Biscuit Bakers’ Treasured Mill Moves North

WINTER WHEAT A staple for Southern bakers since 1883 will now be milled in the Midwest. The White Lily plant in Knoxville, Tenn. is closing this month. For generations of Southern bakers, the secret to weightless biscuits has been one simple ingredient passed from grandmother to mother to child: White Lily all-purpose flour.

Biscuit dives and high-end Southern restaurants like Watershed in Atlanta and Blackberry Farm outside Knoxville use it. Blue-ribbon winners at state fair baking contests depend on it. On food lovers’ Web sites, transplanted Southerners share tips on where to find it, and some of them returning from trips back home have been known to attract attention when airport security officers detect a suspicious white dust on their luggage.

White Lily is distinctly Southern: it has been milled here in downtown Knoxville since 1883 and its white bags (extra tall because the flour weighs less per cup than other brands) are distributed almost solely in Southern supermarkets, although specialty stores like Williams-Sonoma and Dean & DeLuca have carried it at premium prices.

But at the end of June, the mill, with its shiny wood floors, turquoise and red grinders and jiggling armoire-size sifters, will shut its doors. The J. M. Smucker Company, which bought the brand a year ago, has already begun producing White Lily at two plants in the Midwest, causing ripples of anxiety that Southern biscuits will never be the same.

Maribeth Badertscher, a spokeswoman for the company, said the new White Lily was the result of thorough product testing and promised that customers “won’t know the difference.” But in a blind test for The New York Times, two bakers could immediately tell the old from the new.

No test was necessary for Fred W. Sauceman, author of a series of books called “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South, From Bright Hope to Frog Level,” who said White Lily should stay in Knoxville. “It’s kind of like the use of the word terroir when you’re talking about wine,” he said. “It means something to have been made in the exact same spot for 125 years, and it’s unconscionable not to respect that.”

He continued, “People felt so strongly about this flour that in the South it was reserved for Sunday dinner. It was called the Sunday flour.” A White Lily cookbook, now out of print, capitalized on that sentiment with the title “Sunday Best Baking: Over a Century of Secrets from the White Lily Kitchen.”

LaDonna Hilton, whose baking has won more than 200 ribbons at the Appalachian Fair in Gray, Tenn., said she has tried other flours and simply discarded the results. “You wouldn’t think you’d be able to tell the difference in the taste,” she said, “but you can.”

For Cathy Riddle, another Appalachian Fair champion who uses White Lily for everything from green tomato bread to “sad” dumplings (the kind with a chewy center), the selling point is consistent good results.

The passion for White Lily is more than simple nostalgia.

“All you have to do is take a little bit in your hand and take some all-purpose flour in the other hand and just look at it,” said Shirley O. Corriher, the Atlanta-based author of “CookWise,” about the science of cooking, and a forthcoming companion volume called “BakeWise.” “There’s an incredible difference. It’s much, much finer, much whiter and much silkier. You’re going to get a finer textured cake.”

The difference in White Lily flour begins with the kind of wheat it is made from, soft red winter wheat, a low-protein, low-gluten variety. “Protein is the enemy of light, high-rising, delicate baking!” the package says.

Most other all-purpose flour is made from a blend of wheat varieties that differs from region to region and generally has a much higher protein content. “It’s a little bit good for everything, but not that good for anything,” said R. Carl Hoseney, a retired grain science professor at Kansas State University who is now a cereal consultant.

Soft wheat is, in fact, the key to understanding why the South is better known for cakes, biscuits and pie crusts than for yeast breads, which require the strength of high-protein flour. Soft red winter wheat was once grown primarily in the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee and, in the days before national food distribution networks, it was the only wheat widely available in the South. Nowadays, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are among the largest producers.

It may also explain why many Northerners’ attempts to replicate Southern delicacies fall flat. Low-protein flour absorbs less liquid, so a recipe designed for White Lily won’t work with other flours. Cake flour or another low-protein flour like Martha White are the closest substitutes.

Carolyn Durst, 62, a sweepstakes winner in the pie competition at the Kentucky State Fair, said, “I give pie crust demonstrations to my friends, and I tell them, No. 1, you’ve got to have White Lily flour.”

