We did find an historical monument that told us Titusville was founded by James Titus in the late nineteenth century. He built a bank that went out of business in 1928 due to excessive defaults on questionable loans the bank made during the real estate run of the 1920s. Everything old is new again.
What we did discover in Titusville was rock shrimp. Rock shrimp actually look like little lobster tails. Until the 1970s, when a Titusville man invented a way to crack open the shrimp, no one ate rock shrimp because you couldn't get to meat without crushing the tails. And that left the meat with pieces of shell in it. We also found Royal Red shrimp in Titusville, another type of shrimp we had never had. The Royal Reds were very small (it was the end of the season) but tasty. Jim liked the rock shrimp better than I did. Seemed like a lot of work for not much return.
We've spent several summers in Georgia since we bought the boat (our insurance company
that we not be in Florida during hurricane season). Georgia is a big shrimping state and Brunswick, where we have been staying, has a sizable shrimping fleet. We got very spoiled, eating shrimp directly off the boat. Georgia fishes both white and brown shrimp, both of which we like. When we got the the Keys, the local shrimp there is Key West Pink. We tried it but weren't impressed, watery and rubbery. In talking with a local fish store owner in Marathon we discovered that the Key West Pinks are fished so far off shore that they are frozen when they are caught. So if you buy them in a fish market, they have been frozen and defrosted.
So now we're shrimp bigots -- has to be locally caught, unfrozen. We're looking forward to be back in Brunswick to indulge in more shrimp. Then we plan to continue taste testing as far north as local shrimping is done. We'll let you know what we find.
As they say in Georgia "Friends don't let friends eat imported shrimp."
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