GET IN MY MOUTH: Low Country Boil

So lately, I've been missing Georgia. Sometimes it literally makes my heart hurt because I miss it so bad. Which luckily, is not because I am totally miserable in Idaho, because I'm surprisingly not (yet). But, ANYWAY, I decided that there was one thing that could help curb my Georgia yearning; some good old southern food.

So, I pulled out Aunt Martha's cookbook (which if you are ever going to buy a cookbook, let that be your next one because Martha is amahzing. She's used to help write Paula Deen's cookbooks. She basically a Savannah celebrity!) and after looking through it, decided to invite some of our peeps over for :

LOW COUNTRY BOIL
Adapted from "Savannah Celebrations" by Martha Nesbit

Thanks to Sassy YGBG for the photo

Here's what you need:

Serves 8

2 pounds kielbasa Polish sausage, sliced into 1 inch pieces.

20 red potatoes, halved or quartered, depending on size.

4 to 6 ears of corn broken into halves or thirds

3 pounds large shrimp 

1/4 cup Old Bay seasoning (this is optional but I HIGHLY recommend using it, and being generous with it!)

Allow 1 hour to heat water in a 20 gallon pot*, filled about one-third full. Add the Old Bay seasoning if using (which you better be). 45 minutes before serving, add sausage. 20 minutes before serving, add red potatoes. 15 minutes before serving, add corn. 5 minutes before serving, add shrimp. When shrimp are pink and cooked through (about 5 minutes or less - you can tell because they curl up like they're prepping for an earthquake drill.). Drain and serve hot.

*Alright so, if you're anything like me, you don't have a 20 gallon pot and when you saw that you were like, Whaaaaaaaaaaat? But don't worry, it's a little bit of work but it's still possible. What I have is just two 5.5 quart pots. So, to make the full recipe (which you can half it, or even quarter it if you're cooking for less people) I had to split it up into 4 different rounds (so two for each pot for me). So I did MATH (which I suck at, but I did it) and split the ingredients up into fours. And then you follow the recipe the same (except that you don't have to wait an hour for the water to heat up). 

The best way to serve this is to just lay out some news paper (or craft paper or a plastic table cloth) on your table and dump it right on to the paper (but if you wanna be civilized you can leave it in a bowl, sometimes that's a good idea too) and serve with: Soft Butter, Sour Cream, Cocktail Sauce, Slices of lemons, and Ice Cold Coca-Cola. 

you can just see the humidity in the air from all that boilin! felt just like the south!

the almost entire month of April, condensed.

I literally just stopped blogging for a minute. Well, longer than a minute. And I know it's not like i have some sort of crazy following where I ruined people's lives from not blogging, but I am kind of sad that I didn't blog very much in April, because we kind of did a lot. Including celebrated our 1 year anniversary! Holla.

Welp, I'll start from where I left off. [and I apologize if you follow us on instagram, you will have seen most of these, cause that's what we've been doing instead of using a real camera. SORRY]

Taylor adjusted back to American life nicely.

He joined a soccer league:

Then, ALL of my sister-in-laws and their children came to visit for spring break and we went to the beach for a couple days:

Tayl put Lux in his shirt:

I got surprised with an early anniversary gift:

We spent easter weekend in Valdosta:

Pregnant karaoke!

Laney girl.

On Sunday we were basically all playing scramble against each other. TECHNOLOGY!

From Valdosta the Tayl and I headed down to Amelia Island, FL to spend a couple of days celebrated our anniversary:

My poorly timed cell phone short of the Florida state line.

Tayl & his driving glasses

 Once we got settled, we went for a walk on the beach:

Random sunglasses I found with barnacles growing on them.

Tay was trying to take this picture of the ocean when this stranger's dog ran by.

Crab shell

Jelly fish

The view from our Hotel.

 Our actual anniversary was actually what I would consider a perfect day:

We got up and went to play tennis.

After tennis we went to the beach.

If you can't tell, this is my face smashed up against the beach chair.

awwwww yeeeeaaah.

After the beach we went back to the hotel and showered and went out for dinner at MOON RIVER PIZZA:

WHEN THE EFF DID WE GET ICE CREAM?

Then we went to play mini-golf (surprisingly, our first mini-golf date together):

After our lovely little vacay, it was back to normal life:

I had to spend forever at the DMV to update my driver's license.

I finally got my georgia plates. Two years later.

I  ALSO FINALLY FOUND CORAL THROW PILLOWS!

We went fishing on the boat with Taylor's cousin Zack:

We went to the Earth Day festival at Forsyth park and learned about composting:

Later in the week we went back to Forsyth park to watch the Goonies:

And on an unfortunate note, my Grandpa Coffin (my dad's dad) passed away last weekend. I was extremely sad that I couldn't go to Utah to be with my family for the funeral. Here's his obituary, I thought it was really sweet, and I recommend it. And even though death is never easy to deal with, it's good to know that he is in a better place and doesn't have to be sick anymore. 

Hopefully I will blog more in May so that I won't have to do this again.

by the way, we went kayaking.

I can't believe I totally forgot to blog about this, cause it was kind of a big deal. Last month, we went kayaking on the river here in Savannah.

