Blueberry Ginger Lemonade - biscuits and such
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Blueberry Ginger Lemonade

Blueberry Ginger Lemonade

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Wilmington is known for many things. Its Civil War History, its incredible beaches, its thriving film industry, and its rich collection of fossils. Thanks to a perfect storm of sea level rise, hurricanes, and time treasure hunters flock to Wilmington to search the sand dunes and the sea floor.

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A lot of what is desirable and available are megalodon teeth, giant teeth belonging to prehistoric sharks that lived between 25 million and 1.5 million years ago. The predator megalodons would follow whales to shallow water and attack, shedding hundreds of thousands of teeth in the process (shark teeth break off like our fingernails break off and are constantly regrowing). These then-shallow waters now sit 25+ miles offshore in 90+ feet of water and every hurricane that blows through knocks a bunch of new teeth up for discovery.

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This is all to say that last year the Capt’n (Pappie) acquired some dive site locations for Wilmington megalodon ledges and is taking full advantage of our proximity to these ledges. He’ll be doing dives out of Wilmington throughout the summer, which means we’ll be seeing a lot more of him this summer than I have since I was 19. Which I’m pretty psyched about.

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One Saturday while he and my stepmom were here he offered to do a dinner cruise around Wrightsville Beach on his boat Tortuga, so we invited some friends to join us and headed out for a lovely night on the water. I made fried chicken, shrimp & grits, cole slaw, s’mores bars, and vodka blueberry lemonades. We (my stepmom and I- she is a great sous chef, by the way) also made a beautiful cobb salad but we left it at home. C’est la vie!
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We met our friends Angie and Kevin shortly after we moved and we’ve loved getting to know them. Angie is from Raleigh and we share a lot of favorite childhood memories in places like Jordon Lake and Shackleford Banks and Dan and Kevin share the displaced-Northerners outlook on life in the South, which makes for interesting conversations when we start talking culture. It also helps that Kaylee is obsessed with their dog Mink.

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We putted along, talking food and family and sharing stories. Dad cruised us past the yacht club where his parents lived and worked when he was born, which brought all new meaning to my favorite anecdote of my grandma’s. Apparently that summer when she was pregnant with my dad she’d have my grandpa dig a hole for her in the sand so she could tan her back (sunbathing was a favorite pastime of hers), garnering questions from friends about whether or not she was trying to “fry that baby to (her) backbone.” If I recall correctly he was born past his due-date, so maybe their questions had merit.

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(I know, the ponytail is epic right now)

One of the things that I was most excited about in this move back to North Carolina was getting to spend exponentially more time on the water. And while eventually we’d like to get a boat of our own (we need to get a 4 wheel drive  vehicle first, which will probably only happen once we have kids and officially outgrow our tiny hatchback) I’ll be taking full advantage of having Tortuga Charters docking in our neck of the woods.

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Blueberry Lemonade

Serves 6

Juice of 12 lemons

1 pint blueberries

2 cups sugar

2 cups water

2″ fresh ginger

Tonic

Vodka

Heat sugar, water, and ginger in a saucepan. Simmer until sugar has dissolved. Cool completely.

Muddle your blueberries in the bottom of each glass and top with 1oz simple syrup, 1 oz lemon juice, and 2 oz vodka. Mix well. Top off with tonic, adding more or less depending on how strong you’d like it. I made these in mason jars and stuck them (lids on!) in the cooler, which was the most fantastic way ever to bring mixed drinks on the boat. We’ll be doing this again when we picnic!

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