February 12, 2024 Lunch - Anna Marie Oyster Bar on Anna Marie Island. Dinner - Red Snapper and shrimp baked in foil with pasta

February 12, 2024 Lunch - Anna Marie Oyster Bar on Anna Marie Island. Dinner - Red Snapper and shrimp baked in foil with pasta

I got early at 6:30 to find out how the market would open and it looked bad for the NASDAQ and most of the high tech stocks were hammered down today, such as Apple down $2.00 and even Nvidia down.

I shared a fruit salad with sweetened strawberries and blueberries with yogurt and a granola muffin.

We then drove to the beach at Sarasota but as we passed the Ringling Museum we turned in to the parking lot.  It was crowded today because the Museum is free on Mondays.  We toured the main art galleries that showed early Renaissance through Rococo and even English Portraiture.

It seems that the Ringling had a penchant for big canvases, many by lesser artists, but even though the Ringling is considered the best art museum in Florida, so well worth seeing.  Here are some pictures I liked.

After visiting the museum, Suzette ran into a old high school friend in the parking lot, which was very cool.

We then drove to the beach and turned and headed north. The road was crowded and traffic slow but we final arrived back in Bradenton by 2;30 and decided to eat lunch at Anna Marie’s Oyster Bar on Bridge St. just south of the causeway connecting the barrier island to the main land.

When we saw the menu we realized it was a sister restaurant to the Anna Marie’s we ate at last night. So we ordered different preparations. We ordered 1/2 dozen oyster raw with Chimichurri sauce and 1/2 dozen oyster steamed with garlic and Parmesan cheese.  These were both better than last night’s Rockefeller and raw, but $5.00 more expensive at $30.00.

Suzette then ordered fish tacos made with Ling or cobia, mango salsa and a slice of avocado in a flour tortilla.  She ordered cole slaw and fried potatoes as her two sides and added coke slaw to the tacos, which made them really delicious.  Also the fish was cooked perfectly and moist that made this a better dish than the grilled cobia we ate last night.

I reverted to my childhood taste and ordered fried clam strips with roasted potatoes and Cole slaw with tartare sauce and cocktail sauce.  They were crisp and chewy and wonderful dipped in both tartare sauce and cocktail sauce.

I drank an Angry Orchard apple cider and Suzette drank a light hopped local beer.

After lunch we walked back to the car parked near the intersection of Bridge and the coastal road. We drove across the 

Bay to the fishing community of Cortez and stopped at Cortez Fish Market where we bought a beautiful fresh large 2.17 lb. red snapper filet and a lb. of heads off local shrimp and then drove home at 4:45 rush hour traffic.

When we arrived Suzette fell asleep for two hours while I watched the news and Mad Money and then when Suzette got up we decided that she would bake red snapper in aluminum crimped envelopes with vegetables and one with shrimp for Bev.

I then lay down at 6:50 and slept until 8:00 when dinner served. Bev had boiled whole wheat vermicelli and tossed it with butter that she put in a pasta bowl and we dumped out the contents of the foil cooked fish onto the pasta.  The fish had been cooked at too high a temperature and become blackened and scorched on the bottom perhaps because Suzette only double wrapped the top of the envelope and not the bottom.

We corrected for this problem by add in butter and a dash of white wine to the dish, but the fish and the carrots, tomato, and broccoli were still tender and delicious.

We drank a local Sauvignon Blanc that was also perfectly .

After dinner I had to do about an hour’s work and then we packed and then I blogged this entry.

Bon Appetit