Tropical Breeze Mahi-Mahi 2 lbs mahi-mahi, cut into 6 pieces olive oil 1/2 head garlic, chopped handful scallions, sliced juice of one lime Put some olive oil in a baking dish. Arrange fish peces. Drizzle olive oil on top. Sprinkle garlic and scallions on top. Squeeze lime over all of it. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 375 until fish flakes softly. Meanwhile, saute one huge sweet onion and the other half head of garlic in olive oil. Remove from pan. Add strips of colored peppers, carrot match sticks, some fresh bean sprouts and whatever other vegies look good. Add some sesame oil and saute. Sprinkle on rice vinegar, a dab of honey, some sesame seeds, half a bunch of cilantro and the juice of one lime and it's zest. Serve fish with vegies. We also had a big salad with Annie's dressings and bowls of fruit and yogurt for dessert. Really yummy ;-) Serves 3 hogs or 6 normal people. OK.....back to the van being fixed.....we want to say a HUGE thank you to the folks at Anchor Rode Mobil. They were extremely nice, did a thorough job and charged a fair price. Mobil Anchor Rode 3391 9th St N Naples 34102 261-3765 We will never forget them.....and it will take them a long time to get over our visit ;-) Every day, no matter where we are, we run into the best people in the whole world!!! I often want to include everyone's picture and story here in the journals. I guess I will have to save that part for my book :-) |
We walked around and tried lots of tasty food samples. The lady on the left was selling herb mixes she had grown organically. Susan bought a couple of packets. Just about everybody who sold food, had samples to try. I really liked the smoked salmon! |
neat though, was that she knew our neighbor! Our neighbor Jim Kelso is an internationally reknowned worker of precious stones and metals. Ahhh, life in Naples. I have never seen so many rich people in my life! Nor have I seen so many Jaguars, Hummers, and Porches concentrated in one area. It is astounding! |
The produce pictured here is from Oakes Farm Market, here in Naples. If you're ever in the area, stop by! It is a wonderful store. You can sample a lot of what they sell. The samples are HUGE! The melon slices are as big as the ones you'd slice for yourself at home. The strawberries had a tub of cream cheese dip for your pleasure. Everything was delicious! |
February 5th Miles: I thought about doing 20 :-) Three little words cover a multitude of questions. When I say, "I'm from Vermont" They say: "Ooooooohhhh .. that explains everything!" When the mercury dips below 65, native Floridians bundle up. When it's that cold, it's outrageous to them to see a barefooted girl running around in shorts. When I tell them I'm from Vermont, they smile knowingly. This morning Mom and I packed up camp, and said goodbye to the nice people at Big Cypress Seminole Campground. |
Seminole Reservation to Top of Lake Okeechobee on the West Side |
We drove over to Billie Swamp Safari to take advantage of our free airboat ride tickets. Right before our ride was supposed to go out, a storm front blew in. Our airboat driver came down to the dock and told us we'd have to wait until the storm blew through. They never take people out while it's raining ... riding in the rain feels like you're being sandblasted. Also, the airboat belts slip and come off in the rain. We poked around the animal exhibits while waiting for the rain to stop. |
Mom's favorite animals to watch were the alligators out front. While we were leaning against the enclosure, we saw one alligator slowly mosey on up to another gator and put its arms around it. The next thing we knew, they were having sex in slow motion. All animals get frisky this time of year. Spring is mating season, and is quickly approaching. |
When the rain stopped, our guide Jesse took us all out for a ride. Airboats are so cool! You skim over the top of the water, on a cushion of air. Because there is hardly any resistance, you can take corners very fast and accurately. |
Speeding past a large alligator, everybody oohed and ahhed ... so Jesse turned the boat around and cut the engine. He hopped off of his perch in the back, and came up to the front of the boat. He gave us a mini talk on alligators. As we glided closer to the big alligator, he said... "Alright, anybody know what an alligator's favorite food is?" At the same instant, mom and I answered, "Poodles!" "Well actually, their second favorite thing, after poodles, is customers who don't tip" |
