have a Samburu Sunset and watch game wandering in to the watering hole)
Hemingway’s it was. As we waited for our meals to arrive, we tried to figure out when the last time we had eaten there had been, and we think it was back . . . more than five years ago, when our son was getting married. We had flown into town a week early to have time to get adjusted to local time and to arrange for a rehearsal dinner. We flew in, had a weekend with our son and his bride-to-be, including a meal at Hemingway’s, and then we headed up the coast to make our arrangements, and to get out of their hair during an exceptionally busy and stressful pre-wedding week.
I love that Hemingway’s has some really good special menus for lunch; AdventureMan had the Hurricane Shrimp and I had the Salmon Caesar. We started with the onion straws, but there was so much, we barely touched them. They were the thin little onions, so each tiny little ring was a lot of crisp batter and fat, and not a lot of onion. A little tasty, but not a lot. Most of the taste was in the Ranch Dressing type dip that accompanied them. I’d skip them next time.
I made a mistake; there was a Caesar salad with something and there was a spinach salad with salmon, so I asked for a Salmon Caesar and he said “Oh! Yes, we can do that, just put it on Caesar instead of the spinach.” I like that flexibility, and I found their Caesar salad very tasty; not bland.
AdventureMan really enjoyed his Hurricane Shrimp and particularly loved the way they were skewered, so that on the grill, you can flip them without shrimp slipping off.
At the end, we succumbed to sharing a rum brownie, very delicious. I wish I could say we didn’t finish it, but we did leave most of the whipped cream behind. 😉
All in all, a nice meal in a great atmosphere. Service was attentive without being too intrusive. We will probably go back soon and take our son and his wife. 🙂
Weekend At the Beach
We didn’t go far – just out to the beach, Pensacola Beach, for a weekend. It was so much fun. It rained our entire drive to the beach, LOL all twenty minutes it took to get there:
But it started clearing, and with all the clouds, the sunset was spectacular:
We all have such a good time together. We took a drive out to Fort Pickens and I saw so many butterflies!
We had to watch THE game later in the day, which the Happy Baby calls “buttball,” LLOOLLL!
Here he is at breakfast with his BaBa:
It was a beautiful day, with another beautiful sunset:
AdventureMan asked me if I wanted a house overlooking the Gulf. I said ‘no, it would never be so interesting as Kuwait.’ In Florida, I think I would want a house up high over a bayou, where there are birds and wildlife. High enough to not flood when there is a hurricane or a storm surge. . . It still was a thrill to spend a couple days high above the beach, and watch the sun set. 🙂
It’s funny the things that make a marriage succeed. It’s the little things. We both wanted to go to Barnes and Nobles because the 2012 calendars are out and we like to have calendars we love to look out through the year. You can take a chance on waiting until New Year’s week, and sometimes you get a cool calendar at 50% off, but mostly the one you really wanted is already gone gone gone, woe woe woe.
Besides that, we always like to get what we want, then the other one hides it until Christmas. By then, we’ve forgotten what we picked out, so it is a really good surprise. 😉
I told AM that I was going to have to have a chocolate fix and he said he would have to have a chocolate fix, too. We decided we could share an Oreo cake:
It was a fun idea, but it didn’t taste as good as it looked. We didn’t even finish it, it just wasn’t that great.
A Different Perspective
“It’s going to be a great weekend! We’re expecting sun and temperatures of 85°F!” my Mom enthused, from Seattle.
“We’re expecting a great weekend, too,” I enthused right back, “the temperature will be down to about 85°F and it’s going to RAIN!”
We laughed. It’s all a matter of perspective.
“We’re staying in this weekend,” said one of my co-mother-in-laws. “When it gets like this, we just hunker down.”
“We went out to the beach!” I crowed! I wanted to see the waves, and when the temperatures go down and it rains, I feel re-energied!”
We laughed. She’s married to a man from the Pacific Northwest, so this perspective is not new to her.
What was not funny was when I had just started a load of laundry, and the electricity went out. Electricity goes out all the time, or from time to time, with frequent thunder and lightning storms, but this time it went out and stayed out. Without the ceiling fans going, it wasn’t hot, but it got stuffy. We have a covered and protected area outside, so we went outside and sat and watched the gusting winds and the flying rain beating down our tomato plants. Mostly, the rain has been drizzling down, but for an hour or so, it really battered and flew about. It’s just a normal small storm, though, nothing like it could be, nothing like Hurricane Irene, which devastated the East Coast last weekend.
And it was a good thing. We have hurricane preparations, but . . . sometimes we rob the Hurricane supplies, or borrow them, and forget to put them back. While it was still daylight, I wanted to check on candles, matches, etc. and I discovered the matches had been MISPLACED. I finally found them. I gathered candles, and checked the weather station on my radio that you wind up during electrical outages (it worked fine) and started a list of additional things I want to gather to have on hand in case the electricity goes out for any length of time. It’s good to be prepared. 🙂
Electricity is back on now, adventure over.
Sobering Reading on Wealth
It’s a long weekend, Labor Day weekend, and Pensacola awakes to rain-sodden streets and forecasts of a rain soggy three day weekend (bad for hotels and restaurants at the beach who hope for a sell-out Labor Day) and high surf from off-shore storms.
The reading for today from James is equally gloomy. I always think of “Insh’allah” when I read it, because it probably has an equivalent somewhere in the Quran, and my Muslim friends say “Insh’allah” (As God wills, or If God wills it) when they state a planned event.
While we are not rich, we have a large homeless population in Pensacola, sleeping out under the skies in hidden camps, scrounging for food, often with a dog, seeking handouts, seeking scraps. They are a constant reminder, to me, of how comfortable we are, and how comfort wars with the religious spirit. When we are too comfortable, we often fail to keep our focus on God, and are distracted by our toys and interests.
(I told you this would be gloomy.)
On the other hand, I wonder how spiritual I would be if I were hungry, worried about getting enough to eat, worried about my safety sleeping out in one of the camps. I wonder if their community looks after one another, or if it is a brutal and chaotic life. I wonder how you can keep your mind on things of the spirit when the search for basic necessities takes up a large part of your life.
James 4:13-5:6
13 Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ 14Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’ 16As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.
5Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. 2Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure* for the last days. 4Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
5You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
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