Food Glorious Food

Our first holiday season as full-time beach bums began with a visit from Von, who rented a condo just up the road. We hung out on her balcony overlooking the Gulf on Christmas Eve while a fire alarm at the condo complex across the parking lot whooped it up. When we'd had enough of that, we tried a new resto, Bombay Masala in Fort Walton Beach. Yummy! A definite Do Again. Not every dish equalled the very best Indian food we've ever had, but there were some lovely flavors and a nice atmosphere. Christmas Day Von came to us for more plebeian fare, ham and yams and curried apples, and, ahem, a glass or two of gin. Sort of remarkable any food got to the table at all . . .

A crew of serious cooks appeared on our doorstep for New Year's. Sure, we did more than just hover over the stove and eat and drink and wash dishes for 10 days, but it's fair to say that a big chunk of every day was devoted to that evening's supper. There was beef stew, scampi, shepherd's pie, pork & pepper goulash, elaborate German dumplings, roasted chestnut soup, Deramus sausages, lasagna, and Moroccan chicken. Not to mention homemade ice-cream, homemade sorbet, homemade cookies. And when we weren't cooking ourselves, some of us attended a class on cooking!

Every angler needs a zinger

It wasn't for lack of trying that we didn't eat fish every day

Scampi--inspired by Ina that morning

It takes a village . . .

Bruno rocks!

Coulis R Us

Tough nuts!

Where did all the cookies GO?

Who's zoomin' who?

Just 30 more passes thru the machine and we can eat!

Hydration is key . . .

Chocolate pasta is not such a hot idea

Supper after everybody left . . .

Splendid weather was on tap during the entire visit, great for beach walks, running, fishing, and hanging around inside with the windows open. We played poker, read books (Frankie was 350 pages into Dombey & Son when we dropped her & Martin off at the airport for their return to London), watched Utah *cream* Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, and viewed a couple of Chris Rock specials, in one of which he was so young and tense that it was painful in a new way to watch him perform. E worked doggedly on the tricky jigsaw puzzle that F&M gave her for Christmas, S&E took Frankie to Bingo in FWB and dropped Martin off at the Okaloosa Island Fishing Pier where he was schooled on the ins & outs of catching the lively bonito, and several groups made runs to the outlet mall at various times with varying degrees of success.

Now we're on entertaining hiatus until Saturday, when some folks are planning to spend the long MLK weekend here playing poker and mahjongg. Yesterday we revved up the GPS system S got E for Christmas and followed it to the site where we hoped to find our very first geocache (tho our hopes were muted, for nobody has seen this particular cache since September of 2007). On the way to Eastern Lake, we finally stopped at FlipFlops and tried their burgers. Which were just fine, very meaty, but not only were the buns not toasted, they weren't even room temperature! We too were cold, standing around in the mist on the Eastern Lake overlook, no cache to be found. We did learn that coastal dune lakes like this one are rare worldwide, and in the US they only occur on the Gulf, so all was not lost.



Today S pitched in on the jigsaw puzzle: we're going to need that table next weekend for jongg!

HELP!!!!