food museum blog

Krackers, Manatees, Mermaids...

Last Sunday we plunged into a tad of Florida's roadside Americana. No, we did not eat here (left), but were inspired once again to ponder the age-old American fascination with using K when a C is called for.

We did buy boiled peanuts from the man selling smoked mullet from a colorful wagon, clearly a local, but no, actually he was from upstate New York and no more a Kracker, um, Cracker than say, I am. ( You may recall that "cracker" derives from the crack of the whips used to drive cattle by early folks in Florida.)

These compelling sightings occurred on a visit to Homosassa Springs to wallow in manatee-viewing. The m's decidedly relish their in-captivity diet of carrots and sliced raw sweet potatoes, as well as Romaine lettuce, augmented by green peppers.

But the human highlight of the day was the mermaid show at Weeki Wachee, where the young women of the area have been plunging into the springs, grabbing air hoses, and posing prettily wide-eyed, hair streaming not directly into their eyes and mouths as with ordinary mortals but flowing up and out into the bubbles, since around the time of the GI Bill. ( While wearing tight mer-woman tailed costumes.) The foodish underwater highlights of the show were : A--apple eating and B-- soda drinking. Do not try this at home!

Steak vs Hamburger

With all the hooha these past few days about the appetite of a certain New York governor for youthful yet costly flesh apparently not available locally, I couldn't help but recall the jaunty response of Paul Newman years back when asked if he had ever been unfaithful to wife Joanne Woodward.

"Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?"  Such a romantic, that Paul!

Now-- we gals do not overtly welcome comparison to cuts of beef, but still, for a food blog, useful.

Real Issues, Please, Not Faux

While the candidates fool around with non issues such as answering old-fashioned 1950's red phones,  who has experience and what kind, and my commander-in-chief mojo is fiercer than yours,-- ( I even heard 46 year-old Barack Obama described as a "callow youth." Please!)--- violence continues and even escalates in many parts of the world, oil prices reach appalling heights, oh--and the world is slowly getting hungry as wheat and other staple grains become  scarce commodities. Amazing.

According to this report from Scotland's Sunday Herald, "More than 73 million people in 78 countries that depend on food handouts from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are facing reduced rations this year. The increasing scarcity of food is the biggest crisis looming for the world'', according to WFP officials.

At the same time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that rising prices have triggered a food crisis in 36 countries, all of which will need extra help. The threat of malnutrition is the world's forgotten problem'', says the World Bank as it demands urgent action."

Price rises are due to a surge in demand, worsening droughts, and increasingly, the growing of foods for bio-fuels, instead of for feeding people and animals. The report continues:

"High (wheat) prices have already prompted a string of food protests around the world, with tortilla riots in Mexico, disputes over food rationing in West Bengal and protests over grain prices in Senegal, Mauritania and other parts of Africa. In Yemen, children have marched to highlight their hunger, while in London last week hundreds of pig farmers protested outside Downing Street."

"The US currently grows one-sixth of its grain harvest for cars, which is madness," ( Robin Maynard of the UK Soil Association,) told the Sunday Herald."

Crawfish, Gators, Armadillo and All That

We had a crawfish festival here in St Pete recently, complete with Cajun bands---and we had a hankering to go eat mounds of the little freshwater mini lobsters but the cost was $12 to enter a park here lined with the usual kind of vendors selling earrings and funnel cake and assorted tacky items, so we passed. After all, the music was so "enhanced" we could hear it for free from blocks away, and my local fish store has crawfish, along with cooked $5 apiece lobsters, and great local clams, and oysters, ditto, though not as superb as Dutch oysters, and a slew of local fish with wild nicknames, as well as flounder and arctic char and , and.....
I ate gator once a few years back, unmemorably--the fish store has frozen gator--but a few days ago a friend visiting from the frozen tundra of Vermont joined me on a walk in a park smack dab in the center of St Pete where we spotted three 12 inch-long baby gators, all sweetly small and stripy, slowly swimming along with their cute schnozzes up out of the water.

ps Just a day before we had seen an armadillo snuffling about in yet another naturey place within St Pete.
Haven't eaten that.....But here's a recipe--oh goody--how does one remove the armor plate, though?

( Thanks to http://www.nuawlins.com/crawfish.htm for crawfish pic.)

While We Await Primary Results, Pelicans Hang Around Fish Dispensing Guy's Box

  Pelicans, those long jawed feathered diving machines, are a particular delight to observe here in Florida, whether gobbling their food, perching on docks or skimming low over the waters of the Gulf.  "A wonderful bird is the pelican, his bill can hold more than his belican...," as the Dixon Merritt limerick begins. Pelicans eat fish, of course, but also shellfish, amphibians, and as they are described as "opportunist feeders," teacup dogs on waterfront walkies should beware...

We suppose someone somewhere must have eaten a roast pelican--one would surely overflow even a hefty turky roasting pan, but have found no actual evidence of same. Shipwrecked sailors? And a birding blog reference suggests that elephant seals might well dine on pelicans.

But, in any case, the usual pelican thing is fish eating. Here's a look at some of the tamer p'cans, rallying round the feeding guy's box on The Pier, a magnificent construct that stretches a quarter of a mile from the palm-lined promenade of St. Petersburg out into Tampa Bay.