A Crab Feast

Lucky me! My son Mike, brought me a 16-ounce container of crab meat. He knows how much I love crab. I've been known to sit at the table picking and eating crab and drinking a bit of wine for hours. I could be by myself but it is even better if I am sitting with some other people just picking, eating, drinking, and talking. A crab feast was something Ned and I loved to do when we could find nice fat gulf coast crabs. Although I've seen crabs in markets in San Miguel, they weren't lively. I did not buy them. Now that I have crab, I wanted to savor it so I spread it out over three dinners.

The first night was a salad with crispy, icy-cold hearts of romaine lettuce with Cesar dressing topped with crabmeat. The second night I made a cream of corn and roasted poblano soup topped with crab meat. I had to improvise on the soup. Back in San Miguel, I have a recipe from a cooking class that Ned had gone to. I looked online but none of the recipes seemed exactly right so I took a bit of this one and a bit of that one. It was good but it wasn't as wonderful as Ned's recipe.

For the last bit of my crab, I wanted to replicate the sauce that Goode Company Seafood uses in one of my favorite things on their menu, the Campechana Extra shrimp and crab cocktail. No recipe but that did not stop me. I roasted tomato, green pepper, and onion and then I chopped it up in the blender. Added some catsup, lime juice, jalapeno, salt and pepper, and a little tabasco. It was too thick so the recipe needs some more tweeking. The crab meat was tossed with the sauce and topped with fresh avocado. 

I cleaned my plate. All. Three. Nights. 

Free Range

Mustang Island earned its name from all of the Spanish horses that bred and roamed freely on the island. The settlers brought cattle. They too, roamed freely and when it was time to take them to market they were corralled and driven across to the mainland at wherever the best crossings were at that time. There are pictures of herds of 100's of cows swimming across to the mainland. At some point the residents got tired of stampedes through the town so the free range disappeared. And gradually so have the most of the cattle.

I've been looking for cattle on the island for a while because there are so many Mercer Log entries about cattle. One time I saw some off in the distance but couldn't get close enough to photograph them on private property. But the wonderful people at the Port Aransas Preservation and Historic Association gave me a contact and he arranged to have the cattle brought to the fence line for me to photograph.

So far I have not found a horse or a pig on Mustang Island although I have heard that there are wild pigs on the bay side. If you know of a domestic pig or a horse on Mustang Island, let me know. I really do not want to have to go looking for a wild pig to photograph.

Fire in the Sky

Last night we ate at Snoopy's Pier. Snoopy's sits on a little spit of land, almost under the Intercoastal Bridge by the Corpus Christi ship channel. It isn't up-scale dining by any means. Instead you order at the counter and within a few minutes they call your name. Your gulf-coast fried oysters or shrimp along with french fries are ready. They serve wine in the little airplane-portion size bottles and beer. Texas gulf coast fast food and it is okay. The main attraction in the evening is watching the sunset. Although we had wind and clouds all day the photo god blessed us with a beautiful sunset. The sun had already dropped behind the horizon but it left us this a fire in the sky.

A Piece of The Spanish Sea

 Geoff Winningham has a wonderful travel/photography book called, Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea. I love the book and I love the title. I had never thought of the Gulf of Mexico in connection with Spain until I saw his book. The Spanish Sea. In the book he travels the coast of Texas and Mexico down to about Vera Cruz meeting people and making pictures. Of course I have been exploring Port Aransas Spanish Sea but I wanted to revisit more of it so I planned to make my way down to Port Aransas hugging the coast as much as I could.  I had travel companions. My Mercer cousin, Dotye joined me along with Debbie a long time friend. And before the end of the trip Debbie's husband Guy joined up too.

The trip started with a general outline but plenty of time to take detours and that we did. We had a lot of rain but that didn't stop us from driving or photographing. We headed out toward LaPorte, Texas but I had to make a stop in Pasadena. I lived in Pasadena for six years while I was a kid. The old downtown has moved away and a freeway ate up the railroad line and the old buildings. What is left is a wasteland of decaying buildings. We stopped and I made a few photographs and it felt familiar but there was nothing to hold on to except the old movie theatre whose art deco architecture is terribly disfigured and now houses a gun shop.

The Sylvan Pavilion in LaPorte was still there and was still being used for community activities. I had to walk around to where I could see the terrace that hung over the water so I could remember going out there during dances. It was quite a glamorous place for an event.

The drawbridge between Kemah and Seabrook is gone but I remember the Easter Sunday when Jerry and his girlfriend and Ned and I were there at the light by the bridge. Jerry was driving and we had a wreck. No one was hurt but we rode in the car while it was towed back to Houston. Driving over the high bridge I looked for all the little shacks where you could buy fresh oysters and shrimp and the ramshackle restaurants that hung on the side of the channel where you could watch the boats coming and going out in the bay. They are gone replaced by upscale commercial venues.

Down the coast and across to Galveston Island. Lunch was in Surfside. Back to the mainland and to Palacios on blue highways. We spent a couple of nights at the 1903 Luther Hotel where we could sit in rocking chairs on the front porch and look out at Tres Palacios Bay. Are you wondering why we stopped in Palacios? Well, as a teenager I went to the Baptist Encampment in Palacios several times  and I wanted to see it again. It is still there but the oleanders that lined the walks are gone. Some blight has taken its toll on the oleanders that use to be so profuse in the coastal towns like Galveston and Palacios. And another reason to stop in Palacios was that Dotye's grandfather is buried there and her father's ashes were scattered there. We also thought we might see one of the rumored ghosts in the hotel but the ghosts must have been tired from Halloween and they stayed hidden.

About the image: When we came through Galveston the wind was blowing and the clouds were rolling in the sky and the seas were choppy. There was a fine mist in the air. We stopped anyway. We took some pictures. I'm glad we did. I like this image of this piece of the Spanish Sea.