Yankeetown Florida - February 2006

We have finished our “first leg”. We arrived in Yankeetown February 5th early in the morning and made our way up the Withlacoochee River to stay with our friends Dan and Joanne (who recently became the mayor of Yankeetown). In the last three weeks we have done a major cleanup on the Lucky Star, we have taken all our winter cloth out and hope that spring is just around the corner. We are still working on our damaged rudder and some other things that need to be done to go further south.


We have finalized our plans for this summer. We will go down explore Florida, the Key’s, Key West and the Ten Thousand Islands. For hurricane season we will come back to Yankeetown the fist week in July and stay here until November when we plan to head to the Caribbean.
Life is great and we are enjoying every day when we wake up having a great view of the River with morning fog seeing the turtles swim by.
I am in heaven since I have a great range and oven to cook with in Joanne’s kitchen. Florida’s great shrimp where an inspiration to cook:

Shrimp and Water Chestnut Toast

This recipe feeds a family of 6 to 8

¾ pound shrimp shelled, deveined and coarsely chopped
4 tablespoons of butter softened and unsalted
6 canned water chestnuts drained and cut in 1/3 inch dice
2 scallions sliced
¼ cup Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
A little salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 baguette sliced in ½ inch thick on the diagonal (2 pieces. as an appetizer, 4 for dinner)
Vegetable oil for frying
¼ cup white sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. In a food processor combine half the shrimp with the butter until pureed.
In a large bowl toss the rest of the shrimp, water chestnuts, scallions, wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt and sugar and blend with the shrimp butter.
Spread about 1 ½ tablespoons of the mixture on each baguette.
In a skillet heat 1/8 inch of vegetable oil. Put the sesame seeds on a small plate and dip each toast to cover the top with sesame seeds. Fry the toast (as many as fit in the pan at a time) shrimp side down, until shrimp mixture turns pink about 25 seconds.
Transfer toasts to a baking sheet, shrimp side up and toast for about 5 minutes. Serve right away and enjoy with a salad for lunch or as an appetizer for dinner.