Highlights from a butcher’s beach trip

I went on vacation, and I get to write the newsletter, so I'm going to tell you about my vacation. Last week the family and I spent a week at Carolina Beach and did all the beach things. It was hotter than a stolen tamale but we didn't much care since there wasn't a thing on the agenda. One of the quintessential places that I love to visit at the coast is Eagle Island Seafood, a fish and produce market that has been around since long before I was alive. As a kid, I remember driving down before the sun came up and fetching a few bushels of oysters for an afternoon oyster roast. As an adult, I love to take my kids, and they appreciate that it's a "real" fish market - i.e. they let you touch the fish. After much handling and discussion of said fish, my nine-year-old daughter chose a gorgeous red drum, and we roasted it for dinner. Eating fish beside water is something we should all do more of.

When I travel, I usually bring "emergency steaks". Well the emergency steaks were eaten in lieu of lasagna on the first night. I always take it as a great honor when snacks from the shop are the first to go on family vacation. Being from NC and having spent my whole life here, I usually feel like I've been to about every little hole-in-the-wall there is to visit. A major gap in my NC culinary experiences has always been Britt's Donuts. Especially odd, as my grandmother grew up a few blocks from the nearly-100-year-old shop. They sell one thing: donuts. And they are $1.25 each. I'm not a donut person but I went every day during vacation, and were it not for the dour judgmental looks of my children, I'd of eaten a dozen each time. They're real good.

My daughter didn't get eaten by a shark, which she'd felt pretty confident was assured. I ate an $8 corn dog at the boardwalk and only got marginally sunburned. It was a wild success and made me happy that we have an amazing crew at the shop that holds things down when someone takes a much-needed break.

We hope you are all finding some time to slip away this summer. It feels especially sweet when folks pop in to fill a cooler before a week away. You'd have to drive a long way to find meat this good. Be well and have a great week!

— Jason