Living Our Dream

Two New Restaurants and a New Take on an Old One

Wauchula, FL - Events of Friday, May 31 to Wednesday, June 5, 2019

In addition to whatever else we're doing be it Co-op meetings and activities, Co-op projects, or our own projects, we inevitably have to run errands - doctor appointments, grocery shopping, clothes shopping, haircuts, buying materials for crafts and projects, etc. When we run errands, we frequently like to schedule them so we can stop at a restaurant while we're out. We normally go to one of our old favorites, but we recently tried two new restaurants.

The first new one was Cang Tong Asian Restaurant in Sebring. In addition to many traditional Chinese items on their menu, they also have things like sushi and other Japanese dishes. They also have four hibachi grills where they can put on a show preparing meals in front of their guests.

Cang Tong Asian Restaurant

Dinners at Cang Tong range in price from about $9 to $20, and there are lunch combos served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for $7 to $8 that include an entree, fried rice, and your choice of an egg roll or soup. Since it was before 3, we both had lunch combos with our favorite - General Tso's chicken, fried rice, and egg rolls.

Margery with her General Tso's chicken

Ever since we first started spending winters in Florida in 2007, we have been looking for a decent Chinese restaurant without success - at least until now. The General Tso's chicken at Cang Tong was excellent. We will definitely be going back next time we're hungry for Chinese food.

The other new restaurant we tried was Hickory Hollow located in Ellenton right down the road from the Ellenton Premium Outlets. When we go to the outlet mall, we usually go to Anna Maria Oyster Bar, which is also right down the road. However, this time we decided to try Hickory Hollow because it gets 4.5 out of 5 stars on Trip Advisor and because it's been around for over 30 years. Not only that, but Hickory Hollow specializes in barbecue, and we were hungry for barbecue.

Hickory Hollow

We both had small pulled pork platters with cole slaw and mac and cheese for our sides ($11). The platters also include two rather large corn fritters.

Paul with his pulled pork platter

The slaw, the mac and cheese, and the corn fritters were good, but the pulled pork was only so-so. It was moist, almost to the point of being soggy; and it had no smoke flavor and not much flavor of any kind without the barbecue sauce. It also wasn't very tender. The 4.5 rating on Trip Advisor must be for some of their other menu items because it sure wasn't for the pulled pork in our opinion. We scratched Hickory Hollow off our list.

We mentioned we usually go to old favorites when we're out running errands. One of our old restaurants that we really wouldn't call a favorite because we don't go there very often, is Dimitri's in Sebring. We decided to go there for change a week or two ago. 

Dimitri's

Dimitri's menu used to be 7 pages long. It had a very extensive selection of Greek and Italian specialties along with lots of other things like seafood, burgers, hot and cold sandwiches, etc. One reason we hadn't been to Dimitri's in a long time may be that the menu was almost overwhelming, and we always had trouble deciding what to order.

We were happy to see Dimitri's now has a new menu. Their selection is still big, but the menu has been reduced from 7 pages to 4. The look of the new menu is also less cluttered making it much easier to read.

Although we weren't familiar enough with the old menu to be able tell which items had been eliminated, it looks like the classic Greek and Italian dishes and the seafood are still there, and they still have at least some of the sandwiches and burgers. We did notice right away, however, they had actually added a several new items, namely 6 or 8 different flatbreads.

Dimitri's has a pizza shop right next to the entrance to the main restaurant, but you can't order pizza in the restaurant. They feel serving pizza in several different sizes with all the topping choices would cause too much confusion in the restaurant with its already extensive menu, so they have always kept the pizza shop separate. The only way to get pizza was to order it in the pizza shop and take it home or eat it at one of the tables out on their deck.

With the regular menu now reduced, Dimitri's has added flatbreads from the pizza shop to the restaurant menu. The flatbreads are a way to satisfy customers' desire for a pizza-like item without having to deal with all the different combinations of pizza sizes and toppings in the restaurant since the flatbreads only come in one size and the toppings are pre-determined.

Paul ordered a Tuscany flatbread ($10) with mild Italian sausage, mozzarella, spinach, and roasted red peppers. Margery was a little unsure of what to expect with the flatbread, so she ordered a grouper finger basket ($10), which we've had before, and which we knew would be excellent. The baskets come with slaw and fries. Paul agreed to share a couple of pieces of his flatbread with Margery in exchange for one of her grouper fingers and some of her fries.

Margery with her grouper fingers

The Tuscany flatbread looked so good Margery was already helping herself while Paul was still trying to take a picture.

Tuscany flatbread

The grouper fingers were as good as they always are. The fish is tender and flaky and the battered coating is nice and crisp.

The Tuscany flatbread is pretty to look at with the red peppers and the green spinach, but the flavor is even better! The crust isn't too thick, and it's a little crisp and a little chewy at the same time. The sweetness of the red peppers is a nice contrast to the saltiness of the sausage and mozarella. We may not have gone to Dimitri's too often in the past, but we are already looking for an excuse to go back and have more flatbread.

A Couple of Park Model Projects, a Craft Project, and Freeway the Lizard Hunter

Wauchula, FL - Events of Wednesday, May 22 to Wednesday, June 5, 2019

In our last post we wrote about a break we took from projects to visit the Naples Botanical Garden. Afterward, Paul was back working on projects.

