A winter wind is blowing.

I am snuggling into my sweatshirts something fierce. The days are still mild, warm enough to eat outside, but the nights are becoming tinged with a bone-damp chill that only goes away with a warm soak in the tub.

I used to love the wintertime; the dull flat grey skies that make all the other colors look so stark and clean, the invigorating tingle right before your skin goes numb. The funny superheated breath between icy lips and a woolen scarf.

Now? Not so much.

Accordingly, I am going to willfully avoid chilly reality for a little while and daydream about somewhere warm, somewhere where it is almost always summer…

We spent most of April in Savannah, Georgia, doing research for our book.

I lived for a fairly brief time in Savannah in the late 90’s, just long enough to fall madly in love and then leave. Isn’t that always the way?

But ruminating on loves lost is an activity for morose winter-loving types.

Let’s talk about The Crab Shack instead!

The Crab Shack on Tybee Island (about a twenty-minute drive from downtown Savannah) is one of my Guilty Pleasures in life. It is, frankly, ridiculous. It’s basically what would happen if Jimmy Buffet’s mentally defunct twin decided to open a Florida-trash bar in the middle of a swamp. There are dangling coconuts and faux signs with salty sayings and a pond-ish thing out front where you can feed tiny alligators with cane poles.

But when the light hits it right, after a spring rain, it’s beautiful:

Plus, there’s this:

and this:

which, plus a few frozen margaritas (not pictured) (because I was too busy slurping them down)

equals this.

Ahab faced the white whale. I drunkenly faced the little red crawfish.

Fortune smiled on my bravery.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 2:43 am and is filed under Comfort Food, The States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.