Living Our Dream

Day Trip to Sarasota Part I: Der Dutchman Restaurant and the Sarasota Garden Club

Bushnell, FL - Events of Monday, March 2 to Thursday, March 5, 2015

Last Monday afternoon, we had a sudden hankerin' for ribs, so we called Pat and Mike to see if they were interested in going with us to OakWood Grill. Since it was Monday, we all had the rib special (you can get a whole rack of baby back ribs for $13.49 Sundays through Wednesdays). They were delish as usual!

Margery, Paul, Pat and Mike

With nice weather finally in the forecast for most of last week, we decided to take a day trip to Sarasota on Thursday to have the breakfast buffet at Der Dutchman Restaurant and to do a little sightseeing. The reason we waited until Thursday was because one of the things we wanted to see is only open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. More about that in our next post.

As most of our regular readers know, Der Dutchman in Walnut Creek, Ohio, is one of our favorite restaurants anywhere. The company that owns Der Dutchman owns 5 or 6 restaurants in Ohio plus Das Dutch Essenhaus in Middlebury, Indiana. A few years ago, they bought a restaurant in the Pinecraft area of Sarasota and brought it under the Der Dutchman banner.

Der Dutchman in Sarasota

Pinecraft is a snowbird community for Amish and Mennonites. While a few Amish and Mennonites reside in Pinecraft year 'round, large numbers of them come from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana in winter to escape the cold.

The Amish arrive by bus, so there are no horses and buggies. Bicycles and adult tricycles are the preferred means of transportation. There were plenty of bikes parked outside the restaurant, and there was a young couple and their two children who were just leaving as we arrived.

Young couple leaving with more bikes parked in the background

We had the breakfast buffet ($8.99) which includes a couple kinds of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, French toast, pancakes, biscuits and sausage gravy, a couple of kinds of potatoes, fried mush, grits, hot and cold cereal, fresh fruit, frozen fruit slush, pudding, breakfast pastries and more. Everything was yummy, and we ate way too much. We'll be watching our carbs for the rest of the week.

Margery with one of our favorite breakfast pastries - a cream stick

After breakfast, we made a stop at a bulk food store that was located right next door to Der Dutchman and at another one just down the street because Margery needed some cooking herbs and spices. Now that she's spending more time cooking and enjoying all her additional kitchen counter space, she wanted to make sure to have a good stock of potential ingredients.

Margery checking out supplies at the bulk food store

After visiting the bulk food stores, we drove a few miles south to stop at Hobby Lobby to pick up some craft supplies. From Hobby Lobby, we headed to the offices of the Sarasota Garden Club where we visited their display garden.

Sarasota Garden Club

They have a nice garden right there at the outskirts of the downtown area of Sarasota.

Beautiful urban garden at the Sarasota Garden Club

Margery on the garden path

The garden isn't huge, but they managed to fit a lot into the space available. There was even an Oriental-style garden.

Oriental garden

Interesting display of color and texture

With spring starting here in Florida, there were a good number of perennials in bloom.

Some of the many perennials in bloom

We spent over half an hour wandering around, taking photographs and enjoying the views.

A final view of the garden

We finished up at the Sarasota Garden Club a little before 1:00 and drove a few blocks to our next destination. We'll tell you all about it in our next post.

World of Chocolate Museum

Bushnell, FL - Events of Thursday, February 26, 2015

As we said in our last post, we have been wanting to get out to do some sightseeing, but the weather hasn't been very nice. It's been cloudy and/or rainy and/or cool and/or windy for most of the past couple of weeks. Therefore, we came up with something to do indoors. Last Thursday, we took a day trip to Orlando to visit the World of Chocolate Museum and Cafe.

We found out about the World of Chocolate through Groupon, which is a website that offers discount gift certificates for various local and national businesses. The discounts include all sorts of goods and services like restaurants, spas, things to do, household goods, home improvement, clothing and more.

The World of Chocolate Museum has displays on the history of chocolate as well as exhibits of chocolate sculptures. The regular admission price is $16.95, but we paid $10 each through Groupon. Admission also includes samples of chocolate from various locations around the world.

