Category: Good eats

Is it too much to ask for a decent glass of iced tea?

I live in what most Americans would associate with the “Deep South.” I live on the upper Texas Gulf Coast.  If I was to drive about 45 miles south and keep driving I’d be eventually sinking into the Gulf. So I reside in what is geographically, and pretty much culturally, the Deep South.

People in the South like their iced tea. Most drink “Sweet Tea.” I grew up drinking Sweet Tea. I also drank bottle after bottle of Coca Cola. I liked those little-bitty bottles of Coke on those smoldering hot days in East Texas. I liked anything sweet.

But at some particular time in my life I didn’t care for sweet stuff much anymore, at least as far as food and drink was concerned. I don’t know why. I still liked to drink tea. Hell, I’ve even been known to drink a Coke every now and then, mostly if it contained a shot of rum. But my tea has to be unsweetened or you will get that look like I just smelled expired milk.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that I had a great awakening about iced tea the second time I visited Washington, D.C. I was in some restaurant and asked for a glass of tea and all of a sudden: Pow! It hit me. This tea was good. It wasn’t just in that particular restaurant either. Pretty much every place I went in the greater D.C. area had tasty tea.

Then I came back home and drank tea and it tasted, well, like water with an attitude. That is what I get pretty much all the time here in Southeast Texas when I ask for iced tea. There are exceptions. But the run of the mill place — I stopped into Mickey D’s this afternoon and got an iced tea — you barely taste tea even though it isn’t terrible. It’s just not good.

I don’t drink that much tea. Usually I drink a glass of tea for lunch with perhaps a refill and I might drink one more on a hot day. I do it mainly for ice. I love ice. I eat ice. I am eating ice as I type this. I sometimes feel like a freak for my ice consumption, but I mean, can it be all that bad for you? I am just eating frozen water. I’ve seen a lot of mentions on the Internet that drinking too much tea causes kidney stones. However, some of the more serious medical sites don’t make such claims. Too much of anything is probably bad for you. Except ice. Well, maybe not.

Maybe it’s just me that thinks most of the iced tea I drink down here on the Texas coast leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t think so. Then again, I eat a lot of ice.

It isn’t pleasant falling off the diet wagon when you are seriously dieting. The slip and fall reminds me of my first attempt to kick cigarettes. I felt bad the first few times I had a smoke but, by God, I had a good cigarette when I slipped or so I thought of a Dunhill Light back then. Now I suppose I am required to say no cigarette is a good cigarette. But have you ever smoked? If you really enjoyed cocaine, was that snootful of coke really bad, or like cigarettes, just bad for you?

I digress and don’t endorse the use of cigarettes or cocaine or overeating or neglecting your diet for that matter. But if you have to slip, you need to make it count and that is what I did today for lunch.

My tumble from the wagon was fried seafood. And when I say seafood, I mean fried fresh seafood or fresh fried seafood from the Gulf of Mexico.

If you aren’t from Texas you may not know of what I speak and that may be even if you are. But so much media dealing with food — I hesitate to say “food media” because I am referring to media that are writing or broadcasting stories in general — in Texas seems to be “barbecue-centric.” That makes sense, of course, because Texas is know for barbecue, beef mostly.

The next “centric” tends to be “Hill Country-centric.” That too is no big surprise because the Hill Country is a lovely part of the Lone Star State, especially when the dreaded Ashe juniper a.k.a. “mountain cedar” is not wreaking havoc on people like me who are violently allergic to it. Along with Hill Country, comes Austin-centric. I suppose that is because Austin is the closest thing Texas has to San Francisco.

So when you hear or read something about Texas seafood you tend to get pretty small pickens insofar as choices go. Therefore you tend to get a pretty limited picture as to what is allegedly the best seafood in the state. And regardless of what Texas Monthly or whomever says the best seafood is it is a good bet that it will be found on the Texas Coast. Unfortunately, that narrows down the best of the best even more. Thus, left is Gaido’s in Galveston. Only kidding. Kind of.  Gaido’s is probably the best Gulf Coast seafood in Texas. But there are others one sees mentioned from time-to-time.

Sartain’s is a great name in Texas seafood though it seems to have become somewhat of a movable feast over the years. For reasons I don’t know, a number of Sartain’s have popped up all over Southeast Texas and then vanished.  There is, I know, a Sartain’s in Nederland, south of Beaumont. Good seafood and everyone has to pull up a picnic table at which to sit. My favorite used to be Esther’s, a great place that was moved under the towering Rainbow bridge on the Sabine-Neches ship channel between Bridge City and Port Arthur. Unfortunately, Hurricane Ike took a bite out of it and it’s no longer open.

There are others you will find in Texas media outlets which will be given the moniker “the best.” But I have found the best, at least East of Gaido’s Galveston. I speak of The Schooner, located on U.S. Hwy. 69 in Nederland, literally across the street from Port Arthur.

It was at this venerable and quite cavernous steak and seafood place that I fell off my diet wagon — just for today I swear — but made it count. My meal today was simple to order because I saw it on their marquis sign outside and I was taken by the simplicity of the name and price, but mostly the price. It said: “Seafood Platter $12.99.” That is actually a really good price because the normal price is $16.99.  The platter consists of a stuffed crab, 3 fried oysters, 3 nicely-sized shrimp, and three hunks of fried trout along with a choice of au gratin potatoes or French fries as well as a salad and two pieces of bread.

The tea, which at $2.15 seems a bit overpriced, kept coming and it didn’t take long, or at least too long, that I was full. I have two of the three pieces of trout in my fridge.

