Eight Feet Deep

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.