Things That Go Pop In The Night

I love the 4th of July for many reasons. It's the day after my birthday. I never have to get up to go to work the next day (that is...unless the 4th falls on a Sunday). It's a time where you spend time with family and friends. And its a time where everyone seems to have a good time.

It's the last reason that I am considering eliminating from my list of all the reasons why I love the holday.

I love fireworks. I love how they've really become pretty sophisticated over the years, when drawing your name in the sky with a sparkler, or lighting a charcoal "worm" or smoke bomb was a pretty cool deal. Now...they're pretty much lame. Not having bought fireworks lately, I don't even know if they make the latter, but rather these complicated fountain things, with complicated names that didn't really translate well to English when they were shipped over from China. I mean, what the hell does White Lotus In Black Hawk Transistor Happiness really mean anyhow....?

Anyhow, it seems anymore that there needs to be more lift, more bang, more pizzazz, more fire, etc., anymore for any teenager or adult to even remotely be interested in them. I would tend to agree as well. And, in addition, it seems that teenagers and adults feel the need to start immediately after Memorial Day, and have the festivities last later and later in the evening, reaching its apex about the first of July, where it seems bangs last until 3 am.

People in my neighborhood seem to have been following this practice as of late, and it's really getting out of hand. I like fireworks like any other person, but at 3 am, I don't find them very festive, especially if I've not imbibed in some sort of alcoholic libation, and have to get up early the next morning. Shutting the windows doesn't help. You still hear them, especially with the screechy ones.

I'm open to suggestions as to how to deal with this, and probably will migrate to some "Jackass" type of practical joke on the people, which may result in filing an insurance claim or lawsuit against me. So I sit, counting to 2342, keeping my emotions in check.

Or perhaps I should get that brick of Black Cat firecrackers, find the bastards' home, and light them off on their front porch...at 6 a.m., a time where I happen to be rarin' to go...

Porto San Giuseppe

Yesterday, I realized that I am on the last end of my annual Florida vacation. I really love it down here, as I love the surroundings, the area, the pace of life (although sometimes a bit overly slow)and especially the weather. I've never been here during the summer or during a hurricane season, but I'm certain that all things considered, this is a fine place to be.

In the morning, we ventured to Apalachicola's downtown area, where there is a myriad of different places to shop, eat, and see, as the city was founded as a harbor in the early 1800's, and the market place reflects a lot of that old charm. We visited a flower shop by mistake, as it was a former sea sponge warehouse that housed an antique store, that now housed a flower shop. In entering the store, it said that it was a flower shop and gift store. From what we saw however, it was a very, VERY basic flower shop. Wherever the gifts were, they were probably on backorder, for as far as I could tell, there were no "gifty" type things anywhere to be found. As we walked into the store, the owner was very chipper and polite in asking us if we could be helped. When we said we were looking for the antique shop, however, we were quickly shooed out of the store with a flurry of directions. Apparently that woman's been asked the same question more than once.

I am not one for antiques at all. I suspect that it has everything to do with how antique shops smell. They just smell old, musty, and dank. Normally this kind of a shop wouldn't be one that I would seek out. However, this particular shop sells some of the best hand-made soap (made from goat's milk) that I have ever used in my entire life.

Being redirected to "the Hayes House" back in town, we ventured to where this antique store was relocated, and browsed through all of the wares they had to offer.
Upon buying a dozen bars of soap, we headed for our next stop, "The Owl Cafe" Cooking Shop, and proceeded to get some really cool kitchen stuff, a seafood cookbook, some shrimp de-veiners, and spices.

We decided to head back to the beach house, where we'd be able to sit in the sun for a few hours before having to decide what we were going to have for supper.

My mom suggested our dinner destination, "Joe Mama's Wood Oven Pizza" in central Port St. Joe, Florida. When we first arrived, there weren't a lot of cars out front in the street, and in looking from the front of the restaurant (which had dark tinted glass), it didn't look like it was open.

After further review, we did see lights on in the restaurant, and decided to give it a try. We were greeted by a very friendly young woman that understood our confusion when we said we couldn't tell if the restaurant was open or not as it was so dark. We were seated, and our server came over, took our drink order and let us decide on the type of pizza we would like to try.

