Another Saturday in Tampa Bay: Pepperfest and Sawgrass Lake Park

Saturday (yesterday) hubby and I went to "Pepperfest". Seems there is always some kind of food festival happening in Florida. This one featured spicy sauces: salsas, hot sauces, bbq sauces, most from local Florida vendors, all for the sampling and purchasing. Many of the products have won awards. It was a fairly small event; about 20 - 25 vendor booths. We sampled many, many sauces - built up quite a burn. About half way through, we treated ourselves to a frozen banana dipped in peanut butter to help clear the palette.

One of the most fun aspects of hot sauces is the inventive product names. Here are some of the sauces from yourhotsaucecompany.com (they like politically oriented names):

• Weapon of Mouth Destruction (WMD)
• Obama Trauma
• McCain in my Ass
• Bush & Dick Hot Sauce
• Al Gore's "I Invented Hot Sauce" Hot Sauce
  

And a special shout out to a local vendor for their "Pittsburgh Sucks" (anti-Steelers themed) hot sauce. "Bing" it - you can find it from several retailers.

A couple other vendors of note, whose products we liked:

• www.intensityacademy.com (chai thai teriyaki sauce and chai curry chup ketchup)
• www.legendsbbq.com (nice bbq sauces)
• www.heymonsauces.com (we purchased a spicy mango sauce from them)
• www.briarwoodfarmherbs.com (makers of herbal infused vinegars, rubs, honeys, and more; we purchased some spice mix packets)

Afterwards, we went to the nearby Sawgrass Lake Park, which is 400 acres of maple swamps, with boardwalk and dirt trails. We saw a couple gators, several turtles, birds, snakes (Florida kingsnake), birds, and of course geckos.

We had a strange encounter with a squirrel. We were walking along the boardwalk, and this squirrel started walking towards us. It has this strange look in its eye. It kept coming closer and closer. All I could think of was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that this was some kind of "Killer Squirrel", and me without my holy hand grenade. Well, it came within about 2 feet of us, then climbed up and sat on the rail with its paws out. Another disaster successfully averted. Phew.

I tried taking some pictures with my camera phone. The camera in my phone is not the best, but here you go.

Always good advice:

One of the gators we saw. Hard to tell size from the picture, but it was pretty big. We did not feed or molest:



Somewhere in here there is a snake:



Thought this tree was pretty cool ...


That's it for now. Until next time....