Ms. Badertscher said that the new White Lily is also made solely from soft red winter wheat. But there are many other variables, like the grind of the flour. The Knoxville plant has long claimed that White Lily is ground finer and sifted more times than any other flour on the market. All that work costs a bit more — at an Atlanta supermarket this month, five-pound bags of White Lily went for $2.99, more than Gold Medal, which sold for $2.79, or the store brand, $1.82, but far less than specialty and organic brands.

Then there is the matter of what part of the grain is used. Underneath the husk of a wheat kernel, a layer of bran encloses the germ and a white substance called endosperm. White Lily is a patent flour, meaning it uses only the heart of the endosperm, the purest part. With wheat prices more than double what they were last spring, some fans fear that selectivity may be compromised.

“At the turn of the century, the question was, how pure and white can you get it?” said Fran Churchill, a former White Lily plant operations manager. “For economy, millers have pushed closer and closer to the bran,” she said. “Everyone in the industry is getting as much flour out of that kernel right now as they can.”

Unlike most all-purpose flours, White Lily is bleached with chlorine, a process that not only whitens the flour but weakens the proteins. Chlorination alters the starch particles to make batters more viscous, and thus less likely to fall. It loosens the strict balance of starch, liquid, fat and sugar that baking requires to allow for higher proportions of sugar — thus, sweeter cakes.

The chlorine makes White Lily more like cake flour than other all-purpose flours. But there again is another subtle difference, Ms. Corriher said. While White Lily can be used in cakes, it is not bleached as much as cake flour, which gives White Lily a better, less acidic taste, Ms. Corriher said. Pastry flour is also made from soft wheat, but it is not chlorinated.

Milling experts said that in theory, it should be possible to replicate White Lily. “If the source of the wheat is the same, the mill itself won’t be that hard to duplicate,” Mr. Hoseney said. Ms. Corriher, on the other hand, was more skeptical that a process perfected over more than a century of milling and subjected to Knoxville’s intensive quality control could be easily replicated.

A blind test by two bakers, who were sent bags of the old and new product marked only A and B, underscored Ms. Corriher’s concern.

Zoellyn Smith, who worked in both quality control and research and development at the Knoxville plant, accurately identified the new product before she began to bake. Sample A, the new product, had “a grayish color” and made a “dense and chewy” cake, while Sample B, the old, made for silky, rather than stiff, dough and a “light and airy” cake.

“When I looked at just the flour I thought that Sample B was milled in Knoxville,” she said. “After performing the bakes there was no doubt.”

But it did not take a specialist in food technology and plant sciences to guess right. Ms. Hilton, the amateur baker, said, “There wasn’t a big difference, but I could tell the difference.” Even her family knew which batch was made with flour milled in the Midwest. “The biscuits came out just a little more dense, and the texture wasn’t quite as smooth.”

Told of the results, Ms. Badertscher said, “White Lily flour continues to be made from the same quality ingredients and processes as when it was produced in Tennessee.”

For many Southerners, though, comparison is a moot point. At a Knoxville grocery store, Peggy Melhorn, 85, was spied with a bag of White Lily flour in her cart and asked if it was better than other flours.

She shrugged. “It’s been my favorite for a long time, so I don’t know if there’s other good flours out there or not.”

Erica Yoon for The New York Times

Researchers hit a homer with 'The Odyssey'

Using astronomical clues, they date one of literature's most heralded events: Odysseus' slaughter of his wife's suitors. But the finding leaves many questions unanswered.

Delving into a 3,000-year-old mystery using astronomical clues in Homer's "The Odyssey," researchers said Monday they have dated one of the most heralded events of Western literature: Odysseus' slaughter of his wife's suitors upon his return from the Trojan War.

According to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the wily hero who devised the Trojan Horse hefted his mighty bow on April 16, 1178 BC, and executed the unruly crowd who had taken over his home and was trying to force his wife into marriage.

The finding leaves many perennial questions unanswered, such as whether the events portrayed actually occurred or whether the blind poet Homer was the author of the tale.

But it casts a new sheen of veracity on a story that has existed in a hazy realm of fantasy and history since it was first composed 400 years after the Trojan War.

"They make a wonderfully persuasive case," said Scott Huler, author of a book about his efforts to follow Odysseus' journey. "I do find myself convinced that some of these events Homer described" are based on actual history.

