Do you know what these are? Yes, I know they’re shrimp and that’s not that hard to figure, but these are special! Very special indeed!

Key West Pinks, that’s what they are! These are not your everyday shrimp by any means.

See how big they are?

On our recent trip to the Keys we treated ourselves to some of the local cuisine. “When in Rome…”, ya know what I mean.

We spent the morning snorkeling and relaxing by the water.

Then A.J. came up and said there was a man there selling “fresh from the boat” shrimp. Well, Tim knew right away what that meant. He was off to talk to this man about some shrimp for me. I say “me” because I am the biggest shrimp fan around! I think I could live on shrimp alone!

He came back with a ton of fresh shrimp for me to cook. I’d like to say that the recipe for this specialty was a little more complex, but it’s not.

Here goes…

• Throw the shrimp in a pot
• Add one beer
• Add enough water to cover the shrimp
• Add salt, pepper, and maybe a little something extra
• Boil for about 10 minutes until they’re bright pink

Even if you can’t stand beer, you need to add it to the shrimp. Trust me on this! I don’t know why, but shrimp like beer. Is that why they live in The Keys?

They are ready to eat! Being extra sharing and caring, I served it with a ton of fresh rolls that my children love. They don’t need to fill up on shrimp! I suggest shrimp sandwiches for the kids.

This is a simple, simple meal that anyone can make! I’m sure you can add a little of this and that, but we worked with what we had with us. And it’s really not the kind of food that needs all that much added. Can you tell that I love shrimp?

Here are a few more Key West Pink Recipes!

After lunch we did more relaxing, fishing, and snorkeling. This crazy Pelican kept attacking the kid’s fish as they caught them.

Here’s just the fish we needed for dinner…

A Snapper of some kind.

The kids caught a ton of fish and kept Tim cleaning fish for a long time. But, it was worth all the work!

This is just the Snapper. We had three or four times as much fish for dinner. We could hardly eat it all. And that’s really saying something with this crew!

It was a great day with fresh catches, full bellies, and fish tales!

Can you tell we take eating seriously around here?

Do you ever catch fish to eat?

Stop by Jen’s at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam for Tasty Tuesday!  You don’t want to miss all the great recipes over there!

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Check out these awesome videos made from some of our still pictures:

How cool is that?

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It might come as no surprise to you that I would love the idea of decorating around the house with maps.  Well, of course I think maps are beautiful things full of adventure and exploration.  The wonder of maps keeps my whole family in awe of all that’s left to be discovered.  There’s no need to put them up on a shelf, just frame them and decorate your home!  I love this idea!!

Frame your favorite city or vacation spot in a beautiful heart! How classy and fun!  It would be a great conversation piece for sure.  I need a few of these around to make me smile.

What a great way to add a little privacy to your office door!  My family would probably want to add stars to the spots we’ve already traveled…lol!  It might not look quite as nice.

I would love, love, love it if someone would just give me a vintage map or two that they’ve had stashed away in a closet for 30 years or so!  Oh, a girl can dream, right?!

You can find all these beautiful map photos and really cool vintage globes on my Pinterest Boards.

Do you have any neat maps or globes around your house?

~Kim

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Great Trips Always Have Great Food!

One of our favorite family conversation starters always brings one of those trips with Kim and her folks to mind. Here is the question:

What’s the best meal you’ve ever had?

We qualify the question be suggesting that the food itself can’t be the only criteria. The real “best meal” has to take into account the overall scene. Where were you? Who were you with? What was the weather, the surroundings, the sounds and smells. All of that goes into the answer.

It’s no easy task, and after twenty years of playing, we still love this game and then answers still change.

Stir Fried Fresh Fish and Conch – Stingray City Style

Stingray City is a dive site (scuba diving) just off the leeward coast of Grand Cayman, in the Cayman Islands. It is beautiful, it is tropical, and it is way fun! Snorkelers and divers are in for an adrenaline pumping treat as they enter the water surrounded by hundreds of huge stingrays.

