It’s amaz­ing, isn’t it, to think about how rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent road trips are with the addi­tion of a GPS unit and a iPhone? With help from Yelp, the Chowhound boards, and occa­sion­ally Road Food, it’s hard to find any­thing but an awe­some meal. I would have been a ter­ri­ble pioneer.

This has become the trip where I fell in love with grits. I think through­out the South I was man­ag­ing to get a serv­ing of grits once a day. Break­fast grits? Love them. Sat­ur­day morning’s grits came from one of Val­o­rie and Alberto’s local joints, and didn’t dis­ap­point. We ran into Perch to say farewell to the host­ess to the most­ess and I fell in a love with a Stray Dog Designs lamp (this one, if I remem­ber cor­rectly) which I may have tried to sneak into the car if it had not been a wee bit out of my price range.

Lunch was in Breaux Bridge. We stopped at Poche’s Mar­ket, per­haps deter­mined to con­tinue our down­ward spi­ral. We ate some green beans, for what it’s worth. (Let’s not dis­cuss that they were on the side of a pork stew and some craw­fish etouf­feé, OK?)

We rolled into Hous­ton just in time for din­ner with Ryan’s col­lege friends (their wed­ding was the first one we attended as a cou­ple!). They have two adorable daugh­ters and busy sched­ules so we picked up din­ner from Taco Cabana, which, if those existed near my house, I think I would turn into a taco myself.

Still in Hous­ton, we stayed in the world’s most unfor­tu­nate La Quinta. Our room smelled of some­thing so ter­ri­ble we could not name it. Wet horse? When Ryan men­tioned it Sun­day morn­ing at check­out, the per­son at the front desk said, “Well, what did it smell like?”

The answer: not any­thing I want to ever smell again.

If you have not had the plea­sure of dri­ving across I-10, or just flee­ing Florida, let me break the news to you that it takes an eter­nity to get out of Florida. Fri­day morn­ing (still in Florida), we ate some seri­ously amaz­ing quiche at Craig’s Killer Cof­fee, a semi-random cof­fee shop inside a video store. Should you find your­self in Tal­la­has­see, I rec­om­mend it.

We made it to Pen­sacola (still Florida) in the after­noon and stopped at Cap­tain Joey Patti’s. (Link goes to the fish mar­ket owned by the same fam­ily. The free­stand­ing restau­rant is about a block away.) I feel fairly con­fi­dent that I’m eat­ing fresh seafood when you can see fish being hauled off of boats nearby. To truly have our South­ern seafood expe­ri­ence, we ate hush pup­pies, fried fish, and a mas­sive slice of red vel­vet cake. To drink? Sweet tea, of course.

Finally, New Orleans (not Florida!)—I had emailed Val­o­rie to ask for a dog-friendly din­ner rec­om­men­da­tion, and she ever so gen­er­ously offered us her guest room. What a treat! She and Alberto are, unsur­pris­ingly, fan­tas­tic hosts. If I had had my act together, I would show you some of the beau­ti­ful details of her home, her adorable pooch Cholo, and the two of us together—Valorie look­ing very chic and me look­ing, well, not chic.

We took a long walk around their neigh­bor­hood to stretch our legs and, I know every­one says this when they visit New Orleans, but could the peo­ple be any nicer? I think every per­son we passed on the street said hello, talked to Harry, or, at the very least, smiled. Now that liv­ing in the trop­ics no longer fazes me, I think we could adapt to New Orleans’ humid­ity with­out issue.

Din­ner Fri­day was at the very lovely Coquette, where Ryan sam­pled a decent por­tion of the cock­tail menu, and I ate noth­ing bad. Pork belly ravi­oli, yel­low­tail crudo, beignets with a choco­late pot de crème. My mouth waters, and it’s three days later.

I had big plans of blog­ging from the road, snap­ping trip pho­tos and writ­ing lengthy reviews of every­thing we’ve seen and eaten. How­ever, both of our phones started dying what “True Blood” would call the True Death, and ser­vice has been spotty through­out the South and South­west, and despite the cozy bed for Harry in the back, he’s spent most of his time on my lap or scal­ing a pile of suitcases.

So, we ate our last Miami meal at Michy’s on Wednes­day night. It was great, and we left full and happy, but I feel like Michelle Bern­stein needs to change her menu a lit­tle more often. That might be an unfair crit­i­cism, espe­cially since I’ve eaten at both Sra. Mar­tinez and Michelle Bernstein’s in the past month, and there’s a bit of over­lap in the three menus, but I won­der if she’s spread a lit­tle thin these days.

Thurs­day the movers came and we had Cheese Course sand­wiches before dri­ving off into the sun­set after­noon sun.

We stopped in Ocala at Harry’s. The restau­rant sits on Ocala’s town square, where there was a vigil for two Great Danes who had been killed. Harry enjoyed meet­ing many local dogs, though he was very sad about the cir­cum­stances. We made it just out­side of Tal­la­has­see Thurs­day night.

OK, it’s not life. It’s just stuff.

But some of it is really good stuff.

We sold two of our three sofas, Freecy­cled our com­post bin and started a pile for dona­tion. Once I start—well, I can’t stop. So with­out sell­ing the chair out from under my bum, I looked out­side. Remem­ber these?

