As long as I can
remember, I’ve been fascinated with all things American Indian. From the first
piece of jewelry my mother brought home from one of her trips to my obsessive
collecting of parrot jewelry, the American Indians have always been on my mind.
As soon as the weather
in South Florida drops into the 80’s, some of our weekends take us to the
Miccosukee Indian reservation, where we happily camp in the parking lot of
their casino resort, watch the sunsets across the Florida Everglades, and feast
on the offerings in their four restaurants.
It doesn’t hurt that
my husband loves his toys in the casino. So far he’s ahead and he never risks
very much so the angel on his shoulder hasn’t turned into the devil. Ever
at the ready, my Kindle keeps me company because I hate to gamble. When forced,
I always win. Every time my husband hands me money and tells me to place a bet,
I win, because I walk out with my original money.
The best part of
camping at the casino is that I don’t have to pack the refrigerator with food.
When we spend the weekends on the beach in the Keys, the ingredients for our
dinners come with us because I can’t bear to leave the seashore. And who can pay
Keys prices for inferior food when the alternative is a seafood dinner at the
Miccosukee resort, complete with unlimited oysters and scallops on the half
shell, mountains of smoked salmon (lox) and crab claws and shrimp, paella (I like theirs and no one else's)…I could go on and on, but I’ll wait until
later….for $12.95.
Sunday morning we were
ready to go inside for breakfast, but, as is our malady on the
weekends, the clocks in our heads were broken, and by the time we looked up,
breakfast was over. One alternative was their incredible Sunday brunch. The
problem with the brunch is that I have to start with dessert because there’s
nothing more frustrating than looking at their desserts and not having any room.
On our what used to be
frequent cruises on Carnival, the waiters got used to my silly eating habits: I
had to eat the what I called “chocolate mushy thing” first or I never had room
for it. Their melting chocolate cake, is so unbelievable, that when they gave me the recipe, it wasn’t hard to figure out why: Heavy cream,
butter, chocolate, sugar, eggs.
We’ve had to give up the
melting chocolate cake in favor of the food at the Miccosukee resort because we
adopted Wesley. Wesley, our first what we think is a Tibetan Spaniel, is an
escape artist, and we can’t leave home without him. So, whereas we used to
leave our menagerie in the hands of our friend, I couldn’t trust Wesley. He’s
the reason we spend every weekend in a motor home, but we love it, so I’m not
complaining.
Nor should I complain
about the remarkable food and desserts at the Sunday brunch at the Miccosukee
resort. It just makes me crazy when I can’t eat enough at a buffet to make it
worthwhile. Who can eat all the seafood in the ocean, along with lamb, rib
roast, pasta as you watch it prepared, and on and on. Whatever you can think of
that belongs on the best brunch you can remember is there.
So we skipped the
Sunday brunch and ate at the lunch buffet set out for the plebeians, all of us
who are just hungry and want food. We’d eaten there many times, were never able
to try it all, and were never disappointed. The salad offerings included
everything that is too costly for most salad bars. The egg salad, pasta salads,
and the like are all worthy of the gourmet shop on the Upper East Side that
shall remain nameless. But, as always is my problem, I can’t have it all.
I took some macaroni and cheese, my favorite comfort food, passed up the fresh carved roast,
chicken Florentine, mahi, and barbecued ribs, fresh vegetables, potatoes, and
tried the meatloaf. But I hate meatloaf.
I think they called it
“Home Style” or “Southern,” but it didn’t taste like any
meatloaf I’d ever been coerced to eat. The first thing I could pick out was pine
nuts, not toasted to within an inch of their lives, but still white. I’m
guessing there were capers and caramelized onions and garlic and cumin or
something else to make it taste like sausage, and for the rest, I give up.
When I looked around
the room I realized that not many people understood that they were dining, not
just eating. I even asked the manager of the buffet, someone whom we had spoken
to many times, if he had tried the meatloaf, and he looked at me like I was
from another planet. So now my challenge is to figure out how to share our discovery with the rest of the general world.