"The Odyssey" tells the story of the king's 10-year journey home after the capture of Troy. Odysseus spent seven of those years as a captive of the nymph Calypso, then was delayed another three by Poseidon, who was angered by the blinding of his son Cyclops.

When he finally arrived at Ithaca, he was angered to find 109 men urging his wife Penelope to accept that her husband was dead and marry one of them. Spurred by Athena, Penelope declared an archery contest with Odysseus' bow, saying she would marry the winner.

Odysseus, in disguise, won the contest, then killed all of the suitors as well as a dozen maids who had slept with them.

The key passage in dating the tale is highly ambiguous.

As the suitors are sitting down for their noontime meal, the goddess Athena "confounds their minds" so that they start laughing uncontrollably and see their food spattered with blood.

Then the seer Theoclymenus prophesies their death and passage to Hades, ending with the phrase: "The Sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world."

The Greek historian Plutarch interpreted this as signifying a total solar eclipse, and many others have agreed. But modern scholars tend to discount this interpretation, arguing that the passage is simply metaphorical.

Previous researchers have determined that a total solar eclipse occurred in the region over the Ionian Sea on April 16, 1178 BC, which would be in agreement with recent data suggesting the fall of Troy around 1192 to 1184 BC.

To investigate, astronomer Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University and Constantino Baikouzis of the Observatorio Astrónomico de La Plata in Argentina read the text of "The Odyssey" carefully, looking for other astronomical clues.

They found three definitive events:

The day of the slaughter was a new moon -- a prerequisite for a solar eclipse.

Six days before the slaughter, Venus was visible and high in the sky.

Twenty-nine days before, the constellations Pleiades and Boötes were simultaneously visible at sunset.

They also identified a potential fourth event 33 days before the slaughter. Homer wrote that Hermes, known to the Romans as Mercury, traveled far west to deliver a message and flew all the way back east again. Magnasco and Baikouzis interpreted this to mean that Mercury was high at dawn and near the western edge of its trajectory.

Each of these astronomical events recurs at a different interval, so the precise sequence identified in their reading should be unique.

Using computer analysis, they searched for the sequence between 1250 and 1115 BC, roughly 75 years on either side of the putative date for the fall of Troy.

They found only one sequence, and it coincided with the eclipse of April 16, 1178 BC.

Whether the events of "The Odyssey" occurred or not, the authors are interested, at least, in reopening the debate.

"If we can get a few people to read 'The Odyssey' differently, to look at it and ponder whether there was an actual date inscribed in it, we are happy," Magnasco said.

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer June 24, 2008
thomas.maugh@latimes.com

With no clear ID on bones, there's always imagination

The mystery is still unsolved. The experts at Mote Marine Laboratory still have not had a chance to examine a set of strange remains found on a Longboat Key beach.

A family on vacation found the bones last week.

With a long, sloping head, sharp spikes and large eye sockets, the creature was like nothing they had seen before. It was several feet long -- and the Robinson family only found half of its torso.

Curious, they took the bones to scientists and sent photographs to researchers throughout the region.

The guesses were varied: red drum, black drum, Goliath grouper, even a saltwater sturgeon. No one has provided a definitive answer. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission asked if the Robinsons found the lower part of the jaw.

They did not, but FWC guessed something in the Sciaenidae family -- like the drum.

At Mote, mammal researchers took a guess -- a snook or tarpon -- but the experts who study fish were not around to see it yet. And with the Robinsons returning home next week, Mote may not have another shot to investigate.

So the Robinson family, vacationers from Texas, will go home with a preserved skeleton and a good story to tell their friends.

But they probably will not have an answer.

With no clear ID on bones, there's always imagination Published Saturday, June 28, 2008
Herald Tribune

County, state team up to plant scallops

Scientists are putting scallops in Sarasota Bay for the same reason people used to put canaries in coalmines. The county and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute will soon be using caged scallops to spot water quality problems from Sarasota Bay to Lemon Bay, and are looking for help from volunteers who live along the waterfront.

The project — similar to ones done by the Sarasota Bay National Estuary Program and Mote Marine Laboratory that were stymied by poor water quality — will also enhance a budding scallop population, which had been wiped out in recent years by pollution and red tide.