Cute, right? But the pro­cras­ti­na­tion on the whole cush­ion issue meant we were sit­ting on blan­kets when we sat out­side. And when was the last time we sat out­side, any­way? (Actu­ally we dined al fresco last night—and it was not the most pleas­ant expe­ri­ence.) This recent Krista Ewart–designed house in House Beau­ti­ful is right up my alley:

But—and it’s a big but—we have no idea what our next place will be like. So I started to think about sell­ing. I didn’t want a long, drawn-out Craig expe­ri­ence, though, so I sent a photo to Circa Who to see if they were inter­ested. Circa Who is eas­ily my favorite store in West Palm Beach, stuffed full of awe­some­ness like this:

When the owner, Tracy, emailed me back to ask when she could pick them up, I was thrilled. It’s one less thing we have to move, and, hey, my stuff will be for sale in a store I love!

Let’s be hon­est: this has been a long time com­ing. We’ve always wanted dif­fer­ent things from each other. To say “it’s not you, it’s me” would be a lie. Because, well, it is you. We’re just not compatible.

I don’t think we should remain friends—it would be too hard. In fact, I’d like to never see you again. I wish you all the best, and I hope you find some­one who accepts you as you are. I’m sorry I never could.

Love,

The Reluc­tant Florid­ian (soon to be the Much More Enthu­si­as­tic Californian!)

Remem­ber Stiltsville?

Author Susanna Daniel kindly left a com­ment on that post, and agreed to answer a few ques­tions about Stiltsville, her first novel, and Stiltsville, the place.

My love affair with cab­bage began in my post-college kitchen, when I worked my way through Lorna Sass’ Short-Cut Veg­e­tar­ian. Sass uses cab­bage in a ton of recipes, and I can see why: it’s cheap, it’s plen­ti­ful, and it’s so ver­sa­tile. A few weeks ago, with a han­ker­ing for some­thing spicy, I tried out Smit­ten Kitchen’s every­day yel­low dal and the accom­pa­ny­ing slaw. The dal was good, but the slaw was out of this world. Two nights later, with the other half of the cab­bage, I made it again.

Help, I can’t stop mak­ing this slaw. It’s so good! Bonus: it works with red cab­bage too.

Cab­bage Slaw (adapted from the ever-awesome Smit­ten Kitchen)

Half of a head of green cab­bage, shred­ded (this goes quickly in a food proces­sor)
2 small ser­rano chiles, finely diced (use less if you pre­fer less heat; for even less heat, seed the chiles)
2 table­spoons fresh lemon juice, or more as needed
1 tea­spoon salt
1  tea­spoon sugar
1 table­spoon canola oil
1 tea­spoon mus­tard seeds

Toss the first five ingre­di­ents together. Taste for sea­son­ing; there should be a bal­ance of sweet and sour.

Heat the oil in a small skil­let until smok­ing, then add the mus­tard seeds. Cover the pan. The seeds will start pop­ping. When they have stopped, remove from heat and pour the oil over the cab­bage mix­ture. Toss thor­oughly. The salad can be served cold or at room tem­per­a­ture, but it needs about 15 min­utes of rest time so that the fla­vors can develop.

This is great with the afore­men­tioned dal, but I’ve been lov­ing it as a side for grilled meat.

This keeps well for a few days, but will lose a bit of its orig­i­nal crunch.

My BFF came into town last Thurs­day to attend a wed­ding (and take me as her date). Sat­ur­day after­noon we checked into the wed­ding hotel and had a few hours to kill before we needed to get ready. I sat by the pool with gos­sip mags, she went to the ocean. I said some­thing I never thought I’d say: “Eh, I can go to the beach any­time.” What can I say? I was really excited about this pool, though the lady in the bathing cap was not there.

It started to rain lightly and BFF returned from the beach. She declared in a very seri­ous tone, “I get Florida now.”

Appar­ently when you go to the beach in New Eng­land, the ocean is not the tem­per­a­ture of bath­wa­ter. The East­ern Seaboard also, I hear, lacks palm trees.

While we were at the wed­ding, my par­ents arrived from Kansas. (Ryan, son-in-law of the year, gra­ciously enter­tained them until my return on Sunday.)

Ten days of guests means a lot of eat­ing yummy food, shop­ping, dri­ving through pretty neigh­bor­hoods and gen­eral Florida Lite. Both BFF and my par­ents said some­thing like, “I under­stand why you don’t like it, but…” and it got me thinking.

Is Florida really that bad? Or are the places you like to visit not nec­es­sar­ily always the places you want to live?

Last year, Mr. TRF sur­prised me with Miami Heat tick­ets. I hadn’t been to a pro­fes­sional bas­ket­ball game since Kansas City still had the Kings.

1. That was a mil­lion years ago. Literally.
2. Heat games are an excel­lent time.

So now I must decide: wait for a LeBron jer­sey or stick with Wade?

An aside: I wanted to quote mod­ern poet Jay-Z here—If Jeezy’s pay­ing LeBron, I’m pay­ing Dwyane Wade—but wor­ried that I might be miss­ing a metaphor. Here’s some help if you, like me, should not run around quot­ing Jay-Z.