Touring Tampa's Tasty Temptations

Touring Tampa on Day 9 of our trip revealed some really interesting stuff to us.
After spending most of Friday driving a couple of hundred miles all over the area, we knew where we wanted to zoom in to. We decided to spend at least part of the day on our shared passion...food and nutrition. So where do we head first? A fast food place called EVOS! Fast food..WHY? 'Cause it's healthy fast food...well, as we soon discovered, sort of. The deal is these folks seem to be offering a "healthy" alternative to Micky D's, etc, when in fact, it's really only a sort of less bad alternative. They definitely are targeting the Whole Foods crowd, but if you start asking specific questions about ingredients the Boogie Man pops up. The menu's pretty straight forward, Burgers (from the menu, "naturally raised beef""hormone/anti-biotic free"), fries (air baked), shakes (again from the menu, "low fat organic milkshakes"), and other fast food stuff like chicken strips, wraps, and salads. Sounds good and healthy, right? Ok, here's the lowdown. The shakes, except for vanilla, all contain the, by now, infamous and dreaded HFCS, high fructose corn syrup. We have yet to see HFCS listed as an organic ingredient in anything calling itself "organic." They have a ketchup bar, filled with lots of neat flavors...all using HFCS too. They serve coke (HFCS) products, which is really ok, since they also offered, as an alternative, organic soft drinks from our Santa Fe friends at Blue Sky Sodas. We find all this a bit inconsistent. Why don't they offer organic ketchup and other condiments and charge a little more. We think many people wouldn't mind paying the upcharge. So who are these people trying to please. We guess the same people who shop at Whole Foods and trust everything they're buying is "healthy." The difference is Whole Foods doesn't claim that something they sell is "organic" when it contains obviously non organic ingredients. The food was tasty, but nowhere in the restaurant could we find a list of ingredients. We don't know how much fat we ate, how much sodium, or other not so healthy things were in our food. If you say you're "healthy" the question becomes, what does that word really mean? Nice try, but these folks have a way to go before we'll want to visit again! On a lighter note, we also visited a total of four heath food stores, and found all of them to be well stocked and fun places to shop...and they were ALL busy! Tampa's a health nut town. There were two most interesting surprises in the grocery store category too. The first was the Publix Greenwise store, near downtown. It's been opened since 2008 and is a cross between a Whole Foods store and a Texas Central Market (for those of you who know what that means). This place rocks! Gourmet cheeses, wines, produce, fish, meats, all displayed beautifully, and bountifully. What a concept! There are only three of them so far, Tampa, Boca Raton, and Palm Beach, but we guess there will be more soon.The second was a store we 'd never heard of called GFS Marketplace. Seems this chain is based in Michigan and offers an interesting mix of bulk type groceries at low prices and restaurant supply type items. It's a little hard to explain. You just have to be there to see it for yourself. Another very cool discovery in South Tampa is Pane Rustica on Macdill Avenue. By day, this tasty looking place is a casual bakery style restaurant and take out. All breads and pastries are made in house and the oven is the size of a bedroom. Amazing breads!! At night, it turns into an upscale eatery, featuring dishes like (again from the menu), "Red wine, porcini, and potato bisque with chive cream" or "Fennel seared salmon, toasted Israeli cous cous, sun dried tomatoes, artichoke, olives, arugula, blood orange butter sauce." This place rocks too. In fact, Tampa rocks! We have enjoyed the people and places here alot, and now we look forward to heading to Miami and visiting with brother Eddie and sister (in-law) Pat....

