Y'bor City

We visited Y'bor City over Memorial Day weekend.   It's known as Tampa's National Historic Landmark District.  In the 1880's immigrants came from Spain, Cuba, Italy and Germany to inhabit this area.  Many of the early residents worked in the cigar making industry.  Y'bor City was known as the Cigar Capitol of the World until the 1930s.

We spent some time walking around the area, taking in the old buildings and streets.  Now Y'bor City is filled with many different restaurants, touristy shops, cigar shops, and a few random roosters walking around...

Chihuly Collection

A few Saturdays ago we went to the Morean Art Center in St. Petersburg to see the Chihuly Collection.  It was pretty amazing!

We'll let the pictures do the talking...

Blender Recipe Fail

We got a Blendtec blender, and have loved using it for many things- but the first recipe we tried out of their recipe book was an epic fail.

The recipe was for spinach whole wheat pasta.  It didn't start off too bad, it looked like dough. 

It all started to fall apart when we tried to roll it out.  We used a bunch of flour, and then rolled the dough out. But, no matter how much flour or how many times we tried rolling it out it wouldn't work.  The dough kept sticking to the cutting board.

So, we decided we should just throw them into the pot.  Jake thought we should make spatzels, so he balled them up and put them in.

Maybe spetzels are great (KC has never had them)- but lumpy spinach pasta was not so great.  The texture was a lot to get past.  We smothered it in meat sauce and cheese, and it was barely edible.

Thank goodness this blender makes great smoothies! ;)

New Recipes

Jake has been working a lot, so KC has spent a lot of time trying out new recipes. Pictures of some of the winners are below. :)

Salmon with lemon and thyme and balsamic green beans

Orange honey chicken and quinoa

Steak, potatoes, and balsamic green bean salad

Cod piccata

Tampa Electric Manatee Viewing Center

On President's Day we went to the Tampa Electric Manatee Viewing Center in Apollo Beach.  After living in Florida since July we hadn't seen manatees up close.  (We think we see a few moving around in the bay near us from our apartment- but that's a far view.)

There were hundreds of manatees just hanging out in the bay.  The Tampa Bay Electric Plant keeps the water warm during the cold months, so a lot of manatees congregate here.  It was fun to see them up close moving around a little.

 

 

After, we walked along another path and we able to see a few sharks jumping and some other big fish.  This was an easy to access, free activity- and now we can say we've seen manatees.  Next up, alligators! ;)

Bella Steals the Show

We went to visit Grandma Pauline two weekends ago down in Cape Coral.  A tornado hit Cape Coral in the beginning of January, and many of the homes still had tarps on their roofs.

We didn't take many pictures of our visit this time, but KC got one of Jake using his "engineering" brain to put the leftover pot roast in a container.  He got it right on the second try...  

Poor Bella hadn't pooped all day so Grandma Pauline fed her pumpkin, and had us bring her on a walk.  We weren't supposed to bring her back until we had "success."  Little Bella was pretty stubborn, and wouldn't go on the first leg of the walk, so Jake had to carry her.

Once we got to the end of the street and turned around, Bella had "success".  And, Jake got to carry that "success" all the way back. ;)

Thank you Grandma Pauline and Bella, for letting us visit.  We had a great time catching up, and are looking forward to the next time!

The Coldest Day in Florida Yet!

The last week of January in Florida- we didn't know HOW cold it would get...  Yep, that's ice!  Thank goodness we had the ice scraper from Minnesota in KC's car.  We saw other people sitting in their cars with the heat on until their windows defrosted.