My First Real Vacation

Judson and I just got back from our first real vacation. Our honeymoon didn't count. That's not a vacation, it's a once-in-a-lifetime event. Also, when we got back from our honeymoon, we both had to return to our lives as graduate students, which sucked.

This time, we got to go back to REAL jobs that we actually like.

The Setting: Martha's Vineyard. There's a long and somewhat complicated story here, but the end result is that Judson's aunt Dianne owns a guest house (designed to look and feel kind of like a refurbished barn) there, and she leaves time for Judson's family to come stay during the summer.

Activities: Reading, cycling, bike riding, cooking, sitting on the beach, hiking.

We brought along our bicycles. It turns out that you can fit two adult bicycles in the back seat of a Pontiac Grand Am if you take off their wheels. We also brought a small collection of kitchen/cooking essentials (not realizing, unfortunately, that we should have brought along our knives), plus all the normal vacation clothes, books, etc.

While we were on the Island, I managed to read:

• Lolita by Victor Nabokov (actually, I was more than halfway through when we left, but it's a dense book).
• Deliverance by James Dickey
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (I had read this one before but thought it was time for a re-read
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Of these, the best book was Lolita, whereas the best beach read was Deliverance.

One of the best things about being on the Island was the proximity to fresh seafood. We had a great time cooking and experimenting with fish, something we don't get to do often since we live so far from the coast. We made three fish dinners.

The first day, we were a bit inexperienced and ended up with red snapper. All of the fish markets had snapper, but I'm not convinced that it was actually local. At any rate, we sauteed it in butter with shallots and then made a pan sauce using white wine and a little more butter. We served it with local asparagus and some crusty French bread. It was all right, but asparagus was definitely the wrong choice for the fish. The snapper itself was good, especially toward the tail end.

We later cooked swordfish with a fresh salsa and bacon. We lightly seared the swordfish, then covered it with bacon and surrounded it with a homemade salsa. Then we cooked it in the oven at about 350 F until it was done (no longer translucent, nice and moist). We served it with a hot corn salad consisting of corn, onions, red peppers, jalapenos, cumin, salt, and pepper.

We also made goujonettes, small strips of fish (we used gray sole) lightly floured and fried. We served that with a salad. It was delicious.

So I've written all I care to write for now. I hope to eventually figure out how to make this more interesting.