Three great state parks

Since we left Biloxi, we've driven the roads between there and the Tampa Bay area. The first night out of Biloxi we made it as far as Niceville (it really is!), Florida. Niceville is where the Gannon State Park is located, is about fifteen minutes from Destin and the beaches near there, and is a wonderfully kept wildlife area, full of birds of all kinds. The next day we pushed further around the Big Bend of the Florida Panhandle and stopped for the night at another state park. This one is magnificent and one of the jewels of the Florida Park System, Manatee Springs. This place should be more famous than it is. The park is centered around one of Florida's largest freshwater springs, where you can swim with Manatees if you're there at the right time of the year (mostly winter). We stood on a pier where the spring empties into the Suwannee River (makes me want to start singin' like Al Jolson every time I say that!!) and watched Mullets jump about three feet out of the water (nobody's sure exactly why the hell they do that) and Sturgeon that might be about five feet long, but did not see one alligator......yet. The third state park we stopped at is Little Manatee, right outside of Tampa. We're spending three nights in the area, and on the first one, Thursday, we drove in, hooked Harvey up, unhooked Smarty, and within a few minutes were headed in to take in some of Tampa's nightlife. We drove straight to one of the towns most well known and oldest eateries, The Columbia, because we've eaten at their sister restaurant in Celebration (Orlando) several times and it's been good every time. This time was no exception. Seafood Paella is one of the house house specialties, and it was worth the half hour wait for it to be prepared properly. Friday we started out in the morning and drove about 150 miles from south of St.Petersburg up to Clearwater and the beaches there, then over to Tampa again and dinner again in Ybor City, a hip area which is actually one of the oldest parts of town. The Columbia is there and so is Carmines, an Italian/Cuban place with great food. What was on the menu? Nothing fancy. Just some really good and aldente Spaghetti Marinara...yum! The Cuban part of the meal was a dessert of cafe con leche, traditional dark Cuban coffee, lots of sugar, and lots of steamed milk...yum yum!

Down to the Gulf Coast

After literally eating our way through Lafayette, New Iberia, St. Martin, and the rest of the area, we finally pulled up anchor around noon on Monday and headed down the Gulf Coast for Biloxi. Oh, one more special mention for the foodies is T-Coons in Lafayette. This little diner type place totally ROCKS! Great down home Cajun style cooking for breakfast and lunch. Most places in the area take coffee very seriously, but they go a step beyond here. The first thing you see when you walk in is a gigantic commercial type thermos on every table, loaded with the special local coffee, Mello Joy. The food goes uphill from there. A must do place if you visit. Driving in to Biloxi is a little eerie. The strip of casino hotels is pretty much built back up after being flattened by Katrina. It's only after you turn off the coastal highway and go into town where the devastation is still all around. This town was literally wiped away. Almost all of the buildings now standing are new..and there are quite a few. Seems like a real effort is being made, but there are entire neighborhoods where there is nothing but a street, lighting, and foundations of former homes and businesses to remind that there once was a bustling town here. It will take years of additional effort to bring the whole place back. We don't hear or see much about this on tv, only New Orleans.

La Fay Ette!!

We pulled in to Lafayette, Louisiana at about 2pm on Saturday, after a really scenic drive down from Southeast Texas, where we spent the previous night at The Sam Rayburn Reservoir. From very peaceful and quiet to the heart of Cajun Land in one short drive! If you've never been here, it's hard to decribe. Lafayette is a good size town, you know, one of those that has one of everything...one Best Buy, one Macys, one World Market, instead of a gazillion like in Dallas. In that respect it's pretty normal, that is until you start looking a little closer. Kind of like New Orleans. You start hearing the interesting speech patterns "How you do,Dawlin'"), seeing the spellings of the names (Fontenot, Delatte), turning on the radio and hearing KBON 101.1, blasting Zydeco music into the airwaves 24/7, and the food!! Fawgetaboutit! Crawfish Etouffe, Shrimp Creole, all kinds of Gumbo, Grilled Redfish, and that's just the appetizer assortment!! These people live to eat. THAT is why we decided to stop off for more than a day on our journey. There's too much food here for a quick stopover. We tried that about a year and a half ago and vowed to come back for another helping. Here we are. As we crossed the border between Texas and Louisiana, we had our final organic meal in Harvey and kissed the healthy eating regimen goodbye until further notice. Dinner tonight at POOR BOYS RIVERSIDE, so far the definitive Cajun Restaurant for us, started reasonably enough. Grilled Redfish for me, a huge bowl of seafood gumbo for Mary Ann, homemade melt in your mouth scratch dinner rolls, and all the sides. Then came dessert. Sweet Potato Beignets. Doesn't sound too interesting? Just stick your fork in, and you won't come up for air until you've finished one. It turns out these are the creation of our server, Dee Dee's husband, Cleve Sonnier. It turns out that he won first prize for these at the annual Yamboree in Opelousas, La (they grow tons of Yams down here!). The smooth outer dough is filled with a custard like cream of whipped yams, eggs, and flour. Then it's very lightly deep fried and topped with a sauce made with two liquors. Just look at this picture, and you can almost tell that these little fried confections disapperared about as fast as the speed of the camera shutter! I almost ordered another round since I still hadn't finished the deep, dark Community Coffee they serve (very Louisiana indeed), but came to my senses just in time as Dee Dee asked if she could bring anything else.

