7 minute read
Dinner’s Ready
Every year, thousands and thousands of tourists, from all sorts of destinations, visit our area with two things on their mind. One being a chance to sit out all day on our beautiful beaches. Two being to enjoy fresh seafood… specifically the Gulf oysters.
There are plenty of restaurants in our area serving great oysters, but as an oyster loving local, it can get expensive to eat these delicacies out on a regular basis. This month’s Dinner’s Ready recipe is shared with us by Daniel Jones, a Gulf Shores resident, who loves to eat oysters at home.
When shopping to prepare the perfect oysters at home, Daniel shares you want to support local because they are usually fair priced and they won’t sell oysters that aren’t good. Overall their standards are higher.
Oysters, unlike most other foods, will also need special tools for preparation. He recommends investing in an oyster shucking knife, shucking gloves and an aluminum seafood tray. All of these can easily be found on Amazon for an affordable price.
“The fresh from the Gulf oyster is my favorite,” Daniel said. “It really doesn’t need anything but a little salt and hot sauce. In fact, the best oyster I have ever eaten was found one day when I was out fishing. It was taken straight from the Gulf with nothing on it at all.” His wife Gabriele is from the Midwest and oysters were off the table for most of their 16 year marriage. “Finally after about a decade of being married, I was able to get Gabby to try baked oysters and now she enjoys them,” shared Daniel. “I still can’t get her to eat them raw, but one day I will.”
His kids have not yet fallen in love with oysters, but he has no doubt they will carry on the legacy of love for these family favorites in the years to come. Daniel and Gabby have three children, Nate (15), Luke (8) and Briar Psalm (10 months), so the odds are certainly in his favor!
Daniel loves to fix the baked oyster options on Alabama football game days! They are such a great, lighter appetizer option and are a nice change up from the popular chicken wing and burger options. However, you can find him eating oysters raw about once a week at his kitchen sink. Daniel wanted to be sure he provided both a chilled and baked option for families with diverse pallets. So this month, we hope you enjoy not one, but two oyster recipes!
Daniel’s Dozen Raw Oysters
Fill your aluminum tray with ice and serve fresh shucked oysters (in the shell) directly on top of the ice. Serve with hot sauce, salt and maybe lemon wedges. Personally speaking, crackers and any other fixings can take away from the oysters.
Daniel’s Baked Oysters
Ingredients
Tony’s Cajun Seasoning Drago’s Butter Garlic Sauce (found at Rouses) Shredded Cheddar Cheese Chives Crispy Bacon Crumbles
Preheat Oven to 400 degrees.
Shuck oysters, leaving them in the shell and place on a baking sheet. Add Cajun seasoning, butter garlic sauce, cheddar cheese, chives and bacon to taste. Bake for 15 minutes and then serve.
Gabriele has been married to her husband Daniel for 16 years. Together they have three incredible children - two boys, ages 15 and eight, and a sweet girl who joined the family last summer. She is a full time Pink Cadillac Sales Director for Mary Kay Cosmetics. When she isn’t spending time with family or building her business, she supports her husband who is the Lead Pastor and Planter of Forward Church in Foley.
Do your kids seem a little less ready for school after each summer break?
So, what can parents do to give the slide the slip? Here are seven fun activities that have worked for our teenage son, and I bet they’ll help your kids, too.
Since our son learned to read, we’ve had him read one fiction and one non-fiction book every other week to keep his reading and comprehension skills at grade level. It’s summer after all, so instead of assigning him books like he’s used to from school, we let him choose what to read.
Keep A Vacation Journal
We take at least one big family vacation trip every summer, and since our son was very young we’ve had him keep a daily journal where he writes about what we did that day. It’s been a great way to keep his writing skills up-to-date and document his childhood.
Email Family and Friends
To strengthen our son’s writing skills, we also have him email family and friends, especially those people we don’t get to see that much during the year. Teenagers prefer texting, but we insist that he emails them because texts are usually full of broken
Play Math-Based Board Games
In the evening, whether we’re on a family vacation trip or at home, we play math games like Monopoly or spelling games like Scrabble. The key is to focus on the fun part - the competition - rather than the learning. If you do that, the learning will happen automatically.
Watch Feature and Documentary Movies
Aside from playing a board game or two, we also watch movies in the evening. With all the streaming services available, it’s not that hard to find a documentary or feature film, which also happens to be educational. Movies are some of the most fun ways to learn about other time periods, cultures, and current events.
Download Educational Apps
Although we try to make our son’s summer activities as social as possible, we also indulge his interest in anything technological, like letting him download all the educational apps he wants. He really likes quiz apps, which like the board game Trivial Pursuit, is great for developing kids’ general knowledge. Visit Arts, History, and Natural Science
Museums
Museum visits are another great way to keep your kids up-to-date with the arts, history, and natural science. It doesn’t matter whether you live in a big or a small city. Even the smallest town often has a museum nearby. Going to the local town museum and learning about your own history can be surprisingly fun. ESP
Tanni Haas, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Communication Arts, Sciences, and Disorders at the City University of New York – Brooklyn College.