The fan-shaped bivalves are sensitive to myriad water quality changes and will help researchers pinpoint problems.

“If we can identify when scallops die, we can narrow down the environmental factors affecting their health,” said Rene Janneman, environmental specialist for the county.

But the double-edged effort needs the help of people who live along the bay and who are willing do monthly monitoring of the cages or allow monthly access to them.

Leading up to the placement of the cages, researchers are using scallop “traps” in the bay to figure out where they have the best chance of survival.

“We are going to put those scallop seeding cages in the areas that have the best chance for survival,” Janneman said.

The researchers plan to recruit volunteers to allow them to put the cages just offshore. The cages will hold scallops grown by Fish & Wildlife.

At one time, Southwest and the central coast of Florida harbored dense populations of scallops. But changes in water flow and other factors led to a decline.

To bolster their numbers, the state closed its waters to scallop fishing in 1994 and severely restricted recreational harvests.

To volunteer for the program or host a scallop site, contact the Sarasota County Call Center at (941) 861-5000 and ask for the scallop seeding project.

County, state team up to plant scallops by Cathy Zollo Published Monday, June 23, 2008
Herald tribune

The Economics of Bananas

The papers yesterday were full of news about bananas.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Chiquita Brands International, “the Cincinnati-based banana distributor” (I love that phrase; it evokes Lardner, or at least Runyon), was expected to report a third-quarter loss due to higher fuel costs and bad weather in banana-growing countries. Chiquita stock fell sharply on the news.

The second article was far more interesting, and answered a question I’ve long wondered about: why are bananas so cheap relative to other fruit, especially since a lot of the fruit we consume in the U.S. is grown here while bananas are not?

Dan Koppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, wrote an Op-Ed in The Times that is packed with interesting stuff about the Freudian fruit. The economics are particularly interesting:

That bananas have long been the cheapest fruit at the grocery store is astonishing. They’re grown thousands of miles away, they must be transported in cooled containers, and even then they survive no more than two weeks after they’re cut off the tree. Apples, in contrast, are typically grown within a few hundred miles of the store and keep for months in a basket out in the garage. Yet apples traditionally have cost at least twice as much per pound as bananas.

Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined, which is especially amazing when you consider that not so long ago, bananas were virtually unknown here. They became a staple only after the men who in the late 19th century founded the United Fruit Company (today’s Chiquita) figured out how to get bananas to American tables quickly — by clearing rainforest in Latin America, building railroads and communication networks, and inventing refrigeration techniques to control ripening. …

Once bananas had become widely popular, the companies kept costs low by exercising iron-fisted control over the Latin American countries where the fruit was grown. Workers could not be allowed such basic rights as health care, decent wages, or the right to congregate. … Over and over, banana companies, aided by the American military, intervened whenever there was a chance that any “banana republic” might end its cooperation. … Labor is still cheap in these countries, and growers still resort to heavy-handed tactics.

The final piece of the banana pricing equation is genetics. Unlike apple and orange growers, banana importers sell only a single variety of their fruit, the Cavendish. There are more than 1,000 varieties of bananas — most of them in Africa and Asia — but except for an occasional exotic, the Cavendish is the only banana we see in our markets. … By sticking to this single variety, the banana industry ensures that all the bananas in a shipment ripen at the same rate, creating huge economies of scale. The Cavendish is the fruit equivalent of a fast-food hamburger: efficient to produce, uniform in quality, and universally affordable.

Some readers may recoil at this description and vow to never eat another banana. Others may thank their lucky stars that free markets are able to deliver a tasty, healthy, peel-intact fruit to their corner stores at very affordable prices.

Koppel’s larger message is that the Cavendish banana is under fungal threat and may disappear. And, because Koppel seems to endorse the locavore movement (unlike some of us), he doesn’t sound all that sad:

In recent years, American consumers have begun seeing the benefits — to health, to the economy, and to the environment — of buying foods that are grown close to our homes. … [B]ananas have always been an emblem of a long-distance food chain. Perhaps it’s time we recognize bananas for what they are: an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach.

I am guessing this prognosis is alarmist but I have no way of knowing. Can anyone out there add some insight?