We sailed out on a catamaran. About a dozen people, with our group being four of those. I still remember the thrill of laying on the net stretched between the front of the hulls and looking down into the crystal clear water. The ride out was worth the trip!

As we played in the water, the captain (and owner of the small boat) did a little bit of snorkeling of his own, but he had a spear. He speared plenty of fresh fish, and collected some conch shells, which anyone who’s been to Key West knows are great food! Then he stir-fried it all up on the deck of the little sailboat and served it fresh.

Swimming in the ocean one minute, on our plates a few minutes later. That’s fresh.

Of course I was highly enamored with the beautiful young girl who was my date for the trip, which didn’t hurt!

That meal, on the bow net of a catamaran, as the sun dropped low in the sky over the clear waters of Grand Cayman, was…

one of the best meals I’ve ever had!

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Crates have a simply charming style that can add that extra touch to any room of your house.  I know I need about at least 10 of these now and I plan on grabbing every single one I run across in the near future.

I never thought of turning a crate upside down and adding legs to create a crate table…love it, want it!

Add a couple to your wall for a lovely open shelf look that only took minutes to create…that’s an awesome weekend project!

What a great touch for a guest room!

I love color and this is a fun way to brighten up your wall and help you organize at the same time.  Now you’ll be on the hunt for these cool crates, too.

These are just fabulous!  Who wouldn’t want these?!

Simply stack them for instant storage and style!

Do you have any crates?  I hope you found a little bit of inspiration from these ideas and maybe you’ll know just what you want to do the next time you see one at a garage sale.

~Kim

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Jacob has been on a non-stop search for treasure around our yard, the park, the baseball park and even all across Georgia and Tennessee on our last trip.  So, I’m sure you can understand my surprise when we are sitting at Tommy’s Paradise Grill {an awesome new local hang out} and he claims to see one of the Odessey crew members.  I’m thinking he’s seeing things as he points to the far end of the umbrella tables…but he wasn’t!

The guys got to speak to Gregory Stemm , the co-founder and CEO of Odessey Marine Exploration!  I won’t even begin to start listing all the amazing treasure they have discovered, but you should stop by their site and check it out for yourself.

Jacob dreams of discovering historical treasure and it was such a thrill for him to meet Mr. Stemm.  He was so nice to stop and take a photo with the guys before leaving and I’m afraid we started to draw a ton of attention his way.  {The photo was taken with my phone, but it’s still pretty good.}

You never know who you might meet just around the corner!

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10. Alaska

Amazing Scenery!

Amazing Wildlife!

We hope to drive our motorhome to Alaska. (maybe this summer!)

9. Norway

Fjords and Seaside Villages

Aurora Borealis – The Northern Lights are great from Norway!

We’ll need a boat or a plane to get us here!

8. Easter Island

Mysterious giant statues and extremely remote! Two thumbs up!

7. Antartica

One of only two continents left to set foot on!

Penguins and sea ice await. But brave heavy seas you must!

6. Bora Bora

We’ve had this one on the list for 20 years!

Stay right over the water! Wow!

5. The Great Wall of China

Some things you just have to see in person. This is one for us.

We’ve been to Hong Kong, which is an incredible stop in China.

4. Africa

Amazing and Incredible Wildlife!

I can’t wait to see a baby elephant! Africa is the other continent we have yet to see!

3. The Amazon

We want to see wild macaws!

And go deep into the wildest jungle!

2. Iguazu Falls

This is a close race for number one!

Adjoining three countries, this is one of the most spectacular sites in the world!

And the Grand Finale!

#1 Place we want to visit is:

Machu Picchu

Hopefully we can get there while still able to walk up the Inca Trail!

Truth be told, ten is way to short of a list. That’s why we have this:

This is something you can pick up and flip through anytime. Especially if you’re like we are and are hooked on travel! I was going to put a link to it on Amazon, but they don’t have it…go figure!

Thanks to Julia for hosting Hooked on Fridays, go check it out to see what other bloggers out there are hooked on!

