Coastal Living Magazine Features Elbow Cay: The Island Time Forgot

Coastal Living magazine’s current issue features our old stomping grounds of Elbow Cay in the Bahamas in their April travel section. The main settlement on Elbow Cay is Hope Town, where their picturesque  kerosene powered candy striped lighthouse greets guests on arrival in the little harbour. The article is titled “Elbow Cay, The Island Time Forgot.” You can read it in their on-line addition of the magazine and see more pictures of the tropical paradise.

Elbow Cay is located in the Abaco chain of "out-islands" in the northern Bahamas where we lived for ten years on the tiny nearby tropical cay of Lubbers Quarters. For a tour of Elbow Cay and more about Abaco and Lubbers Quarters, please visit my blog Island Time in Abaco.

In conjunction with Coastal Living's article I thought that, since this is a food blog, it would be fun to go to the grocery store on Elbow Cay. So hop aboard my “imaginary” run-about boat and we’ll head to Hope Town. The welcome sign at the entrance of the harbour reminds us to “Slow down, we’re in Hope Town.”

Here is the lovely harbour where power and sailboats are tied up to buoys.

We’ll park our boat at the Hope Town Sailing Club Dinghy Dock and walk to the grocery store. Vernon’s grocery store to be more exact. Vernon happens to be a good friend of ours and I want you to meet him.

Hope Town was founded in the late 1700’s by Loyalist from the United States fleeing the wrath and intolerance of the American Revolution. Their loyalties lay with Great Britain, so they left the victorious United States in order to remain within the British Empire. Wyannie Malone was one of the first loyalist and many of her descendants still live on Elbow Cay, including our friend Vernon Malone. Along the Queens Highway, a narrow concrete main lane that winds its way through the settlement, there are old loyalist’s cottages resembling New England that have been lovingly restored. Here are a couple of examples.

Since we’re going to Vernon’s Grocery, we need to take a right at the Jib, named because it is shaped similar to the head of the sail at the forward end of a sailing sloop.

Ah, here we are at Vernon’s Grocery.

Let’s look and see if he’s open. Stores in the islands close for lunch as well as holidays and Sundays.

We’re in luck. Vernon’s here.

As you can see, island grocery stores stock a little bit of everything, not just food. Vernon is famous throughout Abaco for his homemade Bahamian bread and delicious key lime pies. His motto is “let them eat key lime pies.” Vernon also has a fabulous sense of humor as you can see by his little humorous signs strewn throughout the store.

Here’s a glimpse of Vernon making his signature key lime pies. They are a perfect balance of sweet and tart.  It's smart to buy them the moment you see them on the shelf; otherwise they will be snapped up before your very eyes.

I can personally attest to the fact that the very best Bahamian bread in the Bahamas is made by Vernon. They remind me of the sturdy white loaf my mother made when I was a child. There's nothing better than a club sandwich made with Bahamian white bread. Here are some of his loaves of bread rising in the window of the bakery.

Vernon is a jack-of-all trades and, in addition to be a shop owner and baker, he is also a lay minister of the local Methodist Church. In case you would like to get married, he can perform the ceremony for you. Here is a wedding of a lovely couple who honeymooned in our rental house on Lubbers after Vernon married them on Tahiti Beach on the south end of Elbow Cay.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our imagionary trip to Vernon’s, our favorite island grocery store and bakery, on Elbow Cay in Hope Town in the Bahamas. Don’t forget to take a look at Coastal Living’s April 2011, either by picking up the April 2011 issue or on-line. For more pictures and information about Abaco, Elbow Cay, and Lubbers Quarters, please visit Island Time in Abaco.

A Laid-Back Breakfast at the Abaco Inn on Elbow Cay in the out islands of the Bahamas and visiting with friends at our old home on Lubbers Quarters

There’s no better way to start a lazy Sunday morning that to have breakfast at the laid-back Abaco Inn on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas with old friends. Judy, the manager of the inn and also a friend, greeted our group with steaming pots of coffee and seated us at a large table by the window overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

Anyone for a Bloody Mary or a Mimosa? Or how about Abaco Inn’s house drink, a tropical rum punch called the Bahama Breeze.

Viola was custom making omelets on the breakfast buffet line and the special of the morning was Bahamian Chicken Souse. Souse is a favorite of locals made with chicken, potatoes or noodles, and celery in a spicy, soupy broth seasoned with fiery bird peppers, allspice, and native lime wedges. Here’s an authentic recipe for Chicken Souse.

Wednesday night we visited our old home on Lubbers Quarters where they had a big dinner in our honor. They say you can never go home, but thanks to our friends, we did. The owners of our old house Lazy Days had a big party for us and as you can see, everyone was having fun.

I want to tell you a story of going to dinner at our old house several years ago right after we sold it. When houses are sold in the islands, they are sold completely furnished and all the new owners have to do is bring their toothbrush and that’s how we sold our home Lazy Days. The new owners invited us over for dinner. As we entered the house, nothing had changed except it was no longer our house.