When he dropped us all back off onto dry land, everybody tipped him. Sorry, alligators! |
The alligators did get something from us, though. While waiting for our airboat ride, mom and I fed an alligator part of a date flavored Anna's Oatcake. Mom kept hitting it on the nose with oatcake pieces. The pieces would roll off his snout and into the water...sometimes he would roll and dive after them. What he didn't eat, the fish enjoyed. |
Elvis must have left the building before I got there |
February 6th Miles: 15.7 Steps: 30,081 The nearby town of Clewiston is billed as "The sweetest town in the US". Sugar cane abounds. The fertile black muck lands are covered with hundreds upon hundreds of acres of sugar cane. Every 5th vehicle passing you on the highway is a semi filled to the brim with sugar cane stalks. When the sugar cane fields are harvested, the growers come through and burn the fields of stubble. Huge clouds of black smoke dot the horizon. |
Nearby processing plants belch smoke and steam into the air, adding to local pollution. The US Sugar Corporation owns this part of the world, and controls almost every aspect of it. There was a lighter side to today. Mom told me I have to live off of the land for the next week. So when I found an alligator in the middle of the trail, I lulled it with sweet-talk... |
...Then ate it before it noticed what was going on. |
February 7th Miles: 15.28 Steps: 28,514 |
Alligator Chowder Saute two onions in butter or olive oil, with one bunch celery. Add 1/2 a head of garlic, minced. Cube 4 large potatoes. Add 1 pound alligator chunks. Add water to cover. When tender, add 1 can evaporated milk, or 1 pint half and half. Season with salt and pepper to taste. For extra flavor, sprinkle on bacon bits. Alligator To Go Find Alligator. Eat. Tastes like chicken! :-) Alligator Kebabs Two pounds alligator chunks One pound heart of cabbage palm chunks Two handfulls water chestnut bulbs Marinate in canal water with chopped up sugar cane stalks. Season with herbs from the side of the trail. Alligator Jerky Find roadkill alligator. Let stay in middle of road one week. Scrape off road and eat. Need a Backscratcher? Lash one well dried out alligator paw to one sugar cane stalk, using palmetto cordage. Itch. For a great backscratcher, make sure toenails are curled inward. |
Walked from John Stretch Park, to Uncle Joe's Fish Camp today. My first day on Lake Okeechobee! Nothing much exciting today ... The dike around the lake is nice, though! I can pull off onto the lake side of the dike anytime I want to, and be hidden from civilization. Great for pee breaks! The scenery was comprised of burning fields of sugar cane, and never ending dike views. Ooooh. Ahhh. |
February 8th Miles: 30.5 Steps: Todays' milage is brought to you by the letters Hah! and is dedicated to my ex-boyfriend Steve, who said there was no way in heck it was possible for me to walk 30 miles in one day. Thhhhbbb! I have been wanting to pull a 30 mile day for the longest time, just so I could say I've done it. Today was perfect! Walking on the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee is as easy as falling off a log. It's flat, you walk on one of two dirt tracks, and navigation is easy - as long as you're on top of the 35 foot high dike, you're on the trail. There are only a few times you have to get off the dike to walk around locks. I started hiking at 7am from Uncle Joe's Fish camp, to the free Indian Prairie Corps Of Engineers campground. The weather was perfect. It was a cool, mostly overcast day with a constant breeze. |
February 9th Miles: 10 Steps: |
This is the trail |
This is the trail 5 miles down the road |
This was the excitement of the day - a decrepit old boat, towing 5 almost-dead boats. At any given time, there are about 50 thousand boats on Lake Okeechobee. In 1991 (book statistics), boaters caught 6 million pounds of fish. |
I walked 10 miles, and officially reached the top of Lake Okeechobee today. Woohoo! Since I was getting so far up the state, we decided it was time to head down to Naples one last time to pick up mail. Mom and I drove south towards Fort Myers, to visit an island we'd never been to before. After exploring Pine Island for a while, we started to drive down to Naples. We never made it. Our car started overheating in traffic. We pulled down a side road, popped the hood, and discovered that we didn't have any engine coolant left. I filled it with water, and we waited for the engine to cool down. |
