Folly Beach - June 30-July 7, 2012

Hello Dinner Clubbers!  I hope you all had a good 4th.  Nick and I just got back from Folly Beach, SC where we spent a week with Nick's family.  We had a lovely and relaxing holiday filled with days at the beach, drinking lots of beer (and margaritas), and enjoying some local, Southern food.



For the first time, I tried boiled peanuts.  This locally loved snack is sold at many a roadside stand in South Carolina, and we got ours from one called Fat Boys.  JJ and Greg picked the Cajun flavored variety and we brought them home and dug in.  These guys get a bad rap up north, but I really enjoyed them.  I think the problem is that we Yankees associate peanuts only with "nuts" and not with the legumes they actually are.  Understandably, a soggy nut does not sound appetizing, but If you approach these like you do edamame, it's a much more pleasant experience.  I thought these guys tasted a lot like cooked red kidney beans, and their delightful starchiness tasted delicious with the mildly spicy Cajun seasoning.  And with a beer.

 

Sadly, our rental beach house did not come supplied with the glass mason jars I'd dreamt of for our Southern drinking experience.  It's just as well I suppose, since glass is not allowed on the beach (but beer is.  Folly Beach is the only beach in the Low Country that allows alcohol consumption...for now).  Instead, we used these little, plastic stemmed glasses with our names written on blue painters tape.  Nick and Greg made sure that we had loads of great craft brews to drink all week, filling growlers up at places like the Charleston Beer Exchange, the James Island Piggly Wiggly, and the Folly Beach Brew Pub.   




Since they are experiencing a local crab shortage (this is a shell JJ found on the beach), we limited our local seafood consumption to shrimp.  It was caught fresh daily and the best I've ever had.  I plan on posting about some of the things we used it for later in the week.