Hunt's
Shopping, except for grocery shopping, I despise going shopping to traipse around a store looking for something. Thus, I'm grateful for the computer and internet age, when I can shop online.
A hobby past time that l enjoyed for years was visiting new car dealers' lots on Sunday afternoons, when dealerships were closed; but that ended when salesmen started coming out the showroom doors to beeline for me even on Sundays. I do not like being "approached" by car salesmen, so I quit that sort of wandering years ago. The car shopping was only fun, actually, the long years of my life when I was perpetually in the market for a new car. My car bug was so "bad" that I was buying an average of three cars in any two year period. At this age I'm content and prefer the freedom of no debt to any situation of paying out or making car payments!
Grocery shopping is different, I enjoy it, and when we go grocery shopping I make a primary point of the exercise, walking a lot, sometimes a couple miles around a grocery store. My favorites are Grocery Outlet in St Andrews, Carousel and Fresh Market at PCB, Sam's and Publix on 23rd Street.
Now and then to Piggly Wiggly at 15th Street & Lisenby Avenue because their stock is extraordinary, very strange vegetables, even just-caught-this-morning fresh mullet sometimes. I bought those once, but they're whole, untouched, saran-wrap packaged and you have to take them home and clean them yourself, which in a condo with no outside yard with a fish-cleaning table, is a nightmare to clean up the scales afterward; so when we want mullet to cook here at home, I go to Gandy's just up the street from 7H. I like Tarpon Dock, but in all my years shopping there they've only had mullet twice, so I go there for oysters, shrimp, crabmeat, red snapper, grouper.
The last Time we visited Apalachicola I went in two fish markets looking for fresh mullet: the owner of one of them told me that mullet are just so cheap that it doesn't pay the fishermen to net them. When I was a boy working in my father's seafood business, mullet was our most popular and cheapest fish at 25¢ a pound retail, which means you'd have to sell a lot of mullet to pay the light bill, so I understand even though I miss the days of the 1940s and 1950s when mullet were so plentiful.
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Breakfast: two slices of ham from Grocery Outlet, and English blue Stilton from Fresh Market. At the Fresh Market they always have an interesting cheese display and when we're there I almost always leave with at least a couple of different cheeses. Stilton is a favorite, and certified Roquefort from France (which is also available at Publix), and a German cheese that's a mix of camembert and blue, and a mix of camembert and mushrooms.
12 oz. mug of ice water with my ham and cheese breakfast, because I had my magic mug of hot & black early while it was still dark outside.
This ham is neither the best nor the worst, but it was $3 for a small nubbin that I bought to sample it; whereas the ham I shop for when I'm serious is the big annual fall discount sale of incredible Kurobuta hams at Snake River Farms online, usually just before Thanksgiving. Haven't ordered one in a couple years though. Not feeling the need to, but we'll see. My food ordering online these days is pretty much down to crab cakes from Maryland and lobster meat from Maine. I used to order salmon from a place in Alaska, but I can get good salmon at Sam's Club. And I used to order Walleye from a Canadian sourced website; but haven't had the freezer space lately; it was good.
Once, I also ordered lake smelt from them, because of the basket of fried smelt I had at a restaurant in Chicago in late 1977 just before I retired from the Navy. Have told that story here at least once. The smelt was excellent, my first, tiny whole breaded and fried, a huge basketful; but I started eating them as soon as the waitress set them down in front of me and scalded the roof of my mouth. Fun to eat tiny whole fried fish, though!
That trip to Chicago, I was interviewing for a corporate executive job with Brunswick Corporation. They'd advertised in the WSJ and I'd applied. Of several hundred responses, they selected ten to consider further, then chose me and another man to bring to Chicago for interview. I had a reolly good Time, but I was a bit cool because I knew that if I took a job in Chicago, Linda would not be moving to Chicago with me, so I was regarding it as a practice interview. A day or so after the interview the VP who'd interviewed me telephoned me at home in Harrisburg to say they'd selected the other guy because I hadn't seemed enthusiastic about their job.
Had a similar experience with a job opportunity in Brooklyn. They asked if I'd accept the job if they offered it to me right then, and I said no. I'd have been living in Brooklyn by myself, and commuting home to Harrisburg weekends. Or someo ther arrangement.
What life had in store for me was a defense-related consulting business of my own for a few years, then theological seminary, ordination and off into the the rest of my life.
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What's coming up? Joe is to ring me about ten o'clock, we're going to Pruitt to visit Malinda as soon as Kristen gets out of school around one o'clock or one-thirty, then later the three of us will go for early supper. Last Friday it was Mexican at Los Rancheros (they brought me a beef enchilada instead of the chicken enchilada I ordered, but okay), the week before it was Enzo's Pizza. Captain's Table is our "usual" because of the fried mullet; today we're thinking Hunt's for a change.
Hunt's have changed face since Hurricane Michael and since being acquired by the owners of Tarpon Dock Seafood: the "old original" building was left intact as a large new facility was built completely surrounding it. Then the roof of the old building was removed, leaving it still the same "old original" inside, noisy and crowded, but the new building has a second level where they just installed glass that looks like wind breaks; stairs going up, and maybe they'll have a lounge bar &c. It all looks like it will be very flexible. The outside has recently been finished in a bright yellow color that's a primary viewing feature from my study office den!
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Pic: not a good shot, but it'll do. The little turret-like structure with the spike on top is the far north-east corner of our Harbour Village development. Hunt's is the yellow building just beyond the Chevron sign. Captain's Table ("Capt's Table") is in the lower center, corner of Beck Avenue and 11th Street. Snapped just now from 7H sidewalk.
I'm a day older, a day uglier, and a day more foolish.
Hoping you're the same,
RSF&PTL
T89&c