5/30/25 - 6/2/25
The good
On the third night of my (opal) now three day weekends I decided to cook Oliver a delicious dinner with my extra time. I wanted to do something other than our normal which is venison these days so I choose beans as the basis for the meal. Now I know this bluegrass song called Cornbread and Butter Beans. I kept thinking about buttered beans and that is how the meal was formed. It is a Cajun flavored meal with rice and beans at its heart.
Ingredients:
2 cups Red Kidney Beans
1 cup chopped onions
2/3 stick of butter
1 cup collard greens
1 cup chopped broccoli
2 diced garlic cloves or garlic powder
About 7 chopped “Little Smokies Hotdogs”
1/4 cup tomato sauce
Cajun seasoning
Sage
Cumin
Paprika
Pepper
Salt
Diced fresh mango
However much rice you like to make
Instructions:
Start rice boiling, or in a rice cooker (we don’t have one)
On low heat add olive oil, onions, and garlic to a pan and sauté until the onions are turning golden brown.
Add half the butter and melt.
Add collard green and beans and about a cup of water. Let sauté for a few minutes until some water boils off.
stir in all the spices and tomato sauce to taste.
Add the broccoli and Little Smokies, let simmer.
Add the rest of the butter.
Serve over rice and top with the mango.
This dinner was a success and we ate it while watching the first thunderstorm of the season pour outside our door. The mangos came from Oliver’s manager Frank. So thank you Frank because the dish was good on its own but the mangos made it perfect.
The bad
Two weekends ago was rather discouraging so this past weekend I asked Opal if she wanted to go to the Keys. She said yes so we booked the only campsite available from Key Largo to Key West, gathered fishing and snorkeling gear, and set off. The first place we stopped at was John Peddencamp state park where we thought we would be able to do some snorkeling. Evidently we thought wrong and the only snorkeling available was at the end of a $50 ferry ride. That was about $45 more than what either of us wanted to spend so we settled for a paddle around some of the mangrove channels on the paddle board. This was nice but we were on limited waters and soon got hungry so it was a rather short lived adventure. By the time we got packed up we were properly starving and raced to find food which we found in the form a McDonalds. After eating we got groceries and went to Long Key state park where our campsite was. To get to the campsite you have to walk in about a quarter of a mile which is not terrible but we found it got old after the third time hauling all of our stuff. All of this walking under the hot Florida sun caused us to build up quite the sweat so I pumped up the paddle board once more. When trying to launch it though we discovered that it was a low tide and we had to muck through a bed of mud and seagrass to get to the water. After doing so we found that the water nearest the shore was orangish and smelled foul much like the sulphur pools in Yellowstone. Eventually though we worked our way out past all the nasty and were able to paddle around and give snorkeling a shot. We didn’t see anything of note but it was good to finally swim in the ocean for the first time this summer. After slugging through the muck again on our way back I determined that the tidal conditions made fishing imposible so we focused on cleaning up and making dinner. Dinner was unremarkable, instant rice things we had found at the grocery store, but enough to fill us up. Then the no-see-in’s came out and we were forced into the cover of the tent.
Sleeping that night made me realize why Satan chose heat as the ultimate punishment in hell. The temperature never fell below 80 and our campsite was tucked in and received little breeze. At two thirty I walked back to the car and got Opals bug net and put it on a hammock. At two thirty five it started raining. Ten minutes later after setting up the rain fly, which blocked the minuscule breeze there was, the rain stopped. Needless to say we ‘woke up’ tired and hot. Also the tides had completed their cycle and were low again which meant no fishing. We weighed our options and figured that there was not much point in sticking around the Keys and we better make for home. On the way back we stopped at the busiest Walmart I have ever been in to get groceries and a gas can.
The weekend wasn’t all bad by any means but I have fond memories of the Keys and it did not live up to my past experiences. Most of what went wrong could have been avoided with better planning and after getting home Opal and I had a good conversation regarding things we need to work on and dealing with the disappointment that comes with adventures like this one.
The ugly
Like Oliver said most of what has been going wrong isn’t that bad and most of it could be avoided with better planing. When you have things going wrong every time you try to do something (like we have had this past weekish) it gets hard. Especially when you’re trying to do everything low budget. We’ve lost a fishing pole*, had to replace our boats gas tank, been bitten up by mosquitoes at dusk, and had to put lots of time into keeping our room clean and bug free as well as figure out cooking together. It feels like we have brain fog which is likely due to the heat. But I am feeling very decision fatigued. All of this is mostly transitioning into a new place and getting adjusted but it has put us in a negative headspace. We’re trying to lower our expectations a bit and shoot for less until it feels like we’re in a better position.
*Oliver here. For one of my birthdays, my parents gave me a sleek new Abu Garcia bait-caster fishing reel. I don’t know how much it was but it felt like a million bucks. A few nights ago we were fishing at the marina and the reel and a rod were lying down on the dock when a fish must have bit and they zipped into the water and disappeared. Sorry mom and dad.
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