The man behind the counter at the seafood market on James Island drew our Lowcountry boil on the back of the receipt: potatoes, then sausage, then corn, then shrimp, with the minutes written beside each one and a box around the words TURN IT OFF. That receipt is in the Charleston envelope now, and it's the one piece of paper from this trip I'm keeping for good.
This was our big trip of the year, a full week, Sunday, June 14, through Saturday, June 20. We drove 565 miles each way, through Chattanooga and Atlanta and across Georgia and South Carolina, a little over eight hours of driving if nobody needs a bathroom, which has never once happened. The cooler earned its keep, and we ate our own sandwiches both days on the road. Home base was a rental on James Island, six nights for $1,184 with the cleaning and booking fees, more than everything else on the trip combined. It had a real kitchen, a screened porch and, under the house, a propane burner with a big pot, which turned out to matter.
Shrimp and grits, three ways
Monday breakfast was at a small place on James Island: shrimp over grits with a sausage gravy, the everyday version people eat before work. Jack gave it an 8. That was $52.
Wednesday was our splurge, dinner downtown in an old dining room with white tablecloths, $164 with the tip. The shrimp and grits there came in a smoky ham gravy over grits so creamy Nora was sure they were made with cream. Mostly they weren't. That's what stone-ground grits do. They keep more of the whole corn kernel, so they cook slowly, drink a lot of water and come out tasting like corn instead of like the box. Jack gave it a 9.
The third way was Ryan's, Friday night on the porch, with stone-ground grits from the City Market and shrimp from the same seafood counter. He kept it simple: butter and a little cheese in the grits, shrimp cooked in bacon fat with garlic and lemon. Nora said it was the best of the three. Jack gave it a 9 so nobody's feelings would get hurt.
The boil, the oysters and the market
Tuesday morning we took the boat out to Fort Sumter, and that afternoon we cooked the boil from the receipt drawing on the burner under the house, for just the four of us: three pounds of shrimp, smoked sausage, corn and small red potatoes. Each thing goes in according to how long it needs, so everything finishes together. The shrimp go in last for about three minutes, then you shut the burner off and let it all sit, because that's when the seasoning soaks in. We dumped it on newspaper on the porch table and ate with our hands. Before the newspaper was cold, Ryan had decided we were doing this for the Fourth of July at home. The seafood counter came to $78 for the week, counting Friday's shrimp.
Thursday evening we drove out to an oyster place on a tidal creek, with picnic tables at the water's edge and a screen door that slams. Oysters in June surprised me. South Carolina closes its wild oyster harvest in the summer, when oysters spawn and get thin, so the ones we ate were farm-raised, grown in cages for the summer market. Jack did his one bite of a raw one under our one-bite rule, made a face I'll remember for years and gave it a 3. The fried oysters got a 7. Nora photographed the pelicans coming down over the marsh. That was $74.
The Charleston City Market is a long row of open sheds downtown, and the best part was watching women weave sweetgrass baskets, a Gullah craft passed down for generations. Nora asked before she took any pictures. We spent $19 on benne wafers, thin sesame cookies (benne is an old Lowcountry word for sesame), plus pralines and the grits. Lunch downtown that day was the dish we'd never eaten: she-crab soup, a creamy crab soup with a little crab roe stirred in. Jack, who vetoed it twice on our planning sheet, ate half of mine and gave it a 6. Lunch was $54.
We spent two long afternoons at Folly Beach under a rented umbrella, walked the pier and looked out at the old lighthouse standing in the water off the north end. Everything else came out of the rental kitchen: $171 in groceries for a week of breakfasts, sandwiches and snacks. That kitchen is why our food came to about $22 a person a day here, compared with $40.50 in New Orleans.
What it cost
- Gas: $177 (about 1,300 miles with the island driving, roughly 59.1 gallons at $2.99)
- Lodging: $1,184 (six nights on James Island, cleaning and booking fees included)
- Food: $612 (groceries $171, the seafood counter $78, shrimp and grits breakfast $52, the splurge dinner $164, oysters $74, City Market $19, she-crab soup lunch $54)
- Admissions, parking and beach rentals: $263 (the Fort Sumter boat $122, parking downtown and at Folly $86, chairs and an umbrella $55)
- Total: $2,236
- Food per person: $153, about $22 a day