So, two questions:

1. Have any of you ever been to any of these places?

2. Where is the number one place YOU would want to go? (or 10..)

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We had no idea how educational and fun homeschooling would be! I could write a thousand posts about ways that Kim and I have been made better as a direct result of homeschooling our boys. We love it and I really can’t say a single negative word about it.

One of the reasons we started home schooling is because we wanted to be able to travel on short notice, sans crowds. The only way to get away from crowds in the best parts of Florida is to get away while the crowds are busy doing something else, like working, or going to school.

As it turns out, the travel made more of a difference than the rest combined. We didn’t know this going in, it’s just been a wonderful surprise!

I have one skill in particular in mind today. One that travel has taught us in a way that nothing else can. here is the word:

I looked up the word improvise because I thought it would make for some awesome blog post fodder. I was right!

Who knew that there was a musical element to the word? I didn’t! In fact, the real root of the word is more in performing and speaking than I knew. I thought it was more like a mechanical thing, like the time I used a 2-liter coke bottle for a water reservoir on my ’51 Ford Pick-Up. But read this:

I love the way the musical element changes my thinking on the word. Make music, sing, on the spur of the moment, making use of whatever you have…invent! That is a life skill I want to have and I want to teach!

It makes me think of a Travel Tale! One that I hope encourages anyone who is thinking of staying home for all the various reasons people stay home. The most common of which are that:

• they think it’s too hard to travel with kids (especially young kids)
• they think it’s too expensive to travel with kids (or without them!)
• they don’t know where to go, or what to do.

I think this story illustrates that, if you improvise, you can have an amazing time…right now!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

Aspen, Colorado – June, 2000

This is going way back! AJ was five and Jacob had just turned two! We flew from Tampa to Denver and rented a Jeep. We had no itinerary, no reservations, nobody to visit, no schedule at all other than a return flight in about a week! That is definitely how we roll and we recommend it highly!

We’ve never thought much about traveling with kids, we just do it and it’s fine. In fact, it blows “fine” out of the water; it’s sublime! Sure we deal with problems on airplanes, and we’ve had our challenges with connecting flights. We’ve had the long road trips with the “I need to pee.” and “are we there yet?”

That’s why we go by motorhome now. But the move to a motorhome was just a slightly better (in some ways) mode of travel. The travel itself is the goal, the transportation is just part of the fun! Bringing the kids and seeing their faces when they see something incredible for the first time is absolutely amazing, every time, even when they get bigger than you! (that is a whole other subject!)

Back to Aspen…

So, we wound our way through a few towns and ended up in Aspen. I think we spent a night on the way, and then we got to Aspen. I had been there once before during ski season and I wanted to see it in summer.

I was also very much looking forward to the extremely rare pleasure of showing Kim some place that I had been and she had not. Her mom is the Travel Agent, not mine.

Aspen was great, but we had a problem. The hotel rooms in Aspen are the ones with the $$$$ next to them in the guide book. We wanted one with the $ or maybe the $$ designation. Not going to happen in Aspen. We found a great room, but it was $300 a night and we had a few nights to go! Not in the budget.

We had to improvise. Here is what we did:

Y’all got a Wal-Mart around here?

Our travels have a long standing relationship with Wal-Mart and this is where it all began. We headed to the local Wal-Mart and made a bee-line for the camping gear!

We had not planned on camping, we had never been camping as a family, we didn’t know what camping areas were nearby but we had a map and we were in the middle of some of the most incredible natural beauty on earth, so we figured we’d find a spot.

We grabbed the essentials, it was all right there. We picked up a huge tent, sleeping bags, pillows, lanterns, folding camp chairs (another lasting love), towels, food, plates…everything. We got everything for about $200.00 and loaded up the Jeep and rolled out searching for adventure.

We couldn’t afford one of these, so we got a tent!

Marble, Colorado

We found that adventure in Marble, Colorado! What an amazing area! Marble is a tiny little town and we followed a mountain dirt road after the pavement ended, heading into the Maroon Bells Snowmass Wilderness Area.

