Long, long ago, there used to be a small, downtown cafe in St. Pete that was decorated with year ’round Christmas tree lights strung around the ceiling. I could almost swear it was where the Central Coffee Shoppe is now, but not certain. That was more than 30 years ago.

This particular decoration, pictured above, is my favorite, even after all these years. Thank you, Nathan.

I think I may drag out my Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Easter Bunny decorations, too, while I’m at it.

Isn’t it great to know where your food comes from? The word, “community,” in that phrase really strikes a resonant chord with me. There’s something “right” about it being grown by real people, not a monolithic corporation in some distant state or country. This salad has got to be fresher than anything on earth.

I’m happy with this picture. Click on it and see the detail. Depending on your monitor, you may be able to click on the resulting picture to get in even closer. If you do, you’ll see capers, artichoke hearts, blue cheese dressing, green olives, cheddar cheese cubes, and sardines! Did I leave anything out?

A fellow blogger (he publishes Zack Shack) and friend has posted several recipes that have made my mouth water. Recently, Zack had a recipe for Brined Turkey Butternut Squash Soup that I simply had to try since I only recently learned how to cook winter squash.

To me, it seemed that the heart of Zack’s recipe was the use of lite creamed cheese instead of cream, which is what typical recipes call for. In checking around online, I noticed some additions that I had laying around that I wanted to use up: carrots and apples. I took that idea from this AllRecipes recipe: Butternut and Apple Harvest Soup. I combined those elements with elements of Zack’s.

I basically made a double recipe, based on Zack’s ingredients. So, I used the butter and olive oil he calls for, but double the amount. On the other hand, I only used 3 cups of veggie broth and 3 cups of water, plus two Knorr’s vegetable broth cubes, only half the fluids he calls for based on a double recipe. I used veggie broth instead of the turkey Zack calls for because I wanted to make it vegetarian this time.

I sauted the onions in the butter & oil, then added the diced apple and diced carrots. I cooked the butternut in the microwave, softening a well punctured squash for 6 minutes, halving it, and then fully cooking for 12+ minutes (it was a large one). I scooped out the meat and added it to the browning onions, apples, and carrots and finished browning them all.

At that point, as per the AllRecipes instructions, I added the fluids and boiled until all was soft. Then, I CAREFULLY ladled the mix into my (quaint 70s vintage) blender and pureed it all, a couple blenders-full at a time, returning it to the pan. I added the whole brick of creamed cheese, stirring and simmering until all the cream cheese was melted and well incorporated, blending it all again at the end.

For spices, I used “apple pie spice” (cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice) plus sea salt and white pepper to taste. This makes a soup that is an interesting mix of sweet and unami. As I eat it over the next couple weeks (I’ll freeze at least half), I’m going to experiment with adding other spices to increase the unami quality–maybe sage?

I’ve updated my blogroll page on Inkwatu because a number of my friends and acquaintances have established very nice blogs. Wanted to call your attention to them:

from inkwatu.com/blogroll

FAMILY

• Lavalili

SPECIAL FOLKS

• Allen Loyd’s Travels
• As I Draw Them
• Beeman Jewelry Design
• Central Coffee Shoppe
• Coping w/Chronic Illness
• Elizabeth Crown Collection
• Eye of Newt
• Going Global
• Lakewood UCC
• Marty Ink
• Re/Creating Tampa Bay
• The Quilting Violinist
• Zack Shack

CITIES

• Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen (Chinese, diverse,
  food writer/photographer for Tampa Tribune)
• Sami’s Bakery (Tampa Middle Eastern bakery)
• Saraplicious! Kitchen (Filipino cooking-Tampa blogger

Plus many others…

It’s winter in Florida (60s…!) so it’s time for winter food and the winter squashes are in. I’m simply too lazy and impatient to cook them properly in the oven and I’m very afraid of cutting off my fingers–my main source of income–because cutting them is so difficult when they’re uncooked. (The squash I mean, not my fingers.) Nevertheless, I was looking online for speedy, microwave recipes for winter squash and I learned a trick: poke holes in the whole, hard squash and nuke for 2 minutes (with my microwave it took 4). At that point, it’s soft enough that it cuts like butter and can then have its seeds scooped out and nuked the rest of the way (in my case about another 4 minutes). Even though one must still be careful, poking holes in the hard, whole squash is pretty easy. Poking the holes is important; this keeps your squash from exploding! I topped them off with real Vermont Maple Syrup that some friends had brought me from their vacation in Vermont. Now, I know I can make winter squash whenever I want and not have to wait 90 minutes as I used to with the oven.

No matter how “mature” one becomes, a trip to the dentist demands a post-appointment-self-reward of some sort. It just so happens that Mazzaro’s (inkwatu.com/2008/03/12/mazzaros-italian-market) is between my dentist’s office and my home!

Soft food (in this case spinach & sundried tomato lasagna and a cheese & brussels sprouts casserole side dish) was in order following getting a crown. The Mazzaro’s deli counter is unparalleled for all kinds of food, but they have a wide variety of casseroles and pastas and other soft foods.

The brussels sprouts casserole was just an impulsive guess on my part. I’d never tried it before. My goodness…! It’s terrific.