We have a cupboard in the hallway of our park model where we store pantry items that we don't have room for in the kitchen cupboards. The hall cupboard is two feet deep making it very hard to see what's in back. Margery frequently had to take numerous items out just to find the one thing she was looking for.

Hall pantry

In order to provide better access to things in the hall pantry, Paul built roll-out shelves similar to those he built last year for our printers in the cupboard across the hall. The big difference is that the pantry roll-outs have higher sides and an even higher back to keep stacked items from falling off. Paul was able to use wood left over from the furniture project he recently finished, so the only expense was for the heavy-duty, full-extension drawer slides.

Roll-out shelves added to the hall pantry

Since there was still more wood left over from building the furniture, Paul used some of it to also add a shelf to the cabinet in the living room over the TV. Not only does this cabinet house our cable modem and wireless router, we also use the bottom shelf to store a lot of smaller items to which we like to have easy access because of the cabinet's convenient location right by the door. The problem is, there were so many things on the bottom shelf that they were piled on top of each other.

The project was fairly simple. There was much more time spent waiting for the stain and finish to dry than actually doing the cutting and fitting. The addition of the new shelf helps things stay separated, which makes it easier to quickly grab what we want.

Bottom shelf in cabinet over the TV before

Cabinet over the TV after the new shelf was added

Margery has been busy reading and has been very busy crocheting. Live Oak Church, which is the church we attended when we spent our winters at Blueberry Hill RV Resort in Bushnell, is very active in Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child. Operation Christmas Child is a charity that sends shoe boxes full of gifts, including the greatest gift of all - the Gospel message, to needy children around the world.

Not only do the members of Live Oak Church purchase items and fill large numbers of shoe boxes on their own, the church also has a workshop with volunteers who meet once or twice a week to make wooden toys to go into the shoe boxes. A number of the ladies, Margery included, crochet hats to go into the boxes. Even though we have moved two hours farther south and now attend a different church, Margery continues to make hats throughout the year and sends them off to Live Oak Church in late fall. Below is an example of one of the hats.

One of the hats Margery makes for Operation Christmas Child

A few weeks ago, Margery found an idea online to wind yarn onto cardboard toilet paper or paper towel tubes, and place the tubes onto a floor-stand toilet paper holder. As you crochet and unwind the yarn from the tube the tension remains much more constant than when unwinding yarn from a skein or ball.

We started saving toilet paper and paper towel tubes, and Margery started winding the yarn onto them. The problem with the cardboard tube is the amount of yarn you can put onto it is somewhat limited because the yarn tends to fall off the ends, especially when the end of the tube gets squished.

Paul, the engineer, came up with an answer to the problem. He made spools from pieces of 1½" PVC pipe with cut-down adapter fittings on each end. He glued flanges made of thin PVC to the adapter fittings. The flanges were cut from pieces of mobile home skirting left over from when Paul put skirting on the shed a while back.

Each spool holds a whole skein of yarn. We even bought a second toilet paper holder so Margery wouldn't have to steal the one from the bathroom every time she wants to crochet. The next photo shows Margery using her yarn holder with Freeway sitting in his favorite spot next to her.

Margery using one of her new yarn spools while Freeway keeps her company

Speaking of Freeway, we want to share the story of how he helped track down a renegade lizard that had gotten into our park model. Florida has loads and loads of little lizards scurrying around everywhere. People sometimes call them geckos, but although there are geckos in Florida, the lizards they are generally referring to are anole lizards. There seems to be great disagreement on whether the name is pronounced "an-OLE" or "an-OLE-ee," so take your pick.

Male anoles have a flap of skin under their neck called a dewlap, which they display to attract females or to establish their territory among other males. Anoles get to be 6 to 7" long. Below is a photo of an anole displaying his dewlap that Paul took some time ago.

Anole displaying his dewlap

When Paul was working on cutting and fitting the shelf for the cabinet over the TV, he had to made several trips in the back door to take dimensions and back out again to make the necessary saw cuts to zero in on the proper fit. Margery was sitting quietly in the living room either reading or crocheting when Freeway suddenly got up and started snorting in a basket we keep by the back door where we put items that need to be taken out to the shed. He then ran to the bedroom and scurried between the bed and the bedside table. Paul grabbed a flashlight to see what it was that Freeway was chasing. Sure enough, Freeway had an anole cornered under the bedside table. The lizard must have darted in unseen during one of the times Paul was going in or out while working on his project.

Anoles eat mostly bugs, which means they're actually somewhat beneficial. Although they'll bite if cornered, they're normally not aggressive. Not only that, but don't have teeth and their bite isn't very strong, so their bite doesn't even hurt. However, we didn't want to see an anole scoot across the floor while we were sitting there watching TV, and we really didn't want to take a chance on having one run across either of our faces while we were sleeping, so having an anole in the park model was highly undesirable.

After considering several options of how to get rid of the anole, Paul ended up grabbing several pieces of leftover plywood from the shed. He laid down barriers on both sides of a path between the bedroom and the back door. With a little encouragement, the little fellow made his way out the door. We were very thankful for Freeway, our little lizard hunter, for cornering the anole so we could maneuver him back outside. Now we can sleep in peace.