What I ate: Breakfast: 4 crackers with cheese, two slices of ham, and a chocolate bar Snack: A carrot cake Clif bar Lunch: 2 cups of leftover supper - veggies with sausage. Also 1/2 of a tootsie roll bar Snack: Mom drove by on the way to the next campsite, and gave me a glazed cruller. Supper: I was in camp and eating a quesadilla with crumbled Mexican cheese and cilantro by 5:45pm. |
Back on the road, the engine quickly overheated, at the exact same time that the lights on the dash went out. We turned on the heater full blast to help the engine cool down quicker ... but no heat came out. If you drive with an engine that's overheating, you'll quickly destroy it. Desperately needing a place to stay for the night, mom pulled into a nearby state park to see if they had any camping sites available. Their gate was locked, and nobody was around. I crawled under the dash and started pulling fuses to see if I could find the one responsible for killing the dash lights. Just then, a park ranger pulled up and asked if we needed help. He unlocked the gate for us, told us where to find the last available campsite, and wished us luck. We were extremely lucky to have him come along - thanks, Steve! |
February 11th The van is in the shop getting an almost $500 repair job. More later. :-) |
February 12th Although having our car break down isn't a nice thing to have happen, at least it happened near Naples. While our car was being worked on in the shop, we were able to borrow my grandmother's car and explore the town. The beach here is a tropical paradise. Ocean, sun, sand, and the requisite leaning palm trees. The scenery isn't the only nice thing to see. Everywhere you look, there are cute guys wearing nothing but swim trunks. |
While walking along a pier, mom and I bumped into a news crew. When we asked them what they were up to, the two guys responded that they were looking for men in Speedos. Hmmm.... It's not as bad as it sounds! Apparently a lot of German tourists come to Naples. When they go to the beach, an awful lot of them wear Speedos. Mom and I passed some people speaking German. When we told them there was a news crew looking for Germans, the lady got all excited! We waved the crew over, who then interviewed and aired the Germans on TV that night. My legs were on the evening news ... they were part of the beach scenery that had been filmed that day. I'm hoping the news station does a story on the rest of me! I gave them my hiking hiatus card when we bumped into them on the pier. We'll see :-) |
Mom and I just HAD to stop at this place. It's a new development that went in within the past couple of years. It looks like something out of Disney World. It's very surreal. The bottom floor of all of these buildings are devoted to shops selling expensive fripperies, and the top levels are luxury apartments. We drove around to look into the shop windows. This place looked like a movie set. |
Sightseeing had worked up our appetite, so we decided to be totally hedonistic and splurge for a lunch out. Talk about hedonistic! I had a 7 ounce burger, topped with onions, roasted red peppers, pickles, pickle relish, olives, tomato, lettuce, honey mustard, banana peppers, jalapeno cheese, and most likely a few other things I'm forgetting. Mom had roughly the same thing. We shared a basket of onion rings and french fries, and washed it down with thick shakes...mine coconut, hers double chocolate. MMMMMMMMM!!! |
February 13th The car is still in the garage. Oh well, a least we can toodle around town in Susan's :-) Today we went shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables. While we're at Susan's, we cook for her. Yesterday I marinated chicken for about 16 hours in a Thai inspired goo. I used it to make spicy chicken satay on a stick, with spicy peanut dipping sauce. The Recipe, more or less: (I don't measure, so these are guestimations of what I used) 6 cloves garlic 1/2 an onion Golf ball sized chunk of ginger - Chop by hand, then whir above stuff in food processor until well minced - 1/4 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup Chinese cooking wine However much peanut butter sticks on a knife when scooping twice from the jar Juice of one lime 1/4 cup of pure, Vermont maple syrup 1 mounded teaspoon each of; cayenne pepper, paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander, basil. A big tablespoon of