What's important?

I've got to a point in my life, where I am currently assessing what's important. What matters and what doesn't. Sorting through what's real and what's habitual. What's worth my time and what wastes it.

And this applies as much (perhaps more so) to things as it does to people.

Last week I forgot the anniversary of my Hobbits death. 

I have a myriad of excuses, but the fact remains that for the previous 5 years, the first week of Feb has loomed large and treacherously, from Xmas onwards.

And this year it passed by in a flurry of "other things".

So, in making an active decision to spend more time on the good, and less (if not none) on the bad, and PARTICULARLY, the ugly, I've sorted my life into what's important and what isn't.

And when you are authentically.. I mean REALLY committed to this process, it's quite confronting. From the ring my first real boyfriend gave me, to the very last thing my Hobbit purchased for me, I've gone through my life and discarded what I no longer need.

And in some cases, kept what I thought I didn't.

And, because this is a food blog, and this post is in SERIOUS danger of becoming a self-indulgent, maudlin middle-aged emo sook-fest,I give you a small taste of what, after 45 years on this planet, is important to me.




A wine rack, a coffee plunger, a print of Monet's garden in Giverny, my stick blender, a mirror overlaid with KwanYin, my antique marble slab,my silicone cooking gear (but only because my non-stick ripple pan is my most prized possession!) and my cookbooks. My Aqua Sulis and a bag filled with mezzalunas and my antique butchers knives.

And my PNG panga and my hand-made bilum.

The rest was dross.

AGITK and I will be taking a wee hiatus, because this blog IS one of the things I have decided is important to me, and when we return, in about 2 week, things, my friends, will be very VERY different.

As they say in the classics, "strange things are afoot at the Circle K"

See you all on the flip side.

Dubai, my love, Dubai...

Dubai Airport. Looks nice, doesn't it? You could cheerfully spend a couple of hours wandering around, sniffing out stuff, don't you think?

This is where Furry just spent nearly 30 hours.

The gig with Emirates is, that if you have a long layover in Dubai, you get a hotel room.

Which Furry did. Where he had a shower and slept and Skyped me and shook off some jet lag. There was a small issue with his meds, the customs officials weren't keen on letting him out of the airport with 20kgs of cardiac/diabetes medications, so they held them over while he had his layover snooze.

Pretty simple, eh?

Well.. no.

Like EVERYTHING in my husband's life, NOTHING is simple.

He got the the airport 3 hours ahead of his scheduled departure. Was given a bum steer on directions to get his bag of meds,  spent nearly an hour finding and them finally retrieving said meds.

All good so far.

So, on his way from customs to the departure gate for his flight to Riyadh, he asked an airport security guard for directions. And said guard most politely gave those directions, swipe his access card, and let Furry out of the terminal, with the instructions: "Walk up here, around the corner, and through the door on the right"

Again, all good so far....

Until..

He attempted to re-enter the terminal at said "door on the right", to discover, he'd left the security of customs and immigration, and was now OUTSIDE with 20kgs of meds in a bag.

Not cool.

Customs officers took him to a "special" room where, thankfully, all the paperwork in triplicate was in order.

But.... there was still a language barrier that was not that easy to cross.

After repeatedly describing the contents of the case as "medicine" and pointing to his heart and saying "tablets".. tapping his wrist and saying "blood tablets" he uttered the OTHER word to describe the contents of said case:

"drugs"

And that, dear reader, is when things went South.

From here, he was taken to an even more "special" room, where he was strip-searched and drug swabbed.

And all he could think of was that he'd borrowed the suitcase from our darling friend Peakie, who had recently been to Bali.

Apparently his happy-place mantra while he was being "probed" was:

"Please don't have let her walk past some random person smoking a joint, whose smoke got on her t-shirt that was stored in the case"

So, needless to say, he missed his connecting flight to Riyadh, and after (most apologetically) being given drug-free clearance, was told NOT to leave the airport for any reason whatsoever.

Oh, and by the way, the next flight to Riyadh isn't for another 26 hours.

So, I can tell you, Dubai airport is a WONDERFUL place, unless you are a sleep deprived, recently-probed, unfairly accused drug mule who has to spend 24(ish) hours sitting in a plastic hair and eating airport food.

And, in closing, for all you international travelers who may suffer from diabetes,

Januvia, apparently, looks like Ecstasy.

"American food"

American food is obviously bigger than the sum of its parts. I get that. It's like trying to define Australian food by eating only a Four 'N' 20 and a Chokito. And I am aware that I was in The South, the home of deep fried coke, but I have got to say that most of the meals I ate in Florida defeated me with the sheer size.

Now, as most of you know, I am pretty good on the fang, but as you can see from the above breakfast shot, the Yanks do it BIG.

The above pic was a small serve of corn beef hash and eggs. And, as you can plainly see, it came with toast, several slices of thick, hot ham, toast, sweet butter and apple sauce. AND a hash brown. The actual corned beef hash is peeking out under the ham, to the left of the toast in the pic.

AND, the hash had been served into patties and fried.

One of the first problems I encountered was the American idea of appetizers. In my feeble, jet lagged brain, I thought of small plates of tasty nibbly bits to whet my appetite. This was also promoted by the fact that after the Appetizer section of the menu, comes the Entree.

Erm. No.

Appetisers and entrees and entrees are mains.

And appetizers are freaking HUGE.