The BIG day is here!

It's 7:58 am, and we're doing the final check of "what'd we forget!" All that's left to do is hook Harvey and Smarty up (that takes all of about 60 seconds with our amazing Sterling hitch!) and head down US 175 toward Nacogdoches, Tx which has the distinction of being the town where the Marx Brothers act was born. You can Google that for details or copy and paste this:
(http://www.texasescapes.com/ClayCoppedge/Marx-Brothers.htm)
After that, we'll keep heading in a Southerly direction until we reach the Sam Rayburn Reservoir, where we'll set up for the night, on the way down to Lafayette, Louisiana on Saturday. The land of Crawfish, Zydeco, and great, friendly people who sound almost like they're from New York (with an Acadiana twist of course). Food? Well tonight we'll most likely "eat in", since we'll be at the lake. Probably a cook out with hot dogs (yes! we're health nuts but we still eat hot dogs sometimes, especially if they're Heart Brand http://www.heartbrandbeef.com/). It's very similar to Kobe. They have very little saturated fat and most of that is the "healthy" kind, like in olive oil. They still do have a little bit of nitrites...but we'll overlook that because they taste so good!! Unfortunately it isn't yet available everywhere (we are lucky Texans!), but check the website because a lot of restaurants all over the country who care about what they serve are beginning to order it. We'll check in later, from the road.

The Countdown Has Started

The trip starts on Friday, May 21st. Our pantry and refrigerator are stocked with mostly fresh organic foods, and Harvey has a full tank of fuel (75 gallons at appr. 6 miles to the gallon! At those prices, the "term trailer trash" seems somehow outdated and inappropriate.). Smarty's filled up too and ready to ride caboose (he holds a whopping 9 gallons, gets about 35 mpg in the city...but only burns premium gas/93 octane or higher! After all, he Is a little Mercedes!! Guess Harvey and Smarty kind of balance each other. All systems are solid green, and speaking of green, Mary Ann has her Eileen Fisher organic RV wardrobe put neatly away in the bedroom closet. Sure there will be some fashion photo ops coming! Thursday we'll recheck everything and do a final count to liftoff Friday morning. The chef here is one of our RV mascots, Mario. He's pictured here, begging to come along to cook for us! Stay tuned....

Harvey and Smarty

Meet our "land yacht", Harvey and "dinghy", Smarty!!

Getting ready to head out!

It's late Tuesday night (5-18-2010) and we're preparing for our second big trip in our new motorhome. Our first major sojourn was to Northern California last fall to have Thanksgiving with our family. What started out as a two week trip ended up as four plus weeks, winding through the Central Coast, then down to Palm Springs, and finally home to Texas, eating well, drinking good wine, meeting interesting folks, some of whom are doing the same kind of lifestyle we're living. This time, we're heading the other way on I-10 to Florida. Down one side and up the other! Then, who knows where from there. Some of our friends have asked us to write about our travels because they find it interesting that we can mix heading out on the road for so long with our work. That's right, we are not retired like so many of the other RV'ers we encounter. We both still have "full time" jobs, only we don't work for the man, but only for ourselves. Next stop, far Southeast Texas, on the way to Cajun Country!