What better container is there than a table that ices your beer? None, that’s what. My husband found plans for this awesomeness over on Ana White’s site and he put it together in a couple of weekends. It makes me happy.
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This photograph needs no words. -
Cloud with rainbow over Gulf of Mexico. Anna Maria Island, FL. Clouds are my favorite thing about Florida. They are the part I miss most after living there, and the part I love most when we visit. I thought I’d share some with you here. Enjoy.
Morning clouds. Anna Maria Island, FL. 
Cotton puffs over Gulf of Mexico. 
Evening light through storm clouds -
Daiquiri improvisation One of my favorite summer cocktails is a rum daiquiri (recipe below). With only three ingredients, it is clean, cold, fresh, and simple. Buy a bottle of rum, a few limes, and some sugar to make simple syrup, and you can make one anywhere you have access to ice.
Or so I thought.
Our first night on vacation I went to make myself one – I had prepped simple syrup earlier in the day and was all ready to go – and I realized I didn’t have a shaker. Cocktails with citrus should be shaken in order to get a fresh bubbly flavor, but you know, vacation rentals don’t always have all the tools you’re used to having at home. I banged around in the cabinets to be sure I couldn’t rig something, then shrugged my shoulders and resigned myself to stirring.
The drink served as a rum, lime, and sugar delivery mechanism, which isn’t all bad, but it tasted flat and I didn’t make another.
The following night my husband and I both wanted daiquiris, but we wanted them to have the zing we craved – the zing you can only get from shaking, not stirring. So I banged around in the cabinets some more, double checked where the wine glasses were stored, triple checked the cupboard with the blender. No cocktail shaker. I wandered back into our bedroom to brainstorm with my husband, and then I saw our solution.
A few months ago I received some WordPress swag after guest hosting a writing challenge on The Daily Post. The box included a tee-shirt, a copy of The Year Without Pants, some stickers, and an insulated Klean Kanteen bottle with a sealable sippy lid (aka “Cafe Cap”). I love this bottle. It keeps my water icy in the summer and my coffee steaming in the winter.
And with a screw top cap that can be mostly closed off, on vacation it serves as our cocktail shaker. I forgot to close off the sippy hole the first shake and I flung sugar-lime-rum everywhere, and when you do close the sippy hole it doesn’t seal perfectly for vigorous shaking, but the minimal drink loss was worth it: the daiquiris were fresh and not flat, shaken and not stirred. Sometimes you have to improvise.
Rum Daiquiri recipe (makes 1 drink)
- 1.5 – 2 oz rum
- juice of 1/2 large lime
- 3/4 oz simple syrup*
- ice
Mix all ingredients in a cocktail shaker (or Klean Kanteen bottle with lid closed) and shake vigorously for ~ 10 seconds. Strain over ice in a rocks glass. Garnish with lime wedge.
*To make simple syrup, heat equal parts water and sugar over medium heat until sugar is dissolved (we use a lot of simple syrup in our house so I usually mix 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water per batch). You do not need to stir constantly, nor do you need to bring it to a boil. Once the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and allow to cool. If you are in a hurry to use it in drinks, cool it in an ice bath to avoid melting the ice in your drink and watering it down.
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Morning clouds over Gulf of Mexico, Anna Maria Island, FL I’m on the porch at a condo at the beach listening to seagulls and a construction crew’s country music station. We are on vacation. While we’re here, I’ll attempt to keep from vacating my blog altogether. I don’t know that I’ll have anything sensical to say, but maybe I can post some pretty pictures.
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Sunset over Georgia marsh I am a fan of contrast: of rough against smooth, of blur against sharp, of dark against light. When I saw that this week’s Daily Post photo challenge is to share a shot that captures a contrast, I knew I would want to participate, and I knew I would want to share photos from our trip to my childhood home in Georgia.
When I started looking through my photographs from the marshes, though, I realized the contrasts I was trying to tease out in the photos I selected – land against sea, wet against dry – were forced. Those things are not the true contrast I feel here. The contrast I feel here on the marshes is the wide expanse of flatness that is so different from our mountain home.
Morning light on salt marsh near Tybee Island, Georgia In our Appalachian home water is surrounded by land, is fresh, and falls from the sky. In my Georgia home land is surrounded by water, the water is salty, and it rises from the sea.
High tide at sunset, Spanish Hammock, GA In our Appalachian home the horizon undulates. The sky shrinks and expands as you move through the mountains. On the coast of Georgia the horizon is flat and the sky is one size: big.
Morning sky As a person who seeks out a strong sense of place, I thrive on the contrasts between my two homes: the one where we are raising our kids, and the one I was raised in. I am grateful that by growing up in the mountains of Virginia and visiting their grandparents on the coast of Georgia, our children will have the chance to experience both.
Spanish moss and Spartina on the coast of Georgia -
Tiny mushrooms on a wet morning in Appalachia Rain rattled the tent last night and pinged on an overturned cook pot. The past few times we camped it stormed the first night and I felt panicky as I lay down to sleep, breathing deep to calm myself then feeling like I couldn’t get enough air, even though we were outside where there is all the air in the world. Generally I’m so tired and the outdoor sounds are so primal and repetitive – rain rattling, frogs croaking, thunder rumbling – that drowsiness trumps anxiety and I fall asleep before a true panic attack sets in.
This morning everything is damp. The thin nylon of my sticky sleeping bag clings to my skin; strands of hair cling to my neck. My camp sandals – a pair of Crocs and a pair of Rainbows – are cold and clammy. Outside the world drips. The poison ivy leaves that surround our campsite glisten with rain and their mocking oils. The charred wood in the fire pit shines a glossy black.
I used the backpacking stove by myself this morning. It was already assembled, but still. I used my notes from last night to boil water for oatmeal and coffee while B___ finally got a chance to sleep in. He lounged in the tent while I shooed a daddy long legs off the stove, pumped the fuel, lit the burner, listened to the hiss of a Whisperlite stove in the stillness of the campground morning.
It’s weird wearing glasses on a camping trip. They seem like an indoor thing not an outdoor one. They make me feel vulnerable to the elements – they get raindrops on them and get caught on my sweatshirt as I pull it over my head. When I take them off I hurt. My eyes work hard to focus and they blur and feel like I need to rub them to make them see the world crisply, but rubbing them does not help. My head begins to ache inside, behind my eyes, and at my temples, and so I put the glasses back on again.
The kids caught fireflies in the field across from our campsite last night. I sat under the trees in a nylon camp chair and watched them in the distance, reaching up with hands poised to cup around a lightning bug, like they were preparing to catch a kickball coming down from the sky. Or leaning down, knees bent, crouched and sneaking up on fireflies in the grass. The fireflies lit and darkened all around the grassy edges under the trees where the evening deepened sooner. Our children’s laughter drifted across the field to me till we heard thunder and called bed time.
In the quiet morning, my pen scratching paper while the campground sleeps, the sun not high enough yet to pierce the fog, all of us alive and the world gently dripping, the panic of the first night has gone.
Butterfly Mind 