We had already had some fun off-road experiences in Aspen, but these roads were nuts! Just wide enough for the Jeep and a long way down! After a few hair raising minutes, we found our way to a huge and beautiful riverside campsite.

We set-up camp next to the river and had a blast! We roasted marshmallows by a huge campfire and took baths in the icy river water. AJ is still traumatized by the memory! We hiked around and did a bunch of exploring by Jeep.

The road in was a huge part of the fun and we keep trying to find better and better places to drive off-road, like Moab, Utah. While in the Marble area, we explored deep into the wilderness and saw the much photographed Crystal Mill, near the mountain ghost town of Crystal. Tons to see and do in this area.

We stayed three nights and finally packed-it up! It was a blast and we would recommend it to anyone! You have to get out there, have to leave the pavement and the roadside Motels. Explore, find adventure, improvise!

Visit Monday Memories at Planet M Files for more memorable posts!

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Welcome to Tasty Tuesday!

Well, I don’t know about the “Tasty” part, but it is Tuesday.

This week I wanted to go on and on about my love of strawberries and share some recipes with you. I did run into a little problem as I started making my pound cake. I’ll tell you a little more about that later.

Growing up in Florida and going strawberry picking almost every year of my life, I’ve learned a thing or two about these wonderful treats.  We always end up filling the whole trunk of the car with quarts of strawberries fresh from the fields.

We have a hard time knowing when to stop ourselves from the fun of finding the biggest (they get really big) and best strawberry out there. Having a little friendly competition never hurt anyone, right? Even though you really shouldn’t…you have to test a few to make sure they’re alright. Just wipe them on your shirt a little and quickly pop it in your mouth!

Visiting the Florida Strawberry Festival and making the biggest possible Strawberry Shortcake you can fit in the bowl would have to be a highlight of Strawberry Season. If you’re in Florida, theFlorida Strawberry Festival is coming up!

Making fresh Strawberry Jam and feeling like you are “Ms. Homemaker” or something is part of the fun.

Strawberry Jam

• 2 quarts fully ripe strawberries
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 7 cups sugar
• 3 ounces liquid fruit pectin

1. Wash and hull the strawberries, and place them in a medium bowl. Using a potato masher, crush the berries. You should have 4 cups of crushed berries.

2. In a heavy saucepan combine the crushed berries, lemon juice, and sugar. Over high heat, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly; boil, stirring, for 1 minute.

3. Add the liquid pectin; boil and stir for 1 minute longer. Remove the saucepan from the heat. Using a slotted spoon, skim off and discard any foam that rises to the surface.

4. Spoon the hot jam into 8 widemouthed, warm sterilized 1/2 pint jars, leaving a 1/4 inch space between the top of the jam and the rim of the jar. Wipe the rims, cover, and process for 10 minutes in boiling water. You might want to look up canning instructions for this part. I don’t feel qualified to tell you. This is usually where I call my mom asking if I’m doing it right or not!

What NOT to do!

Now, back to the story about the “What-Not-To-Do” photo at the top of the post…

It all started when I thought I would like to make pound cake to use for my Strawberry Shortcake instead of buying those cute little round ones at the grocery store. Let me just say that I’ve never, ever, ever made a pound cake before.

I found a recipe in a great cookbook labeled “NEVER-FAIL POUND CAKE!” This seemed like the obvious choice for someone like me. But, maybe it should be a warning sign when something starts out with “NEVER-FAIL!”

I had a few setbacks on my road to a wonderful Strawberry Shortcake! I’ll quickly list them so we can move on and you can appreciate all that I went through to give you an interesting Tasty Tuesday Post!