Let me tell you why this was a big deal, because Kynslie, does not like outdoorsy stuff. I like to fish, and I like to camp in a place that I didn't have to hike to. That's pretty much it. I mean, I like being OUTSIDE for like, the beach, picnics, four wheeling, tennis, outdoor movies, and being on yachts. But basically, anything that someone might wear Teva sandals, hiking boots, and/or eating granola for energy while doing, it's pretty safe to assume, I'll hate doing that thing.

Back to the kayaks. So, we went kayaking because April really wanted to, and everyone else was cool with it.. I really did not want to do, I didn't know how, and I figured I'd probably die and/or sink the kayak with my fat body. But it turns out that Taylor's aunt Martha's neighbor used to be a kayak instructor and she had like 30 extra kayaks, and since she loves Martha, she let us borrow hers, for free. So it was me, Tay, April, Jamie, and Jeff. Everyone had been at least once, except me. But she taught us some stuff before we got on the river.

me, looking like a boy, waiting to get pushed in.

First, Jamie went out, then me, I started to drift down the river slightly and Jamie had started to drift almost all the way across the river, everyone was yelling at her to come back thinking that she couldn't hear but really she was struggling to turn around. While everyone was focused on her, I started to panic because I was going down the river and couldn't turn around. Then everyone started yelling at me to come back. After much struggle and panic. some kind of miracle happened and Jamie and I both made it back. The kayak lady made us wait on the shore while she watched the others practice, because she no longer trusted us.

after i finally started to make my way back after almost drifting out to sea.

Finally, we were on our way, and I was surprisingly, pretty good at kayaking once I got the hang of it. I wasn't the fastest, but my kind husband kept my pace so I had someone to talk to. It was hard work. I was hoping that because we were traveling with the current that the river would do most of the work, WRONG. Also, poor Jeff and Taylor are so giant that the kayaks were not made for men of their stature and they both pretty much instantly lost feeling in their legs.

The entire journey took us over an hour, maybe more, it felt like we were traveling for days after awhile. ESPECIALLY when we got to the mouth of the river and the waves were crazy and I thought I was going to flip.

The lady dropped us off at our start location and then picked us up at the Isle of Hope Marina so we didn't have to fight against the current (I'm pretty sure I would have died.) While April was helping the lady pull the boats of the water her phone fell out of her jacket and into the river. It was funny. But she upgraded to iPhone so I don't feel bad for her.

The next day, my arms felt like they were going to break off of my body. But I was very proud of myself because I didn't complain, whine, cry, die, flip, or kill anyone or anything in the process. Hurray for doing new things! It was a cool way to start the new year.

Priesthood Campout at Fort Pulaski

The weekend before last I went camping at Fort Pulaski with the priesthood brethren.  Despite being in January it was really good weather for camping.  I arrived at sunset and the view back towards Savannah from the bridge to Fort Pulaski was very pretty.  When I got there everyone was gathered around the fire making hobo dinners.  To be honest, I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a nicer dinner ready, but I was surprised when a pulled out my hobo dinner from the fire and it was delicious.  So delicious, in fact, that I made a second.  And I was delighted to find that there was stuff to make smores with.

After dinner, everyone gathered around to sing a few church songs and to share a spiritual thought.  It caught me off guard that they were doing this, even though I should have expected it, but I was glad they were.  It’s not necessarily the type of thing that guys would gather round the fire to do which is why it was nice that it was a priesthood camp out.  We had Ben Clark play the guitar to accompany us singing and also had a special number on the harmonica.  Charles Jensen shared a spiritual thought relating the battle at Fort Pulaski to the battle in our spiritual lives.

After the spiritual thought and music, a few of the adults and a few of the boys walked over to the tunnels outside of the fort at night.  Some of the leaders had enjoyable time frightening the boys by throwing rocks into the woods and making them think there something out there.  One of the guys got a coke at the vending machine with his credit card, at which time some of the boys started hitting the buttons.  Not understanding that the transaction with the man’s credit card was still open, they started yelling, “this machine’s giving out free cokes!” when two more cokes came out.  I wasn’t there to see it, so I just thought Daniel really like coke when I saw him with three of them, but when he explained it I thought that was pretty hilarious.

It had been a while since I’ve been camping, so I was worried I might not sleep very well, but it turned out I slept pretty well.  I woke up a few times early in the morning, listening for sounds of breakfast being made and debating whether I should get out of my tent to go to the bathroom.  After drifting in and out of sleep for a little while I decided that even though I hadn’t heard breakfast being made I should go ahead and get up.  I was really excited about having breakfast being made without having been asked to contribute.  When I finally peered out of my tent, to my astonishment of the campground was deserted.  They had already left to start the service project without me.

With camping hair I went off to meet them.  Luckily I had turned my phone off to save enough battery power for at least one call, but I hadn’t anticipated that it would be a help everyone left me I don’t know where to go call.  When I met up with them, there wasn’t much left to do, so I walked with them as they picked trash up on the outer dike surrounding Fort Pulaski.  In his spiritual thought the night before, Charles had told us about how the union army had defeated Fort Pulaski we have the newly invented rifle canon.  It was very cool to see that the battered wall of the fort that they had destroyed from a mile away on Tybee Island.