Lemon Shine Revisited

Back in January we created our Lemon Shine, or thats what I called it that night.  It is julliened lemon rind soaking in Vodka.  Well, this week we opened a few jars and made lemon rind candy by drying the rinds in granulated sugar for a couple days.  The vodka went into a drink yet to be named and we are open to suggestions. The drink consists of 1 oz. of the now pale yellow lemon vodka, 1 oz. lemon juice, 1 Tablespoon of cane sugar syrup.  Stir that up, add ice, top it off with 7 Up and garnish it with the lemon candy, and it sure is tasty.

If like us, ya ocasionally find yourself with a bunch of lemon peelings. This is the best thing we have found to do with them.  So far.

Spring 2013 BBQ

Our good friends, the Radigans stopped by to spend some time with us on their way back to their upstate home in NYS, from their "snowbird" home in Florida.  We had a couple slabs of spare ribs we had got on sale and were looking for an excuse like this to fire up the pit, so that's just what we did.

Here they are with a tray of appetizers that we make to fool folks into thinking we have a li'l class.  It's rice crackers with brie cheese and a tiny dot of our potent homemade lemon-pepper jelly.

Mrs. Jean plated up some strawberries, Cool Whip and powder sugar, while I plated up some of our oft requested BBQ'd asparagus'. Taking away any class points the brie woulda won us, I used fine paper Chinets for the plates, and ya can't exactly wipe the butter stains off paper platters.

The guys outside didn't seem to mind the unsightly presentation and slurped up all but 1 asparagus, washing them down with assorted adult beverages.  Us guys had a ball minding the pit while the women folks had a nice visit in the kitchen while they fixed the side dishes.

We also had some of Sam's green onion sausage on the grill. Man! They didn't last long!

Peggy whipped up a pot of beans that we set on the grill to absorb some good smokey flavor while they bubbled away.

The ribs were rubbed with our spice and light brown sugar and slowly "Q'd" for 4 hours.  We then took them out, separated them, and slathered them with Peggy's BBQ Sauce, then parked them back on the pit for an hour.  The sauce became a sticky, sweet glaze and the feast was so good that I plum forgot to take a picture of a plate as it looked before we said "Grace" and tore into the meal.

Our new BBQ mascot, "Allie Gator" (given to us for Christmas from Mr. Ed and Mrs. Jean) wore my hat for me while we ate.  Also, Peg's luscious macaroni salad didn't find its way to a picture, but it sure found its way to our plates, and like every thing else, it was wonderful.  I'll try to remember to take pictures of the plated feast next time, but if it's this good again, no promises.

Strawberry Festival

On a whim Peggy and I decided to check out the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival. It was a nice sunny day, so we set sail across the swamp, singing along to some Bluegrass Gospel.

As we mosied into town we were greeted by this weird Cyclops blimp.  Sponge Bob pointy head???  We couldn't decide.
   The traffic was moving at a slow crawl as we approached town.  Most folks would be upset at this, but for us fun lovin' Cajuns, it was a great opportunity to gawk and 'people watch'.

We had a wonderful time people watching and since we are "foodies", we had to show yall some Cajun-style food booths.

We got some strawberry wine and strawberry jam, but decided not to buy any of the beautiful berries on accounta we have some already growing in the yard.  We hadda wonderful time and were home before dark in time to fire up the fire pit and do some wine tasting.  An oft said quote is actually the motto of one town down here; it's, "So many festivals so little time"

We sure aint complaning.

A Beautiful End to a Great Day

I have been on the boat for over 3 weeks now and we have been non-stop busy.  Always either running, loading or discharging, with no down time.  Now this is a good thing 'cause when we're busy, the time flies by, but it doesn't give ya time to tend to the details of boat maintenance.  Well, I was thrilled when last night we finished discharging at 1 a.m. and got to "stand by" all day 'til 5 p.m. before we had to make the 2 hour trip to our next port.  I spent the morning doing paperwork and cooking a good lunch for the crew while they spent the morning painting and taking advantage of a beautiful Spring day.  We headed out for our next location in Breton Sound and as I approached the location, the sky and everything was just aglow with the beautiful pastel colors of a glorious Gulf Coast sunset.  Truly a fitting end to a great day.  Right now we are sitting at the dock, already to load in the morning.  A good night's sleep of the waves rocking at the dock,  then come dawn, it's up and at it again.