Sarasota: Food, Family and Drums

On Father's Day we headed south to Sarasota to meet up with family and visit with Steve's Aunt Mary Therese. She is a nun and lives in Bolivia serving in a girls home. It was nice to catch up and she showed us a video of the work they do in Central America.



At about sunset we headed to the beach for the drum circle. It's a weekly event where people show up with their drums and just start playing and dancing. There were a fair amount of "eccentric people" there so it made for some great people watching.

Ali helps Aunt Weezie with the drumming.

We also made it to Mote Marine for a visit. Our zoo passes are reciprocal so we got in for free (yay for free!). I love this picture of Brooke going nose to nose with this sea turtle. They stared at each other for quite a while and then met back up at the window later for another visit.

Getting up close in the touch tank..

Another highlight of this trip was the food. One of our favorite shows is Man V Food on the Travel Network. The host travels to major cities and tries out crazy food concoctions or takes on food challenges which are usually very large or very spicy or very bizarre in one way or another (and also usually very unhealthy). Sarasota was featured in one of their episodes and we made it to two of those restaurants. The first, The Salty Dog, features a battered and deep fried hot dog. Steve and I split it and while it was very unusual, I think I refer my dogs the regular way.

Then for a late dinner we went to Munchies for the crazy sandwich in the picture below. It's a hoagie roll stuffed with chicken tenders, cheese sticks, hamburgers, onion rings and macaroni and cheese. It was quite ridiculous.

But the main reason we were drawn to this place was their wing challenge. They have some ridiculously spicy wings and if you can eat ten of them you get a free t-shirt and your picture on the wall of fame. Steve has a fascination with spice so he was very intrigued with this wing challenge and tempted to try it out. The host in the TV show only ate 1 1/2 before giving up so he knew it wouldn't be easy. Unfortunately they only allow the challenge before 10 pm and we were there after that. Steve asked if he could try the sauce and after signing a waiver, they gave him one tiny drop. It was enough to to make him cry, sweat, down a couple glasses of water, and excuse himself from the table "just in case". I skipped the hot wings and got these fried Twinkies instead.