anthonytrumbo.com

I had two goals for my brief trip to Destin; relax on the beach and eat some great food. I think I have accomplished both as I start getting ready to head back to Nashville tomorrow morning. The above picture captures both as it was taken from the deck of the Back Porch restaurant at lunch today. My beach chair is the first one behind the volleyball net with the blue and white beach towel hanging on the back. I will get to lunch today but decided to post about the meals in chronological order.

Dinner - Friday
Upon arrival in Destin and getting settled in my room, I began my search for a place to eat for the evening. I had already done some searching at home and one of the restaurants on my list of possibilities was Zampieri’s Harbor Grille. Given it was just across the street from the hotel it seemed like a good choice.

Appetizer - Chicken and Andouille Gumbo - Generous amounts of chicken and smoked sausage (smoked in house by the chefs) as well as some fried oysters in a light broth. Unlike many gumbos this was very light on the rice and really highlighted the meats. I didn’t even mind the lack of okra. A very good start.
Entree - Potato Wrapped Grouper - I was pleasantly surprised by the entree. I sort of expected a piece of fish with a potato pancake type encasement. Instead it was completely surrounded by very thinly sliced pieces of potato that seemed almost like a nest. The outside was crispy and the inner layers nice and moist while the grouper was thick and meaty. This was nestled on top of a few stalks of asparagus. The stalks were larger but they were tender from top to bottom. The entree was finished off with a citrus butter.
Dessert - Banana Foster Bread Pudding - Wow, sooo good. The bread pudding was nice and warm and served with a Jameson sauce. Along side the pudding was a piece of carmelized banana and some strawberries and blueberries with whipped cream.

Overall a great way to start the culinary excursions.

Coming soon - Saturday Dinner at McGuire’s Irish Pub, Sunday Lunch at the Back Porch and Sunday Dinner at Vin’tij.

I posted some pics from my beach trip as well as a trip to mammoth caves to my flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/anthonut. The pics in the cave are not that great but there was a family of turkeys we saw on the way in. I counted 10 turklets or whatever they are called :). There is also a set from the beach with some dolphin pics but I found it difficult to get good pics of them.

The heavy rains this morning have passed and have given way to partly cloudy skies. I really am amazed at how clear the water is. There are a bunch of minnows at the surfs edge which I think would mostly be hidden from view at the jersey shore. I’d like to thank my friend Crystal’s beach umbrella for providing me shade and my iPhone for allowing me to post this from the beach.

Figured I had time for a quick post from the just released wordpress for iPhone native app. If there is a random picture for the post it means I figured out how to add a photo to a post via the app.

I figured I should write a quick note using the mobile interface from my new iPhone, not some lesser iPod touch

So far everything has been working well which is good since I was in line for 4 hours.

 Seems I have been on a zoo kick lately, this time taking a trip to the Philadelphia Zoo while I was visiting home. I spent most of my time there in the rare animal exhibit as well as the primate house. Something is always intriguing about monkeys and their ilk. You can check out the rest of my pics by clicking on the image below:

As I sit at the airport waiting for my flight, I figure I should take a moment to update my blog. This past Sunday I took my first trip to the Nashville Zoo. I’m surprised it took me over almost 5 years to make my first visit, given my love of zoos and aquariums. While still small, the zoo is continuing to grow and has plans in place to continue adding more animals. You can see a number of photos in this flickr set.

I’m writing this post using the wphone plugin, after reading a blog post from Wysz. While I don’t have an iPhone yet, I can test with my iPod touch. Now if I could just figure out something to write about

This Sunday I was looking for an outside activity to enjoy the warm sunny weather. I hadn’t been to Cheekwood in a while and was delighted to see that they were having an orchid show. I’m going to give another go at growing a Paphiopedilum Pinocchio, which I was told was one of the easier orchids to grow and blossoms often. You can check out more pics of my visit to Cheekwood here.

Thankfully the Fantastico installation system did not take anywhere near as long to allow upgrade to WordPress 2.5 as it did to make 2.3.2 available. So being the maverick that I am, I decided to upgrade and hope for the best. So far it looks like everything updated fine.