DO MEMORIES HAVE A TASTE?

As I talk with the "in and out"-ers here at the RV park I find that most of them also came the Bolivar Peninsula as children. Just like me, the pull of the beach in the summer has memories they also love to relive.

One of those memories is food.  How could it not be?  After a day of sun, sand, and sea, you are hungry!  I am offering up a few new recipes on the Beach Food page to correspond with the beach delights I remember as a child.

I really only remember having green beans, ham and small potatoes once at the beach..  We stopped at a produce stand in High Island where mom purchased the ingredients. Green beans and new potatoes...what the woman can do with new potatoes...is something just short of fantastic!  Ok, enough of that carb fantasy.

Just before slow cooking it into a wonderful, flavorful supper.

Over the years, I have cooked this for my family on summer days when we lived on the beach in Mississippi or up in cowboy country at Cheyenne, Wyoming.  No matter where we were, they ate all of it.

Now, things in my life have changed since I was a beach going child.  The outer me has grown older..  The inside me is 100% somewhere between 6 and 26 given the situation at the time.  I've traveled, learned a thing or two about wine and food in my job, and come to terms with how I want my life to be now.

I can still get my french panties in a knot over haricotte vertes, those skinny french green beans that look so pretty but are so hard to find fresh.  For a Thanksgiving dinner they are my bean of choice. For today's
beach supper, the good old American green bean grown and harvested in your own backyard is the only bean that will do.

I've also added a touch or two of my own technique in the pot.  I now deglaze the bottom of the pot with day old white wine before adding the stock.  It makes the pot liquor a little richer.  I also take a larger potato or two and cut them in half to release some of the starch of the potato into the liquor. It makes a slightly more viscous liquor. (See Beach Food for Recipe)

Being here at the beach by myself as an adult gives me a chance to expand my favorite beach foods.  I am
not sure what the name of this is but it's a great twist on fresh cucumbers.  I found the photo of the dish on Pinterest and decided to make my own as seen above in my kitchen.  You can also find it on the Beach Food page in recipe form.

These were better the second day but did not go well with the rose I picked.  Drat, I don't usually make that type of mistake!  In the future I would just make the dip and then chunk up the cucumber (peeled) and mix them together.  Sort of a potato salad without the potato.

I had the sweet experience of watching another family sit down to eat outside this evening.  The children, two boys, were boisterous until they hit the picnic bench and immediately bowed their heads.  I wasn't close enough to hear the prayer but the scene was wonderful.  A new generation of "beachers" who remember how wonderful it is to eat at the beach is well under way.