The great thing we noticed was that almost every table in the restaurant was full of diners, and that it truly did have the wood burning stove in the kitchen, similar to the wood ovens my mom and I experienced when we were in Rome, Florence, and Torino. We were both excited to anticipate having REAL Italian pizza. My mom ordered the pizza margherita, which had garlic, tomato, basil, and mozzarella. I opted for the Quatro, which had fresh mozzarella, basil, cured ham, and tomato.

In a matter of minutes, out came the pizzas from our server, and sure enough, they were identical to the pizzas we had in Italy. After the first taste, we knew one thing: this pizzeria is a complete WINNER. Wood stoves have a different way of cooking, and give pizza crusts (or for that matter, the whole pizza) a more rustic, earthy taste and texture, and the crust was amazing!

It truly was an experience reminiscent of past travels to Italy, and was a great way to end the evening. Next time, I hope to try the pizza with the arugula..it looked really interesting!

Fresher Than Preferred

The weather in Florida has been spectacular all week. No clouds seem to be anywhere nearby, and the temperature has been anywhere from 78-83 degrees. Doesn't get any better than that.

I have had several opportunities to walk along the beach, both around the beach house and nearby where there's a lighthouse. We have seen many types of seabirds, shells, dolphins, and some lizards. We have been able to see fishing boats way off in the horizon, catching fish or shrimp.

Nothing is better than fresh seafood from the Gulf of Mexico. In this area, there are many different restaurants to be able to try tuna, grouper, shrimp, bay scallops, oysters, and any other type of seafood you can imagine. We've tried many over the last several years in coming down to Cape San Blas and Port St. Joe, Florida.

Tonight we were hungry. My mom and I decided that we would venture to a place that we've gone to 2 or three times in the past. It's in the harbor at Port St. Joe, and it's called the Dockside Cafe. I don't think any time we've gone there where the service has been anything to write home about, and some of the servers just do their jobs. This isn't an issue, since the food has been good, and usually comes promptly.

I have no idea if our experience today was an exception or what. Walking into the restaurant, normally someone at least greets you at the door, even if you are asked to seat yourselves. We opted to sit out on the patio, where there was a nice breeze, and wasn't quite so stuffy. As we walked to the table, we passed by about 3 to 4 different workers, none of whom bothered to say hello, or even acknowledge we were there. I have no idea if they were short of help, but from what I saw of the patron to server ratio, this was certainly not the case.

We ordered our beers (which were probably the only things that were served promptly) and ordered the food. I opted for a shrimp basket with fries, and my mom ordered their blackened grouper with steamed vegetables.

After waiting approximately 20 minutes for our food to be served (and by now, our drinks were getting lighter), we finally got the food. While the server was chipper, the food was anything but.

I asked my mom how her food was, and the best part of her meal was the steamed vegetables on her plate, as her blackened grouper was somewhat fishy. I've never had fishy tasting grouper before. This was a first.

I ate about 4 of my 10 fried shrimp, which looked done on the outside, but upon closer examination, realized that they were extremely fresh: fresh off the boat, breaded, and fresh on my plate. While they were de-veined (thank goodness), the remaining shrimp on my plate were all translucent, and not the normal cooked white color that shrimp SHOULD be.

No amount of tartar or cocktail sauce would have improved the freshest food on my plate. I had to check the menu to make sure that we didn't end up in a sushi bar, as opposed to a seafood cafe.

Unfortunately, my criticism of my food to my server fell upon deaf ears, even after showing her my uncooked shrimp and giving her a cooking lesson on what cooked shrimp should look like. The only remedy was for the server to go back and get more shrimp for me. This was not an option for me. I respectfully declined. There was no offer to take the price of my dinner (at an overpriced $10.99) off the bill.

Freshly ingrained in our minds, her lack of empathy or care resulted in a less than stellar tip, which really shouldn't have been her fault. Oh well, our indifference matched what we experienced.

Dockside Cafe and Grill in Port St. Joe, Florida was a severe disappointment both from the quality of the food, and the quality of the service, which is a shame when we've seen many restaurants in the area in previous years that had fantastic food, fantastic service, but went out of business. If they don't pay attention to these types of things in future, this restaurant, too, won't last long either.

We certainly won't be coming back any time soon.