On this special episode of the podcast, hear about some of our recent travels and what we ate for dinner one night in our hotel room to save time, money, and to enjoy delicious local tropical fruit.
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Now onto the episode.
For those that do not know, my family and I travel the country in our travel trailer year round. We have been all over the country from near the Mexican border in Southern California to the most eastern point of the contigous United Sates in Lubec, Maine.
As I am recording this episode we are in the panhandle of Florida. I thought I would do an episode about our travels and what we eat along the way.
Right after New Year's Day we decided to get away from our camper for a couple days and get a hotel down in Key Largo, Florida. We were unable to find an open or even affordable spot down there to park our camper. Even though it was a 4 hour drive, we just couldn't miss out on the chance to see a tropical paradise.
We got up early to make the 4 hour drive. My first mission was to find a variety of locally grown bananas that haven't tried. Back in 2021, I did find some bananas that were locally grown in the San Diego area. However they were just Cavendish bananas which is the variety that we get in all the stores everywhere. I wanted to taste something different.
And sure enough I was able to accomplish that mission at the first place we stopped down in South Florida. We had seen the Instagram page for Robert is Here Produce in Homestead. It had all sorts of tropical looking fruits in their stores. I spotted bananas hanging from the ceiling. I was excited.
Shortly after we arrived I asked the owner's son what type of bananas those were and found out they were a variety called Mysore. He got me a sample of a ripe one. Now that's what a banana should taste like. It was sweet but not mushy whatsoever. More of the size of the baby bananas you see sometimes in stores.
I got two huge bunches of green bananas that I hung up in the camper when we got home. We spent the next couple of weeks picking bananas off the bunch as they ripened.
The produce store also has a ton of animals including emus & parrots out back for the kids to get excited about. And it was really cool seeing a Jackfruit tree right outside the store with immature fruit growing on it. Crazy to think how big those fruits get.
While we were there we also picked out some locally grown papaya, egg fruit, black sapote (which tastes like chocolate pudding when ripe), fresh key limes, young coconuts and Kent mangoes.
Our plan for the next day was to tour around the Florida keys and see what we can. It's such a magic place with crystal clear turquoise waters, bridges, white sand, and the impressive large Magnificent Frigate flying overhead. Of course we had to get a slice of the most silky smooth key lime pie you will ever taste from the famous Blond Giraffe Key Lime Pie Factory.
What we like to do on trips to save money on eating out is just to eat out for lunch and not dinner in the same day We have a satisfying lunch with plenty of food. Then we come back to the hotel and just have a snack dinner.
On this occasion we brought our Magic Bullet with us from home to blend up smoothies. We also had our silicone microwave bowl poppper to make popcorn using the room microwave.
I picked up my favorite Cabot Whole Milk Vanilla Bean Yogurt and some milk at Publix and we got to making smoothies. We only used the ripe fruit we had purchased the day before. A lot of the fruit needed more time to ripen up. Our smoothies were mainly mango, key lime juice, water from the coconuts, and papaya. It was a dream of the kids to sit outside, drinking out of a coconut. So once we removed the water from the coconut we used the coconuts as a container for the smoothies. We saved on having to buy plastic cups and got some fun photos of the kids drinking out of their coconuts.
It's so nice on a busy day of sightseeing not having to then wait in a restaurant with a tired 4 year old!
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