Gulf Coast Collective

The Science of Food Pairings

You arrive at the five-star restaurant that you’ve been asking your significant other to take you to for months. You check your coat at the door and follow the maître d’ to your table. You scan the menu reading words like pommes puree, beurre blanc, aioli and béchamel. After…

I see dead people…

I walked into a room with red leather couches, dark walls and a glass fireplace. Quiet harp music was playing and a television was situated up high with a video of a white dove flying in slow motion across the screen. Abstract paintings from a local artist line the walls with big, red…

1 in 250

When Kristen Boyd was 15, she found out she had lupus. She was a high school sophomore living in southwest Florida. It was the day of her AP Environmental Science exam. Her appointment was a two-hour drive away, so she lied to the school in order to leave earlier than expected from her exam. Her teacher was…

Dear young people,

Young people don’t know enough about history and don’t care to know about it. This is normally the opinion of the older generations, but even I notice it.

Older people complain about us constantly. My relatives have always said, “Millennials are so lazy, millennials…

Irma

Here’s what I did for two weeks during Hurricane Irma when school was cancelled: By moving all the furniture upstairs in my townhouse in Fort Myers and covering everything in plastic; by packing my belongings and driving north to my parents’ house in Punta Gorda two days before school was even cancelled because mom…

Walking a mile in her shoes..

During my sophomore year of high school in Punta Gorda, Florida, I got my first job. It was at a locally owned, fine dining restaurant, and the town hub for public officials and business owners. I showed up to the interview in the sweatpants I wore to school that day. This…