I asked Meakin later if he had a nice time. “No,” he said.

Shocked at his answer, I said, “Well, why not? They are lovely people and Patti cooked a fabulous meal.”

“He was sitting in my chair.”

“I can understand how you feel honey, it’s his chair now and David paid you plenty for it.”

Somehow the story of the chair got out and on this visit (remember, nothing is secret in the islands), David announced that tonight it was once again Meakin’s chair in honor of our visit. The whole evening no one dared to sit in the chair. Here’s Meakin enjoying “visiting” his chair.

Going home to Abaco

My husband Meakin and I followed a dream of living on a tropical island and retired to Abaco in the out islands of the northern Bahamas and lived there for ten years on the tiny private cay (cays are smaller than islands) of Lubbers Quarters. One day when Meakin was 53 he came home from work and announced that he’d quit his job and we were moving to the islands and I had thirty days to sell anything that wouldn’t fit in our house there. As you can imagine, that came as quite a shock to me.

Lubbers Quarters, below, is a lush, tropical paradise comprised of about 300 acres. When we had Lazy Days, our first house built, it was the fourth one on the south end of the cay. It was laid-back living in “de the land of de rum and de coconuts.”

Aerial of the south end of Lubbers Quarters with the Atlantic Ocean at the top

The two houses on the water in the photo below were ours. We built the second one, Sandy Bottoms, on the left when we moved their permanently. Lubbers Quarters is completely surrounded by the protected waters of the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic Ocean is at the top of the photo above. We were about seven minutes from our dock by boat to the six hundred foot drop off point in the Atlantic Ocean where you could catch the big fish - tuna, Wahoo and dolphin fish (Mahi Mahi). Some days when the fish were running, it seemed like they just jumped right in your boat.

When we designed the house, we wanted to make sure we could see the Sea of Abaco from every room in the house, including the bathroom. Below is the view from the kitchen window at Lazy Days where I would stand each day at the cutting board chopping onions, peeling vegetables, and preparing our meals. Not bad - and the frequent rainbows made it even more special. Many days bottle nose dolphins swam by the dock, playing and jumping in unison in the sea and catching needle-nose fish near the shore for their dinner just outside that very window. The boat that you see hanging off of the dock below was our “car” as there weren’t any stores on Lubbers Quarters and there still aren’t today.

View from my kitchen window at Lazy Days

Here’s our small but efficient kitchen pictured below with a tiny walk-in pantry behind the door in the corner. The walls are pine, pickled a soft driftwood gray/white. The house was always open to capture the sea breezes. When we built in 1989, there was no city power and we used solar panels on the roof for electricity. We also had no telephone and cell phones were a thing of the future in a tiny country such as this. The black radio with mike hanging below the copper pan on the cabinet is the VHF, the main means of communications in a boating community such as ours. Jimmy Buffett famously called it “the coconut telegraph” and wrote a tune about it. As the song The Coconut Telegraph goes,

You can hear ‘em on the coconut telegraph,

Can’t keep nothin’ under their hat.

You can hear ‘em on the coconut telegraph,

Sayin’ who did dis and dit,

Dis and dat, dis and dat.

We wanted to live in Abaco, as the song goes, “where everyone knows your name,” but we had no idea that they would also know our business. There’s no such thing as a private conversation on the VHF.

Our island kitchen, small but efficient - VHF radio with mike hanging on the cabinet on the right

We’re going back home to visit friends in Abaco. It will always feel like home to us because we made so many friends and have such wonderful memories of the good times we had there. Lubbers has grown a lot since the early days of our arrival. At the insistence (and might I add persistence) of Meakin, my lovely husband, the government finally agreed to lay an underwater cable from the mainland and dig a ditch in the road around the south end in the stubborn coral rock so we could have city power and telephones. There are over 60 houses on Lubbers today and much of the growth is due to amenities being available.

Our "road" - an old coral path that winds its way around the south end of the cay

Of course Lazy Days isn’t our home any more, but we’ve become great friends with the people we sold it to and they’re having a party for us while we’re there. It should be a wonderful time catching up with old friends, many of whom we’ve known for over twenty years.

As some of you know, I’m in the process of writing a lively memoir. The book is a travel adventure filled with zany characters, funny stories, and all of the wonderful friends we made in Abaco. It includes building a house, boating and fishing tales, entertaining, food and recipes as well as all of the trouble we managed to get into. Yes, trouble. Life isn’t always perfect in paradise.

My other blog, Island Time in Abaco, has lots of pictures of the beautiful settlement of Hope Town, about 10 minutes by boat from Lubbers. The first inhabitants arrived in the 1700’s and were Loyalist to the Queen of England after the Revolutionary War in the States. A barrier reef, just off shore of the settlement, protects miles of beautiful white sand beach and the clear turquoise water is filled with tropical fish and dolphin. This gorgeous, candy striped lighthouse, built in 1863, dominates the harbor filled with sailboats and trawlers, bobbing at anchor in the water.