• I decided to “SOFTEN” the butter a little faster (I could have a patience problem.) by setting the stick of butter in the microwave for “just a few seconds” while talking on the phone. It melted all over the freshly cleaned microwave, and I had to scrape it out.
• I pulled my favorite, antique mixing bowl out of the cabinet to find it cracked. I threw it away after trying to decide if a giant crack caused a problem for a mixing bowl or not.
• Then Jacob, my youngest son, sweetly helped me mix everything together. It was all happy, happy in the kitchen for a few minutes.
• I popped the cake pan in the oven and began the baking. I decided to peek through the window after 30 or 40 minutes to find the first photo. It was overflowing everywhere!
• I pretty calmly cleaned out the oven and threw everything else in the sink to deal with later. Then I decided to start over.
• I had all my ingredients on the table and I decided to tweet about my fun in the kitchen. (Follow me on Twitter for exciting tweets – Ha!) I turned back around to only four eggs. Where’s number five? On the floor. It rolled off the counter.
• I was still being very calm (as usual) and started putting some stuff up in the kitchen and when I turned around with paper towel in hand, the dog was licking up the egg. She was done. It grossed me out!
• The second attempt went fine, but my sink is still full of dishes and an oven rack!

Here’s the recipe you’ve been waiting for…

From Uncle Bubba’s Savannah Seafood Cookbook (Paula Dean’s brother)

Never-Fail Pound Cake

Serves 10 to 12

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
• 3 cups sugar
• 5 eggs
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons lemon extract

Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.

In a large bowl, using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the flour and milk alternately, beginning and ending with the flour. Stir in the lemon extract. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Place in oven and bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour. Increase the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 30 minutes more. Do not open the oven door while baking. After 30 minutes, insert a toothpick into the center of the cake to see if it comes out clean. If it doesn’t, continue baking at 350 degrees until the toothpick comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

While this was baking I sliced up about two pounds of fresh strawberries and mixed them with about one cup of sugar. Covered it and put it in the refrigerator for at least an hour. It makes a wonderful topping!

Tip:  Do not accidentally grab “self-rising” flour out of your cabinet.  Only use “all purpose” flour.  Trust me!

Ta-Da, I give you Strawberry Shortcake!!!

Enjoy, and thanks for joining us for Tasty Tuesday this week!

Please remember to include a link in your post back here to Tasty Tuesday. Also, be sure to link directly to your post rather than your homepage. Thanks!

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When I took this shot, I knew what it would say to me forever. I knew that what I was seeing in front of me was the eternal conundrum of parenthood, you want them to grow, you want them to walk forward day after day, but then again, maybe not!

You wish they could stay just like they are. I know Kim and I think that way all the time. This picture, printed at poster size and hung on the living room wall, has always reminded me that I better get while the gettin’s good!

Everything Boils Down to Pizza

Pizza! How can pizza lead me to talk about this picture? Well, we’re not talking just any ole pizza here, we’re talking fancy pizza, special pizza, magic pizza. You’ll find out more tomorrow on Tasty Tuesday.

But for today, I’ll just tell you that this particular pie reminds us of a trip to New Zealand and Australia we took in December 2004 (Dec. is summer Down Under). It was an amazing trip, an unforgettable string of days that we would recommend to everyone!

Red Tale Sale

It started with a sale on tickets. Some people are a sucker for shoes on sale, some for furniture, some (like my dad) for the best clothes at 80% off. Kim and I, we’re suckers for an air fare sale.

What a sale! Qantas had a sale that had the total price of the tickets at hundreds lower per person than the best fares we’d seen. We haven’t seen them as low since. On an impulse, we booked ‘em. Cool!

The dance went like this: We’re goin’ to Austrail-ya, we’re going to Austrail-ya…excitement filled the house. New Zealand was part of the itinerary too, but we had no idea how magical of a place it is.

New Zealand is Beyond Description

We flew into Auckland from LAX and arrived at about 6:30 am local time. We had not slept much in about 30 hours. But the excitement and the early hour gave us the energy to push ahead.

We rented an SUV and we were off. I was mentally competing against the Amazing Race contestants I had seen get so lost leaving this very airport. I did not get lost. We would so win that show.

Waitomo Glow Worm Caves

Our first stop was just completely out of this world! Really. The Waitomo Glow Worm Caves has to be one of the most amazing displays of God’s creation that we’ve ever witnessed.

Caverns alone are pretty neat. Awesome caverns (a technical term) are a step up. Awesome caverns with little actual glow-in-the-dark bio-luminescent little creatures all over the ceiling is just something else altogether.