tumeric - Whir all together at high speed. Oooh and ahh at the cool color - Take 2 pounds of skinless, boneless chicken breasts and slice into strips no fatter than 1/4 of an inch. Pool small amount of marinade in bottom of bowl or pan. Place chicken stips on bottom. Cover with marinade. Lay down more strips. Repeat until end of marinade/chicken. Cover, and place in refridgerator at least 8 hours in advance of cooking. Overnight is even better. Take chicken out, and skewer strips in a serpentine fashion onto pre-soaked bamboo skewers. (Pre-soaking the skewers for at least 20 minutes ahead of time prevents them from burning and bursting into flame) Cook the meat on a grill, or in an oven. When cooking in an oven, suspend the skewers on the rims of a nice baking pan. Make sure the chicken doesn't touch bottom of the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for a while. Rotate the pan every 10 minutes or so. When it starts to look done, taste test one. Proclaim to the folks in the living room that it needs more time. Eat more. When officially done, serve to everybody else with the peanut dipping sauce. Peanut Dipping Sauce Recipe: 1 can of coconut milk Enough peanut butter to make it taste peanutty (A small jar?) Soy sauce Cooking wine Chopped garlic, ginger, and onion Splashes of maple syrup 1 juice of lime Tumeric Curry powder - Whir together in food processor. Realize there is way too much sauce for the chicken. Make more chicken to go with the sauce tomorrow, after everyone begs for more - |
Food is one of my favorite subjects. I especially love the produce isle at grocery stores. A while back, I wandered the isles of my local store, and took lots of pictures. I made a webpage about it. Ever since, people have been asking me to take more pictures. Here they are. :-) |
The produce pictured here is from Oakes Farm Market, here in Naples. If you're ever in the area, stop by! It is a wonderful store. You can sample a lot of what they sell. The samples are HUGE! The melon slices are as big as the ones you'd slice for yourself at home. The strawberries had a tub of cream cheese dip for your pleasure. Everything was delicious! |
February 14th We got our car back from the shop last night. Woohoo! It's so nice to have it again. We felt lost without it. Before taking it to the shop, we emptied everything in it out into Susan's carport. What a mess! We used the time to organize everything, and try to get rid of some things. The big grey tote that Zeke is next to, is the "Don't know if we want it, don't know what to do with it, stuff it in here" box. That's mom, sitting on the front steps while updating the webpage from our computer. |
You'll notice how big the computer is ... that's our home computer. It makes it difficult to update the web page sometimes. Modem access is few and far between. When we do find it, we can't just pick up our computer and bring it to it. We have to run hundreds of feet of phone cord and electrical cords. |
Hmmm, I just found this picture of me. I forgot to stick it in the appropropriate day. Yesterday while mom and I were sight seeing in Naples, we visited a neighbor of Susan's. Phyllis works in a very upscale clothing store. To give you an idea of how upscale... one day when we were here last, she sold $39,000 worth of clothes. 39 Thousand!! .....That's to ONE person! The dress I'm wearing in this picture was on sale for $850. What a bargain :-) Mom and I had a great time at the store! Everybody there thought we were the neatest things. There was a famous clothes designer who happened to be in there while we were, delivering clothes. She gave me the name and address of a famous writer friend of hers, and suggested I query her to do a story on me. We struck up a conversation with a famous jewlery designer who was in there. She was behind several glass cases of her neat looking pieces. A Naples policeman was posted nearby. The last time she had shown her jewelry in that store, a thief had broken in and stolen a few million dollars worth of it. She was very nice, and very interesting. What was really |
neat though, was that she knew our neighbor! Our neighbor Jim Kelso is an internationally reknowned worker of precious stones and metals. Ahhh, life in Naples. I have never seen so many rich people in my life! Nor have I seen so many Jaguars, Hummers, and Porches concentrated in one area. It is astounding! |