World of Chocolate Museum and Cafe

We arrived around 12:20. Unfortunately, the website for the museum doesn't mention all tours are guided, and that they start every hour on the hour. Had we known, we would have timed our arrival a little differently. We had 40 minutes to kill, so we hung around outside a little while (it was cloudy, but it wasn't raining) and we browsed the goodies for sale in the cafe. There were cakes and tarts, most of which feature chocolate in some form.

Cakes and tarts for sale in the cafe

There were also individual pieces of chocolate.

Individual pieces of chocolate available in the cafe

While the goodies all looked delicious, we were able to resist because they were all a bit pricey. The cakes and tarts were $5.45 each, and the chocolates were $1.98 each.

The tour started with a short video on the production of chocolate. Chocolate comes from the seeds of cacao trees, which grow in tropical climates. Most of the cacao used to produce chocolate today comes from west Africa with some also being grown in Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico.

Cacao fruits, called pods, each contain 20 to 60 seeds. After the pods are cut from the trees, the seeds (also called beans) are removed and allowed to ferment for 5 to 7 days. This fermentation is what develops the chocolate flavor. After fermentation, the beans are dried and prepared for shipment.

There is archeological evidence of chocolate usage in Mexico as far back as 1900 BC. Crushed cacao beans were mixed with chili peppers and water making a frothy, bitter, spicy drink. Chocolate was so prized by the Aztecs, cacao beans were used as currency.

Chocolate was taken to Europe by the Spanish in the 1500s. At first, chocolate wasn't that popular because the bitter flavor was an acquired taste. Monks discovered the flavor could be improved by adding cane sugar, but they kept the recipes for the sweetened chocolate drink to themselves for almost 70 years.

Our tour guide explaining the history of chocolate

Once the Spanish nobility found out about sweetened chocolate in the early 1600s, the popularity of chocolate grew and its use began to expand to other parts of Europe. At that time, chocolate was still being used only as a beverage. Chocolate didn't make the transition to its solid form until the mid-1800s.

Today, Switzerland tops the list of per capita chocolate consumption at an average of over 23 pounds per person per year. The United States doesn't even make the top ten list for chocolate consumption. We're down around 15th.

The museum had a few pieces of old equipment used to make chocolate, but they didn't go into great detail on the process. Maybe that's because most modern equipment and processes are proprietary. They did say the processing of chocolate was very labor intensive, and the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s mechanized a lot of the work and made chocolate much more affordable.

Next, the tour moved into the room that contained the chocolate sculptures. The sculptures are solid chocolate, and the largest weighs well over 300 pounds. Although the room is kept cool, the sculptures have a finite shelf life. After 4 or 5 years, the chocolate will dry out and start to crack and will have to be replaced. Although the museum has only been open a couple of years, one of their earliest sculptures has already had to have cracks repaired.

One sculpture we recognized right away was Mount Rushmore from our "home" state of South Dakota. The sculpture is made from milk chocolate with dark chocolate for the trees.

Mount Rushmore

The photo below of Margery looking at Big Ben gives an idea of scale. Incidentally, Big Ben is not the name of the building, the tower or even the clock. Big Ben is the nickname of the clock's bell. The building is the Palace of Westminster, and the tower is officially known as Elizabeth Tower.

Margery looking at Big Ben

The Taj Mahal is sculpted from white chocolate. White chocolate technically isn't real chocolate because it doesn't contain cocoa solids. It contains cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids.

Taj Mahal from white chocolate

The museum began using advanced techniques on some of their more recent sculptures. They have added food coloring and they airbrushed darker chocolate onto white chocolate backgrounds to obtain shaded effects.

Later sculptures have color and shading added

From the sculpture room, we headed to the room we had all been waiting for - the tasting room. There were 9 different chocolates from around the world available for tasting.