I ordered an appetizer of fried green tomatoes, naively thinking I'd get a wee tapas-like taste.

Newp.

I got 4 whole sliced tomatoes. Deep fried and covered with cheese and salsa. Absolutely delicious, bit terrifying when I realised that I had also ordered another "appetizer" and an entree while I searched vainly for "mains"

That first night in Florida, I ate for Africa. I ate for King and country. I ate for my very reputation. Like a foie gras goose, I was pushing those last little bits of seared tuna with wasabi mayo, and those blackened grouper cheeks down with a stick.

And the other cah-WAAAZY restaurant thing I took a while to get my head around, was the sheer amount of choices.. both in supermarkets and restaurants.

Would you like fries, soup or salad with that? (Soup? With a sandwich?) White, brown, multigrain, farmers grain, rye or sourdough? Toasted or fried? Butter or mayo? Dressing with your salad, ma'am? Ordering a Coke became a battle of wills to see who would crack first. Cherry? Vanilla? Diet? Ice? Lemon?

Invariably, everyone I met was amazingly polite, but the number of choices and decisions I had to make simply to get a salad sandwich and a Coke, left me feeling quite wan.

I went to the supermarket (and yes, they do actually have Piggly Wiggly's in Florida!) and stared like a numpty at a whole aisle devoted to more than 30 TYPES (not brands) of Cranberry juice. Low-fat, added fibre, Cran-apple, Cran-respberry, Diet Cran, Sugar-free Cran.. the list went on and on.

Later in my trip, a bucket of steamed shrimp (no, that is not a typo.. I mean it.. a BUCKET of banana prawns) was ordered in the vain hope of consuming something neither fried nor covered in condiments.



I admit to developing a penchant for chips and ranch dressing while I was away, but only Lay's Kettle Chips, any other chip I tried was just too salty... like cave-your-mouth-in-seawater salty.


I was fed fried green tomatoes and cheese grits with boiled salted ham for breakfast, by two Southern Belles called Aunt Wee and Aunt Tee. I had iced tea, I ate a hotdog from a roadside diner. I had my very first coke slurpee, I ate a 7-Eleven Cherry pie, consumed mojhitos, Apalachicola fried oysters, soft-shell crab legs, Michelob beer and more.

And loved every damn mouthful!

Although, there was one thing I found, in a roadside gas station cum fast food joint, deep on 98, in the middle of the panhandle, that even I didn't attempt.

And no, they're not strange candies. They REALLY are what they say they are.

I'm back...

And here's a quick sample of my delights to keep you occupied until I a) find my luggage and b) get over my jet lag!


Fried green tomatoes from Thirsty Marlin

Blackened Grouper cheeks, with a side of red beans and rice.

road trip food.

Hush puppies at Rusty Bellies Restaurant.


Sunset over the Anclote River, from the balcony of Rusty Bellies.

It's the final countdown!

For those of you NOT following me on Twitter or FB, you may not be aware that I am off this week to the US.. specifially Florida, to fullfill a promise to a friend of mine that suicided this year. We had planned to meet last year, but what with Furry being out of a job, I just couldn't justify it.

What Bella's death has taught me is that I need to live more in the moment, Live less for "what if..." and more for "Why not......." Spend more time with people who fullfill me, and less time with those whom my relationship can be best described as "habitual"

So, despite the fact that Bella won't be there, I am heading to Florida to meet with several women that all know each other via a women's forum that I run. I've been moderating The Tavern for about 5 years now.. and have know these women online for about 8.

It's the first time that many of us will have met IRL.

**gulp**

My kids have grown up with me being involved with Internet forums, way back in the early days of MSN Groups. My kids think nothing of getting birthday cards from Auntie Lunchbox, or Auntie Catnaps. Random people with accents and names like "Narf" ring asking for "pee-gee" quite often!, so noone in my house even batted an eyelid when I announced that I was off to Florida to hang out with some internet peeps.

Neither is anyone suprised when I presented my list of "Must Do's" for my trip.

My Must Do's include:

eat biscuits and gravy
eat collard greens
eat po boys
eat a slider
eat hush puppies
eat a crawfish
eat gumbo with file powder
eat andoille
eat a poke salad
eat BBQ
eat blackened grouper
eat real Mexican


eat at a seafood shack
eat chowder with conch
eat Cuban bread and cafe con leche
eat stone crab
eat chayote
eat a Cuban sandwich
eat grits
eat Key Lime Pie
eat Cajun/Creole
eat oyster crackers
eat peach cobbler
eat red beans and rice
eat chitlins
eat an American hot dog
eat an American pizza

Apparently there are places in Florida called "tourist attractions" and consist of things like "Disney World" and "Dali Museum" and a place called "Miami", but none of my Google searches threw up anything about them, so they can't be that important. Or maybe because all my holiday research has involved searches like "best food in FLA", "history of soul food in FLA", "traditional food in Tarpon Springs"

I am heading to the Florida Panhandle for 4 days, if the BP oil slick doesn't bugger up that plan, and then spending the rest of the time eating my way around the Tarpon Springs area.

If any of you, dear readers, have anything I should add to my list, please feel free to drop me a line.

And I somehow think the 12kgs I have dropped this year might be waiting for me, lurking in some fabulous U-Peel crab shack in Apalachicola.

I will try to post when I can, but if not, be prepared for an ONSLAUGHT of photos and recipes from Southern US of A when I get back!

Happy eating from Auntie PG, until I get back!