February 15th Yesterday we were showing the neighbors our website and realized that we have an awful lot of pictures of fruit stands. So today we went to another one. :-) We also dropped in on the local farmers market. |
My wicked step grandmother walked up to this lady, who was selling beaded frogs. She and Susan's sister are in the local orchid society together. When Susan told her she had to get her granddaughter to show her the frogs, the frog lady said, "Oh, the granddaughter who's hiking over 5 thousand miles?" She had already looked at my entire site! Even my house! |
She sells these neat looking beaded frogs. She gave me this purple one as sort of a trip mascot. Look for future pictures! |
We walked around and tried lots of tasty food samples. The lady on the left was selling herb mixes she had grown organically. Susan bought a couple of packets. Just about everybody who sold food, had samples to try. I really liked the smoked salmon! |
We bought a pack for $5. If you're rich enough, you can book an order with this guy for a party. If you do, could you invite us? :-) |
Zeke walked around with us for a little while. He liked the jam lady! We bought a jar of calomondine marmalade. We'd never heard of it before, but MMMMM it tastes good! |
While I was putting Zeke back in the car, mom stopped to talk to this glycerin soap lady. Her soap looks and smells like fruit and vegetables! She gave me a starfish shaped bar of soap for backpacking. Very cool :-) |
After the farmers market, we stopped at Oakes Farm Market. The fruit and vegetable arranger has been busy! A lot of displays have changed since we were there two days ago. |
We bought some Mahi-Mahi on sale for $3.99 a pound. Mahi Mahi is an excellent tasting fish. Mom and I had had some in the Florida Keys. Tonight she's going to look up a recipe for it online. To do that though, she needs to kick me off. More later.... :-) |
Zeke likes to play dress-up :-) I was bored today, so I outfitted him in my bra, stuffed with plastic grocery bags. He didn't seem to mind, so I stuffed mom's bra and strapped it on him. Hmmm ... Mom didn't like any of the recipes, so she invented this....... |
Tropical Breeze Mahi-Mahi 2 lbs mahi-mahi, cut into 6 pieces olive oil 1/2 head garlic, chopped handful scallions, sliced juice of one lime Put some olive oil in a baking dish. Arrange fish peces. Drizzle olive oil on top. Sprinkle garlic and scallions on top. Squeeze lime over all of it. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 375 until fish flakes softly. Meanwhile, saute one huge sweet onion and the other half head of garlic in olive oil. Remove from pan. Add strips of colored peppers, carrot match sticks, some fresh bean sprouts and whatever other vegies look good. Add some sesame oil and saute. Sprinkle on rice vinegar, a dab of honey, some sesame seeds, half a bunch of cilantro and the juice of one lime and it's zest. Serve fish with vegies. We also had a big salad with Annie's dressings and bowls of fruit and yogurt for dessert. Really yummy ;-) Serves 3 hogs or 6 normal people. OK.....back to the van being fixed.....we want to say a HUGE thank you to the folks at Anchor Rode Mobil. They were extremely nice, did a thorough job and charged a fair price. Mobil Anchor Rode 3391 9th St N Naples 34102 261-3765 We will never forget them.....and it will take them a long time to get over our visit ;-) Every day, no matter where we are, we run into the best people in the whole world!!! I often want to include everyone's picture and story here in the journals. I guess I will have to save that part for my book :-) |
February 16th Today we read books, took naps, cleaned and rearranged the van and ate. A way to use up leftover peanut sauce..... Thai Chicken Chunks 3 chicken breasts handful scallions 1/2 head garlic splash of olive oil glug of Chinese wine juice of one grapefruit a few dashes of Crazy Mixed Up Salt jolt of toasted sesame oil 3 dollops of leftover peanut sauce healthy bump of curry powder Let sit awhile. Put in cast iron pan. Bake at 400 until bubbly and done. Serve with extra spoonfuls of cool peanut sauce. Waldorfy Cabbage Salad 1/2 bag sliced cabbage 2 handfuls baby carrots, chopped 2 handfuls raisins 1 chunked golden delicious apple juice of one grapefruit quick pour of Vermont maple syrup large glob mayonnaise Stir up and chill. Fried Plantains Heat cast iron pan. Add olive oil. Add 3 sliced plantains. Fry on each side until browned. Divide all this up on 3 huge plates. Pig out!!!!!!!! ;-) |
