An island adventure that puts us on the time space continuum. Sorry Blue Origins fans, this destination is anchored in the present as we look to the future, with this Bahama Mama cooking up some coconut inspired fare. We invite you to join us on this Feed Your Fire podcast episode as we embrace island time.
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Episode Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Feed Your Fire, I'm Kim Baker, founder of Kim Baker Foods. In today's episode, we're going to talk about time. In scientific terms, time is a dimension, but in our lives practically, time is a connector. It's a unifier, a precious resource. We don't want to squander, and it's a language. It's the only scientific dimension that moves in one direction only, forward.
And while we travel through this space-time continuum, we're going to be taking a trip of our own, taking you with us in island time, where only the present moment exists.
This is not a space mission with Gail King and Katy Perry. We'll let the Blue Origin flight crew worry about the theory of relativity. The trip we're about to go on is at a much more relaxed pace, but it is no doubt very purposeful.
That's right, we're going to the Caribbean. This trip that's been on our calendar has given me and my son something to look forward to. And even though our vacation will only be a few days long, it's given us months worth of excitement.
By putting something out there in the future, we're almost able to bend time, allowing “to experience a moment that much longer. And we're going to share that enthusiasm with you today as we prepare an island-inspired recipe. Now, everyone knows in the islands, there's no such thing as time.
The philosophy is one of enjoying the moment without stress. It won't be a White Lotus episode, but rather a moment where I lean into a language that I don't always speak, but one that as a young man, he certainly does. What does time mean to you?
I was recently at this restaurant, and at the bar, there was a woman with a young child. And it was almost like an out-of-body experience, where I could see myself and my son in that exact environment. And while I could so clearly see us in them, we were standing at the front of the restaurant, with my son nearly 16 years old.
It was like I was rifling through a memory box, but instead of just seeing the moment, I could feel it. Maybe that moment in the restaurant was a bittersweet reminder that the now is all we have. Because if I could bring myself back to those moments, though I enjoyed them, I would squeeze them so much tighter.
I would bring more of myself into them, and I would release everything from the past, and all worry about the future that got in the way of me fully embracing that. I would operate a little bit more like I was on island time. And yet the sight of that woman and her child was like a wormhole.
It was time bending, and me reaching back into a moment that had already existed and experiencing it once again. And so as my son and I sit in the surf and sun, taking in the present moment, we'll also be creating a bridge to the future, because each moment lived shapes the future version of ourselves and the future version of our relationship. And thinking about this experience as a sort of wormhole to the future, it makes it so clear that the quality of that time is essential, because it's not only lived in the present, it's calling in what we experience tomorrow.
What is it that you not only want to experience, but that you want to call in to your life? How about a pina colada and some coconut shrimp? Today, as we look with anticipation to our upcoming travels, we're going to take you along with this meal.
Pina colada, not shown, but highly recommended. Unless you have a food allergy, you must eat this dish. Crunchy, sweet finger food with tiki bar appeal.
Now, I got these shrimp at the Seafood Market. They're Florida Pinkies, bringing a real spring break vibe here. These have not been peeled and deveined, so I'm going to walk you through that really quickly. If you buy deveined shrimp, you can absolutely skip this step. The easiest way to do this is to kind of do it in an assembly line fashion. First, peel the shells off all the shrimp.
You can decide if you're team tail on or tail off. Normally, I'm team tail on, but I will say having made these, I would probably go for tails off, so you don't have to decipher between the crunch of the coconut and the crunch of the tail as you bite into it. So once all of the shrimp have been shelled, take a paring knife and very gently run it along the curved side of the shrimp.”
That will expose the digestive tract, which you're just going to pull out with the knife, like you're pulling out a string. Do that with all of them, and then put them in a bowl and rinse them off with really cold water. Now we're going to set up a breading station, or in this case, a coconut-ing station.
Now grab three bowls. In the first bowl, I want you to put some flour, and I want you to season it with salt and pepper, a little bit of paprika, and some cayenne pepper. In the second bowl, we're going to put egg whites, and in the third bowl, we're going to put sweet coconut, and we're going to add in just a little bit of flour.
Then pat dry the shrimp, season them with a little bit of salt and pepper and move them through that coconut-ing station. First, dredging them in the flour, then dipping them in the egg, and then covering them with coconut. Once you've done that with all of them, set them aside and grab a sauté pan.
We're going to pan fry them in batches. So the bigger the pan, the fewer the batches. Now let your pan get nice and hot, and then add in an oil that could hold a high temperature, like a peanut oil.
You want the oil to be about a half an inch deep. You'll see the oil start to almost ripple, and that's when you know it's hot enough to start frying your shrimp. Using tongs, carefully put them one by one into the pan.
You should be able to fit around six to eight. Let them cook for about a minute until they're golden on the bottom, and then gently flip them over to cook for another minute and a half on the other side. Now these are Florida pinkies, so they're already pink, but most shrimp have a sort of gray tail that will turn pink when they're done.
Go ahead and remove the cooked shrimp from the pan, put them on a paper towel lined plate, and sprinkle them with salt. Because the pan with the oil will likely have coconut remnants that will burn if we reuse that oil, we're going to very carefully pour that oil from the pan into a stainless steel bowl to cool. And we're going to put fresh “oil in that sauté pan.
Once that oil is rippley, put shrimp in and repeat the process. Once you're done cooking and the oil in that stainless steel bowl is cool, you can toss it in the trash. Definitely don't put it down the drain and don't work with it while it's hot.
If you'd like, you could make a little bit of a salsa, chop up some pineapple, some cilantro, green onions, and maybe a splash of lime, and you could serve that along with the shrimp. You don't need to travel far to take in this island vibe. This meal brings it right to you.
The experiences I've had with my family have taught me about the fragility of life and the elusiveness of our time together. And it's made me ever more aware of time's passage. There's this 80s song, Nothing is Going to Break My Stride, that I feel like should be the anthem for everyone, because time requires forward motion.
Now moving forward can certainly be at island time, relaxed, unwinding, unencumbered with worry. We could speak this language of love, slowly and intentionally creating a bridge to the future. One day becoming a flicker “of a memory, like that woman I saw at the restaurant bar, a hologram of who I was and who I am, ultimately portraying who I'll become.
The best part of all of this is that we get to choose how we meet the moment. If in fact, the past, present, and future all co-exist simultaneously, we get to live them all right now. Until our next episode, I say so long.
Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.