The Economics of Bananas By Stephen J. Dubner

Life and death at the shore

Turtle facts

In summer, an ancient reproductive ritual begins when the female leaves the sea and crawls ashore to dig a nest in the sand. She uses her rear flippers to dig the nest hole and then she deposits about 100 eggs the size of ping-pong balls. When egg-laying is complete, the turtle covers the eggs, camouflages the nest site, and returns to the ocean. Nesting turtles may return several times in a nesting season to repeat the process and usually nest every two to three years. As is true for some other reptiles, the temperature of the sea turtle nest determines the sex of the hatchlings. Warmer temperatures produce more females, whereas cooler temperatures result in more males. Consequently, conservationists prefer to leave turtle eggs in their original location whenever possible so that sex ratios are determined naturally. After incubating for about two months, the eggs begin to hatch. A few days later, 2-inch hatchlings emerge as a group. This mass exodus usually occurs at night, and the hatchlings use the bright, open view of the night sky over the water to find their way to the sea. For more info click here. Artificial lights on beachfront buildings and roadways distract hatchlings on their way to the ocean. Because of this danger, many beachfront communities in Florida, including Sarasota, Lee and Charlotte Counties, have adopted lighting ordinances requiring lights to be shut off or shielded during the nesting and hatching season.

Source: Fish and Wildlife Research Institute Visit: myfwc.com

A stroll along the beach is supposed to ease stress and aid relaxation, but for Coastal Wildlife Turtle Patrol members, the dawn’s light showcases the juxtaposition of human’s wants and needs versus the survival of wildlife. For turtle patrol volunteers, the light shows how the barrier island habitat is shrinking as condominiums line the shore of some of Florida’s prime sea turtle and shorebird habitat.

Loggerhead turtles, other sea turtles and shorebirds are endangered, in large part due to human encroachment on their nesting grounds and pollution along Florida beaches. Four-legged predators including the family dog destroy many nests and kill baby sea turtles each year, according to Florida Wildlife Commission. Life for a sea turtle is so perilous, that only 1 of 1000 ever become adults to reproduce.

On a recent Saturday, some Coastal Wildlife Turtle Patrol members walked south from the Range Light to document sea turtle activity in areas known as Zone 8 and 9. A week earlier, they had found up to six or seven nest sites per day. Saturday, two nests were marked, measured and documented under islander Grace Harvey’s authorized permit holder.

This year is a good year so far for the loggerhead (Caretta caretta), according to Harvey.

As of June 20, 2008, Gasparilla Island turtle nest totals as of June 20, 2008, 23 nests and 12 false crawls have been reported by Turtle Patrol volunteers and 110 nests and 60 false crawls have been reported in Lee County, according to Norma Jean Zvosec, a volunteer with the Coastal Wildlife Club Inc., an award-winning non-profit organization helping to protect endangered and threatened sea turtle nests from South Venice to Gasparilla Island.

Sadly, Saturday’s patrol also documented lack of knowledge by local residents and vacationers about the needs of sea turtles and shorebirds during the nesting season that runs between May 1 and Oct. 31 each year.

Almost immediately upon stepping onto the beach, Coastal Wildlife Club co-founder Wilma Katz and two-year volunteer Cherie Laflamme saw three things that bothered them. First, Katz stopped a porch light left on at a condominium that was shining brightly in direct line of a marked nest.

“Lights are bad for adults,” Katz said, “but light can affect hatchlings more.”

Second, Laflamme noted a nest had been inundated by the tide. “Nests can tolerate moving water,” Katz said as Laflamme documented the information in case the nest failed to hatch. Third, as far as the eye could see there were toys, beach chairs and canopies left on the beach. Laflamme pulled out a fresh tag that explains politely that beach furniture and toys should be removed from the beach nightly. She tied it to a beach chair. “This is the frustrating part,” she said as she marked on tag that had been attached to the same beach chair more than a week prior. “Either people are not informed or they lack respect. Maybe they don’t realize it can cause a turtle not to nest or cause false crawls.” Just up the beach a few yards from the site of a newly found nest, a jumble of beach furniture and an old canopy lie in a direct line south of the new nest.