Candy stripped lighthouse in Hope Town, Abaco, The Bahamas

We’ll be back before you know it, but while I’m gone I won’t be able to drop by your blogs for a visit as I usually do. I’ll miss you all, so take care, stay warm and I’ll see you soon.

I think I’ll just let Alan Jackson describe the islands of Abaco for you on this video in an interview with him where he sings the catchy tune he wrote and consequently sang on an album about his own personal visit to Abaco - Laid Back ‘n Low Key. If you like Alan Jackson, this is a "do not miss" video. Click this link and sing along with Alan and think of us going home “Down in Abaco.”

Laid back ‘n low key

You and me on that white powdered beach

Side by side with the sand and the sea

Laid Back 'n Low Key

Gentle roar of a wave on the shore

Makes its way through the crack ‘neath the door

Wake up call from the ocean floor

Down in Abaco

Junkanoo Festival - held on Boxing Day in the Bahamas

Junkanoo is a national festival in The Bahamas, held in the early morning hours of Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. During the Junkanoo parade, a procession of dancers in brightly colored costumes “rush” through the streets, singing and making music on goat-skin drums, cowbells, conch shell horns and whistles.

Today is Pink Saturday and I want to thank Beverly of How Sweet the Sound for hosting this fun event. Please be sure to drop by How Sweet the Sound where you’ll find links to other Pink Saturday bloggers.

The revelers, both young and old, spend all year pasting their costumes together, many of which are made out of cardboard covered in colorful crepe paper.

Spectators join in the celebration, singing and dancing to make it a big street party.

The origin of the word Junkanoo is unknown. Some say it comes from the French word “L-inconnu,” meaning the unknown in reference to the masks worn by the parade participants.

Others believe it was named for John Canoe, an African tribal chief who demanded the right to celebrate with his people during the 16^th and 17^th centuries after being brought to the West Indies as slaves.

The slaves were given a special holiday during Christmas when they could leave the plantations to celebrate and be with their families with African dance, music and costumes. After emancipation, they continued the tradition and Junkanoo has evolved from its simple origins to organized parades with intricate costumes and music.

These photos were taken at the Junkanoo festival on Green Turtle Cay in Abaco, in the northern Bahamas.

It’s my (blog) birthday party and I’ll go where I want to

It’s my party and I’ll go where I want to, go where I want to, go where I want to. You would go too when it happens to you.

Welcome to My Carolina Kitchen’s first birthday. My other blog, Island Time in Abaco, is also one year old. I’ve decided to celebrate by taking you on a virtual trip down memory lane to a pink birthday party at one of my all time favorite places in the world - Wally’s Restaurant in Marsh Harbour, Abaco. Located in a pink and white Nassau-style Colonial villa overlooking the harbour, its grounds are dotted with pink hibiscus and bright rosy pink bougainvillea. It’s a balmy 75 degrees there today and I have friends waiting, so grab your passports, throw your sunglasses and flip-flops in straw bag, and hop on board. You take the window seat so you can so enjoy the view. Isn’t that a gorgeous private beach?

We’ll land at the Marsh Harbour International Airport in the northern Bahamas where we’ll take a taxi to Wally’s.

Hi ladies, it’s great to see you. How have you been? We’re meeting friends, so we’ll just go on in.

Hi Pattie, Penny, Barometer Bob. Hope we haven’t kept you waiting too long. I’ve brought along a few friends. Notice the Haitian art work on the pink walls. Even the tablecloth and napkins are pink. Wally's is one of the most upscale restaurants in the islands.

Every time we come to Wally’s the first thing my husband does is to give Wally's daughter Maureen, the owner, a great big hug. Hi Mo. Maureen attended the Cordon Bleu and returns to Paris each fall for a visit.

Hi Angie, our usual, please.

Here’s why we came – to share a bite of Wally’s special birthday brownie. One of their specialties, it’s a huge, sinfully rich brownie, smothered with vanilla ice cream, and covered in a dark chocolate sauce, rich whipped cream, and topped with a birthday candle. It comes with extra spoons, so dig in. The brownie is a little hard to see in this picture, but it's in front of me with the candle on it.

Before we leave let’s slip in the boutique and say hello to Angie’s daughter. Maybe I’ll pick up a cute swimsuit and one of those colorful pareos to match. Look around, I’m sure you’ll see something you can’t live without.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our trip to Marsh Harbour. Thank you Beverly of How Sweet the Sound for hosting this fun pink Saturday party. I’ve met so many fabulous people this year blogging that I now call friends. Thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart. Happy Pink Saturday.

These pictures were taken several years ago and reflect how the author remembers Wally’s and her friends.