travel – Page 6 – My Urban Pantry

outpost

September 17, 20121 Comment

I use this blog as something of a journal and haven’t felt an overwhelming need to document a lot that happened this summer. Just a bit of the blues I guess, or maybe I was just too hot. We did some work in our house this summer and I have had a couple of busy months at work which I am really looking forward to wrapping up at the end of September – culminating in the dreaded inventory. I am looking forward to cooler days and some new projects at both work and home. We began the summer at the beach with my sister and her family and I feel like it really ended last weekend with a short road trip to the newest destination shopping location in Florida, Trader Joe’s. It opened in Sarasota and is roughly ten minutes from my parents front door. It opened on Friday morning with shoppers who left home as early as 3 am to be first in the door. Well, by Saturday after lunch I’d guess we were like the 5000th shoppers. I am not even sure that is an exaggeration. It was insane. My dad kindly dropped us off (my mom, Z and I) in the street next to the parking lot and went and parked on the other side of a four lane road and walked over. Us and our 300 new best friends.

We made our way in, picking up the basket of the last person to check out and entered the fray. We couldn’t get near the coolers to even get a look at the famous prepared foods and I had to content myself with only dry goods and wine aisles. We found all kinds of necessities – $4 wine, sea salt dark chocolate almonds and gluten free snickerdoodles for co-workers along with cookies, buffalo jerky, dehydrated mango and cashews for ourselves. Can’t live without that stuff. I hope that TJ’s takes a cue from this Sarasota store and makes it’s way into central Florida. The market certainly seems to be there. Even if it doesn’t though, I suppose it’s going to become a new habit.

out·post/ˈoutˌpōst/

Noun:

A small military camp or position at some distance from the main force, used esp. as a guard against surprise attack.
A remote part of a country or empire.
Any Trader Joe’s outside the state of California.

surfer chic

June 28, 20121 Comment

my sister and her family found this funny throwback ‘resort’ during their first beach foray four years ago called the Long Key Beach Resort Motel. They are a very small run operation and perfect for their family in that it is a small place and so laid back. They don’t mind if the children run a little wild and track in copious amounts of sand. Is is a small hotel with rooms for up to six (as far as I have seen) with each room having a tiny closet size kitchenette with rudimentary appliances and a small kitchen kit including assorted pots and pans, can openers, and dishes. There is a large gulf view deck with a medium size pool, tables and benches and a grill. We were able to secure our own room there last year but this year it was no deal. They wouldn’t rent me a room for under a week. This must be a sign that the economy is coming back but I’ll say that it aggravated me quite a bit. We usually go out for 3 or 4 days and let them spend the rest of the time as a family relaxing.

I conceded and started my hunt for a new place to stay. I landed on what promised to be a shabby beach surfer chic resort called the Postcard Inn. The website photos looked good with a distinctly industrial surfer vibe poised somewhere between 1972 and the future. You could see the hand of a shrewd interior designer working magic on surfer chic with a modern vibe. I loved the decor and took a bunch of terrible snapshots before realizing my sunblocky fingers smeared my lens. Everything from rubbed stencils on the grey concrete lobby floor to a giant oversize chalkboard noting sunrise, surf height and the tides to a photo booth and lots of niches of seating and relaxing space carved out of a giant lobby opening onto a courtyard filled with giant trees dripping with lanterns and coconut palms. Our room was kitschy with a full wall decal of surf and a surfboard leaned in the corner behind retro 70’s basement armchair upholstered in sea and surf friendly teal vinyl.

Little did we now that they would also be hosting the bartender’s guild. Crazy. Z was out doing some sunset fishing when I returned back to the hotel and was greeted by a whole host of drunk bartenders on my balcony grooving to the summer sounds of a surf band. The band was alright but dang it was crazy. Once he came back and we had time to jump in the shower we headed out to the hotel restaurant, the Beachwood BBQ. The decor is kind of Texas Industrial with lots of pallety looking wood and rusted and galvanized metals. We ordered the bbq chili nachos and an apple basket of warm apples in a pastry basket and glazed in moonshine. I also had a cocktail that I am planning to replicate at home. A strawberry jam – huckleberry vodka, muddled strawberries and lime juice. Not too sweet and served on ice. Fresh and friendly. We would go back to the hotel and eat at the restaurant again – next time we would probably check for conventions and hope for some food bloggers or something.

st pete beach 2012

June 24, 2012Leave a comment

chilled soups

March 18, 2012Leave a comment

forgot to mention one other thing I love about cruises. Chilled soups for dinner. I forwent most of the starters in favor of the chilled soups. I love them. Strawberry, Mango, that type of thing. The first one I ordered was a total newb laugh on us. I ordered the strawberry and they only brought a large shallow bowl with a molded strawberry thingy in the middle and a scatter of lime zest. I thought-that’s not what I was expecting. At that point I thought, that’s more hoity toity than I think it should be and only a tablespoon of gelatinized strawberries. The server then came back with a tiny pitcher of soup to pour in my bowl. I felt ridiculous and then happily spooned up my soup.

leap year

March 17, 2012Leave a comment

well, we made it to our first real anniversary. Happy Leap Year! We got married on February 29th 2008. Quite a lot of things have happened in this short time. Everyone asks, did you know you were getting married on leap day and what does that mean? Um, yes. And, we get to go big every four years! So this year we took our first cruise. We booked a five day cruise to the Bahamas and visited Half Moon Cay, Nassau and Freeport. We weren’t sure how we’d like cruising and how healthy it would be for Z so we stayed relatively close to home while we tested the waters.
It was super relaxing. I made my way through 3 books and 8 magazines over the course of my vacation week. We laid on the beach at Half Moon Cay (cold water only fit for northerners but we went swimming out to the buoys.) I don’t know when my blood thinned out.

The food. Being relatively foodish I wouldn’t say cruising stands up to my general food expectations but there sure was a lot of food. It actually really borders on ridiculous. By the last day I was passing up appetizers and desserts because it was all just too much. We never hit the midnight taco buffet and only ate lunch at the buffet twice when we were docked and then ate the fresh cooked Mongolian stir fry. I never could pass up the raspberry danish and croissants though. I think my favorite meal was a vegetarian pot pie filled with pumpkin. We tried most all of the didja options where you try things you’d never buy for fear of spending too much or being grossed out. The only one I couldn’t stomach were the frog legs but Z seemed to enjoy them. The other items tended toward conch, alligator, sushi and that ilk. We had tried most of them before but it was fun to try new preparations.
We had fun walking in Nassau and found a good Indian-Euro cafe where we had some butter chicken curry and jerk chicken wraps along with Goombay punch – a super fruity Bahamian soda. The butter chicken was really good and made a perfect dipping sauce for my fries! When Z ordered the server asked how how he’d like it and the man behind the counter says, ‘I am looking at you. I know how hot to make it.’ How can you say no to that? We also found a grocery store, which is my favorite thing to see on vacation. I love seeing how local people live, eat and shop. It makes me know that I could live and cook there-be local.
The last docking day was in Freeport where we took a bus tour to a local outdoor market and toured around the city seeing everything from local government buildings to local neighborhoods. We saw conch fritter stands, produce similar to home and clearly home bottled hot sauces.

We found cruising to be fun. We would probably try a different cruise line – Carnival being a little more over the top party than we tend to be. I was a little disappointed that the smoking deck was also the pool deck. I don’t know that we would have swum there anyway but it didn’t appeal. I would probably also look for a slightly bigger ship with more dining options than we were offered as we mostly were relegated to the main dining room. Our little room was nice (& tiny!) and the staff were excellent-singing to us twice for our anniversary and showering us with attention. Here’s to another four years!