The whole area around the caves is a beautiful hilly area with farms, sheep, and all the uniqueness of a foreign culture.

The immediate surrounds of the cave facility is captivating in it’s natural beauty. The place is very nicely done and blends in with the landscape perfectly.

The tour through the caves is magnificent and the highlight is a boat ride, on an underground river with glow worms all over the ceiling. Check out the picture to the right!

Unreal! Sure enough, the light at the end of the tunnel appears and the boat emerges into a rain forest. Truly a highlight of all of our travels.

The Show Must Go On

We only had three nights in New Zealand and a whole list of things we wanted to see, so we moved on pretty fast. We left the caves and asked around for directions for a place to go on a hike in these amazing forests.

After a bit of confusion about the word “hike”, Kiwi’s call it a “bushwalk”, we were directed to a great hike nearby. After that we had an incredible meal of New Zealand Style Barbecue (this was lunch!). And we were off.

The Huka Jet

A few hours of travel through the countryside brought us to one of the things New Zealnd is famous for: Jet Boating. Wow! Take a look at the smiles on our faces:

That was in this: After doing this:

The Huka Jet ride is best explained by video at their website. You really want to see this.

What Could Top That?

Would you believe that the trip kept getting better? Kim and I often discuss which of the umpteen amazing experiences on this trip was the most thrilling. She often settle on the Huka Jet (unless we count Australia). For new Zealand I usually settle on the next place we went.

Rotorua, New Zealand

Adventure central! This medium sized city is surrounded by endless outlets for the adrenaline junkies of the world! New Zealand has some different rules about lawsuits and insurance, so they can get away with more than we can.

Like this for example:

That’s AJ and I in a tricked out dune buggy out letting it rip on a racetrack (and off)! We did this at Off Road New Zealand, just outside of Rotorua. Of course, there is another adrenaline pumping, airline ticket selling, video at the website.

Next?

ZORBING

Adjectives fail me. How do I describe being put inside a giant inflated plastic ball with a little core in the middle (that’s where they put you). This core is lubricated with hot water (free from the geothermal activity in the area) so you basically feel like you’re in a giant washing machine. And then they shove you down a mountain, okay a hill. A big hill.

This is what they call a Zorb:

And here is the hill you roll down in it:

We all laughed as hard as we could all the way down, and came out saying “Dad, can we go again?” Oh wait, I am the dad…I wish my dad had sent his credit card! Um, let me think, I could choose fiscal responsibility, OR, I could choose another trip (or two) down that hill for the most amazing experience EVER. “Oh yeah, we’re goin’ again!”

Another amazing video is available at the website: Zorb Rotorua

Agrodome

After all of that, Kim and I figured we could use a little break from the non-stop action. We thought the Agrodome would provide a little breather. While it wasn’t non-stop thrills, the place was amazing. Here is the website for Agrodome. They have a whole menu of things to do, we stuck with the tame Farm Show and it was awesome. The petting zoo was a big highlight:

Back to Auckland

We wrapped up our stay in New Zealand back in Auckland which could be a whole post in itself, but I’ll just put up a simple picture that warms my heart.

I doubt myself sometimes. I worry that I should have buried the money we spent on this trip in a coffee can in the backyard. Not only this trip, but all of the travel we’ve done. But then I look at the picture at the top of this post, and this picture here and I realize that the time with the family, the experiences we’ve shared, the places we’ve seen…they’re priceless.

Two final things I’d like to say:

1. For most of us who can’t afford a trip like this right now (and I’m right with you, it should be obvious that we know how to SPEND money!) there are very inexpensive ways to get memories like this. I’m going to write a post soon about camping with kids, either in an RV or in a tent (which we’ve done for a week in Colorado). That will be a little more down to earth.

2. For those of you who DID bury your money in a coffee can. My advice is to do the following…click on this link right here… Qantas Airlines

They are having another sale…not a bad one either. $720 round trip fare.

To see some more photos, check out our Photobucket Album

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