What struck me upon tasting each component of the seafood was the taste itself. You could taste the “fishiness” of the fish, as well as the “shrimpiness” or the shrimp and the, I suppose, “crabiness” of the stuffed crab, not to mention whatever their battery of seasoning was in their batter.

The majority of  this restaurant’s seafood dishes run from the mid-teens in dollars to the lower $20s. They also have certified Angus and Chicken. I’ve never seen a certified chicken. Can ve see your papers, Herr Chicken? Get a load of some of the selections, Costa Rican tilapia, Gulf red snapper, Gulf flounder, catfish Orleans, Flounder Athena and blackened Opelousas.

I could have saved a few paragraphs but I can sum it all up with “fresh.” The Schooner does fresh seafood and that makes all the difference perhaps as well the tradition of the Megas family that has owned this place for more than 60 years and has made it a certified Southeast Texas institution. No papers required.

Thus, if you are ever in need of really great, fresh seafood while in the Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange area,  go visit the Megas family and put your feed bag on. Well, you don’t need to do the latter, just eat normally and you will do well. I know that sooner or later I will beat myself up for today’s diet transgressions but at least I blew this day’s diet on something that tasted really great.

The Schooner Restaurant

1507 Highway 69 at Hwy. 365

Nederland, Texas

Author’s note: I am not a restaurant critic but I sometimes play one on the Internet.

Oh my feet, or, feets. I always thought feet should be called feets. It’s kind of like deer.

“I saw a herd of deer. One deer paused to look at another deer. A third deer looked back at me, but not before looking at one or more of the deer in the herd.”

Great awful antlers! Writing that sentence tuckered me out almost as much as thinking it up totally exhausted me. Tuckered exhaust. Exhausted tucker. Forrest Tucker exhausted himself when he saw a deer running from a deer herd. Then he died. Forrest Tucker, (1919-1986) that is. The old dude who played Sgt. Morgan Sylvester O’Rourke in the late 1960s Western sitcom “F Troop,” Tucker also starred in the 50’s hit “Auntie Mame” and was a stage star playing Professor Harold Hill in “The Music Man.” Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P and that stands for pool.

But I digress.

As I have mentioned here before, I have some kind of feet problem. Certainly not little feet, or “Little Feat,” like one of my favorite bands of the same name. But rather it is burning feet or burning, aching, partially numb, tender-to-the-touch feet (or feets, or feats).

The feet malady has prevented me from what is likely my favorite hobby and exercise all rolled in one. That would be walking and hiking. That is, it prevents me from walking for any decent length of time. Also, it doesn’t take standing for very long on my feet before my feet become extremely uncomfortable and causes quite a lot of pain and numbness in my feet.

My doctors have not yet figured out what is the origin of my feets (sorry, I like to say feets and if I get a little joy saying feets rather than feet when it’s my feet giving me a great deal of hell, well, then … ) problem.

Perhaps the doctors have figured out what is not the etiology of my feet malady. A big one, diabetes, has perhaps been ruled out. I had some recent blood work that show I am at the cusp of diabetes, or as I think sounds more quaint, the “cusp ‘o diabetes.” Manly yes, but I don’t like it too. I weigh now more than I have ever weighed and need to lose it. Perhaps an end is at sight for this post.

I also had, or rather my doctor, or rather my doctor who skipped out on me, had my feets X-rayed. Doctors, especially VA doctors, sometimes work in mysterious ways. What they found in my “pictures?” Hammertoes. MC Hammertoes don’t hurt me! A one-time fractured right, fifth toe. Yes, I remember the hell out of that! Lacy-Lakeview, Texas. 2004-ish. Damn that thing hurt.

But the X-ray showed not what is wrong with my feets today. And my feet, both feet, hurt much worse than my broken pinkie toe did. It drives me up the wall. It gets in the way of my working, living, walking, enjoying life.

If you just get things done until you stop, however, you get things done. Then you can sit down, relax and let your feet really hurt like a a sonofabitch. But while I was getting things done, I made shrimp tacos. They were really quick, really good and really shrimp tacos. I had a side of white hominy. Only a half-can. Try to cut back on the carbs.

What kind of taco sauce or powder did I use? Huh? What you talkin’ ’bout Willis?

Okay. Don’t hate me because I don’t have fresh shrimp. If you do, go f**k yourself. Big freezen (yes I spelled it that way on porpoise) shrimp. Fire up the grill. Unfreezen der shrimpen vit der vater un der sinken. Swish. Swish. Colander if you got ’em. Put the shrimp into an appropriate container, not a container ship unless you have a lot of shrimp and a lot of marinade. In an appropriate amount sprinkle, add, dump:

cilantro, cayenne, black pepper, salt or substitute, lemon juice, olive oil, red wine vinegar, sweet basil, garlic powder, comino, paprika

Whithk. Kind of like “whisk” only with a “thithk.” Dump the shrimp. Put a lid on it. Agitate. That is, agitate the container but don’t get agitated. Once fully agitated, make yourself a cold, adult beverage. Oh, and put the shrimp in the fridge and wait for the coals to coalesce.

Have some chopped up tomatoes, shredded lettuce, some salsa, canned chopped chili peppers, tortillas, cheese if you want but I’m trying to stay away from the C-word.

Cook the shrimp, tail down, for about 7-8 minutes. Remove from the grill. Quickly grill a couple of tortillas. Grab the tortillas with your bare hands and burn the crap out of them so you will forget about your burning feet. Put the shrimp and all the other stuff you want to put on them on them, meaning the tortillas. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Put up your feets. Enjoy. I certainly did.