Chocolate samples in the tasting room

Although the chocolate samples were cut into tiny pieces and guests were asked to not to take more than two or three pieces at a time, we could go back for seconds, thirds or even fourths if we wanted. We spent at least 15 or 20 minutes sampling all 9 flavors, some of them numerous times. Paul's favorite was a coffee infused chocolate from the United States, and Margery's was a dark chocolate containing orange and almonds.

After the tour, we browsed some of the chocolate bars for sale in the gift shop.

Margery checking our some of the chocolate bars in the gift shop

Although the Industrial Revolution made chocolate more affordable, GOOD chocolate is still pretty expensive. Most of the bars were only about 2.5 to 3.5 ounces, and prices started at around $6 and went up to over $10.

We enjoyed the World of Chocolate Museum, especially the samples. We thought it was well worth it for the $10 Groupon price; but a bit expensive at the regular cost of $16.95 UNLESS you want to become a connoisseur of delectable, specialty chocolate from world-renowed chocolatiers.

From the chocolate museum, we headed back to Blueberry Hill by way of Clermont. There is a barbecue restaurant in Clermont we have been wanting to try, so we stopped there for lupper. Uncle Kenny's BBQ is located in a small plaza off US 27 (accessible via Citrus Tower Blvd.).

Uncle Kenny's BBQ

Margery inside Uncle Kenny's

We both had a pulled pork plate with cole slaw and potato salad. The pork wasn't real smoky, but it was nice and tender and moist. There were 4 sauces available - original, hot, vinegar and mustard. Original was a molasses-based sauce that was thick and sweet. We both thought the vinegar-based sauce was excellent. It was tart with a hint of sweetness. The cole slaw and potato salad were pretty good, too.

Back at Blueberry Hill, we spent most of the rest of the week and weekend relaxing. We still had some things we wanted to do for which we needed nice weather, and the forecast was finally looking good for the following week.

And Still Another Project

Bushnell, FL - Events of Saturday, February 21 to Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Blueberry Hill had another of its yard sales on Saturday the 21st. We sometimes participated in the yard sales in the past with tepid results at best, but this year we had much more stuff than usual to get rid of since we just moved from a motor home to a 5th wheel. We did quite well at the sale in January in spite of the fact there was rain earlier in the morning.

Even though we sold a lot of things in January, we still had a lot of stuff to get rid of. The weather for the February yard sale was sunny with only a light breeze. There was an excellent turnout, and we had another good day. When the sale started, we had stuff lined up almost all the way across the front of our site. By the time it was over, we had whittled things down to only a few items.

Paul at the Blueberry Hill yard sale

There will be another yard sale in March, but most of the snowbirds will have left by then. Therefore, we'll donate most of what we have left to Goodwill so we don't clutter up the shed with a bunch of stuff we'll never use.

We were just hanging around the 5th wheel on Monday when Pat and Mike called to see if we wanted to go to Beef O'Brady's with them and two other couples later that afternoon to take advantage of Burger Monday. It was a nice afternoon of good food and great company.

Mike, Pat, Linda, Jim, Margery, Marilyn and Jim at Beef O'Brady's

The rest of the week was cloudy with a chance of rain. Paul used one of the rainy days to work on an indoor project. The sliding shower doors in the new 5th wheel are clear glass. The motor home had privacy glass, which we prefer because the clear glass is much more difficult to keep clean. We asked about the possibility of getting privacy glass when we ordered the 5th wheel, but clear was the only thing available.

 

Clear glass doors before

When researching ways to convert our shower doors to privacy glass we found static cling vinyl window film. It is available in various sizes and patterns. Although cutting the film accurately to get a good fit can be time consuming, the film is relatively easy to install.

After cutting the film to fit, you clean the glass thoroughly then spray a dilute solution of dish detergent on the glass to enable the film to slide around and be properly positioned. Then a stiff squeegee is used to smooth the air bubbles and excess water from behind the film.

Paul smoothing out air bubbles using a squeegee

After - textured vinyl film applied

We really like the shower doors a lot better with the privacy film applied. Time will tell how well it holds up.

We have been ready for some sightseeing for the past couple of weeks, but the weather doesn't seem to be cooperating. Therefore, we have come up with something to do indoors. Stay tuned.