So, next day, I went looking online for a good recipe and found this one at the Disney Family Fun page (familyfun.go.com/recipes/cheesy-gratin-of-brussels-sprouts-684866). As everyone does, I modified a few things: didn’t have any thyme so I used sage and rosemary instead, doubled the amount of both cheeses, omitted the flour, used dry mustard instead of wet, and prepared the sauce in one pan, in stages, rather than in separate pans.

Most important change was substituting Lifeway Kefir for the milk. It made for a tangy, addicting taste that compliments the cheese just right and lifts this dish out of the ordinary. Here’s the Lifeway site: www.lifeway.net. If you’re not familiar with kefir, it’s a middle-eastern beverage made from milk that has low lactose and high probiotic content. Check out this site: www.kefir.net which even has instructions for making your own if you’re so inclined. One interesting feature, according to that site, is that it can be made from any kind of milk including milk from “cow, goat or sheep, coconut, rice or soy.” I prefer to just buy the Lifeway brand which is carried by Publix. It’s back near–but not in–the milk section. If you ask for help finding it, you may have to ask more than one worker before someone knows what you’re talking about. I get the full-fat, original style, but there’s a low-fat version.

I’m probably eating in a restaurant with a friend this coming Thanksgiving, but if I weren’t, if I were going to one of those traditional, family pot-luck dinners, I’d take this dish as my contribution!

My big sister, Lucy, in 1949 at Biloxi lighthouse

The Mississippi Gulf Coast figures prominently in my family’s history since my father’s relatives are in southern Mississippi and Alabama. Also, as a poor Methodist preacher’s family in Illinois, about the only vacation we could afford when I was a kid was to head south in our old Buick, camp out with relatives, and then spend a week at the campgrounds the Methodist church maintained on the coast.

The original Biloxi seawall, now hidden beneath sand

In those days, there was no beach in Biloxi. There was simply an enormous seawall consisting of steps that one could walk down to be closer to the water to fish. Which step one chose depended on the tides. As a child of 4 and 5 I remember that close, black water as frightening, but my father managed to coax me down the steps by showing me how to use crab-nets baited with bacon. Here is a post card from that era showing the wall; the bit of sand you see in that card was the Gulf floor and was seldom visible.

Huge manmade beach covering the original seawall

These days, that magnificent seawall is covered by countless tons of white sand as seen above. I suppose I prefer the beach, but it seems a shame that that seawall is history. The sand was pumped onto the seawall in 1951 (see MS History for background on this and other Mississippi public works).

Famous Biloxi lighthouse

An indelible memory of that childhood time is the famous Biloxi lighthouse. Here are several good links on it. I’ll let you read about it for yourself.

• Biloxi Lighthouse
• Web Lighthouses
• Through the years
• Drawing
• early photo
• good vintage MS vintage postcards
• Lighthouses of the United States: Mississippi

The OTHER Biloxi lighthouse

West of the historical lighthouse, on a small promontory jutting out from the shore, there is another lighthouse, pictured above. I can find no mention of it anywhere! It appears to be a functional lighthouse, but it’s not listed among the three lighthouses in Mississippi. If anyone knows something about this one, I would enjoy learning about it.

Shrimp boat (singular!) heads out for the day

In those days, shrimping was huge on the Gulf Coast. It still exists, but not like it used to exist. It was already in serious decline because of all the cheap shrimp shipped in from Asian shrimp farms, then the catastrophic BP oil spill damned near dealt it a death blow. I hope it recovers.

A considerable distance out from Biloxi are a series of barrier islands (see Barrier Islands of Mississippi). One of our family treats in those days was to take a commercial boat out to Ship Island–one of those islands. Halfway out, the boat would stop and haul up nets of live oysters. (Vegans hold your ears!) The shells were cracked open for us and we downed them while they were, literally, still quivering.

Piers that once reached far out into the Gulf remain demolished

The Mississippi Gulf Coast has a long history of recovering from assaults from nature. It’s always bounced back, although sometimes it takes longer than others. The trauma of Hurricane Katrina is still evident. These pictures were taken just this past year. Notice the devastation that still exists both on the coast and inland.

Scarred landscape of Biloxi remains–buildings once stood where those blank squares are

But they’re slowly rebuilding.

One rebuilt pier

Part of the economic engine for that rebuilding is casino money; they were rebuilt first, of course. I don’t know what I think about the casinos. The Biloxi of my youth was poor, poor, poor, poor, poor–a sleepy little town on the water. Now there are jobs. And, people should be allowed to gamble if they wish. I don’t believe in legislating “morality,” ever! But, I, myself, don’t enjoy the casinos in Biloxi. (Vegas is another matter! That can be fun…if one doesn’t gamble.) The Biloxi casinos are full of people my age (old) obsessively frittering away their social security checks. Few are smiling. Mainly, I see grim futility. Here are a couple of links that speak to the issue of casinos on the Gulf Coast: here and here).

One of many casinos

Whether you’re into the casinos or just a new place to visit that’s a (long) day’s drive, Biloxi is only 9 hours away from Tampa. That’s really not that far. The casinos make for cheaper rooms, so that’s good. I highly recommend the trip and the experience.

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