While turtle nesting continues through August, by next week, loggerhead hatchings should start emerging and heading out to the Gulf waters. They will continue hatching through late October. Katz urges anyone to report any lights they see on the beach to Grace Harvey or to the condominium’s management, so the lights can be shielded or turned off between 9 p.m. and dawn each day.

At the moment, beach furniture and lights are the biggest detriment to nesting sea turtles as well as nesting birds. Katz pleads: “Please check the lights. We’re happily busy with nests and it’s easier for management to the check their own lights than to wait for us to notify them.

Remember, for a sea turtle mother to be, the light may confuse her as she labors in the night, so she could head toward land instead of back out to sea. And, for a hatching sea turtle, light is life. Unfortunately, sometimes the light holds a false promise and it means certain death.

Most of the lighting issues could easily be remedied with shields or a simple flick of the switch, according to Katz. “We need to have a natural light sky or the hatchlings will become disoriented.”

Editor’s note: Each week, the Gasparilla Gazette reports turtle nesting number and offers turtle tips from local Island School children

by TAMI PATZER email: tpatzer@breezenewspapers.com

Siesta Key Beaches Named the Third Best Beach in the United States

Siesta Key, FL (PRWEB) June 9, 2008 -- Siesta Key beach earns the number three spot in the 18th Annual Top 10 Beaches in the United States by Dr. Beach, Dr. Stephen Leatherman. Siesta Key has been a constant on the Top 10 Beaches in the United States for the past two years, last year taking the 10th spot. Recognized for its powdery, white sand, the crystal quartz keeps the sand cool even on the sunniest Florida day. Unlike most beaches, when the Siesta Key sand is packed near the water's edge, you can easily jog, ride your bike or push a stroller.

50 criteria are used to evaluate the beaches, including water and sand quality, as well as facilities and environmental management, as part of the National Healthy Beaches Campaign (NHBC). The NHBC is dedicated to creating a balance between the recreational use of our nation's beaches and maintaining the environmental quality and safety of this prized resource.

South Miami favorite comes to Siesta Key: Deli Lane Café & Tavern

South Miami favorite comes to Siesta Key. There beneath the blue suburban skies ... Deli Lane Café & Tavern celebrated the grand opening of its third location at 2157 Siesta Drive.

Jan Kirchoff and Mike Maler have been partners in this South Beach institution for 20 years now. The award- winning restaurant has been rated one of the best in South Florida by the Zagat Survey, while America Online customer reviewers call it a "South Miami staple."Excited to be on the west coast, they have duplicated the concept with longtime friends and new partners Sue Russo and Eileen Russo-Whitney.

What's the secret that makes this local deli a neighborhood favorite with a strong fan base? It's always fresh, satisfying, tasty, substantial and, above all, affordable.Among the tempting options are Vegetable Gumbo, Brutus Caesar Salad and Pressed Duck Sandwich. Or if you have a hankerin' for an old-fashioned deli breakfast, Deli Lane serves it every day, all day long.

There's even Key lime pie for you diehards, and yes, it's white, not green.So, go ahead, try it. The place has good food, good vibes and good prices, inspiring good times.

Published Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - Herald Tribune

Neighbors OK waterfront park plan

OSPREY — The first major new waterfront park developed by Sarasota County in years will have three fishing piers, two boat ramps, room for 55 boat trailers and the blessing of neighbors who initially opposed the plans. If all goes well, construction on the 15-acre park on Blackburn Point Road could begin late next year, parks officials said Friday. The park is symbolic, and county leaders are closely monitoring its progress. The Blackburn Point land was the first in a series of waterfront properties acquired during the real estate boom to counter diminishing public access to the water. On Friday, parks officials updated county commissioners on the plans, which initially drew intense criticism from neighbors who worried the park was too large and would jam roads and disrupt the quiet community. More than 200 Osprey resident jammed a recent workshop to protest. By incorporating the neighbors' input on parking, increasing buffers, and moving the children's playground, Parks Director John McCarthy turned their criticism into praise Friday.

"We're pleased they took the neighbors' design and worked with it," said Diane Pick, whose home is only a few feet from the park's southern boundary. "We do feel like they're finally moving in the right direction." However, Pick is still concerned that 55 parking spaces might bring too much traffic onto narrow, two-lane Blackburn Point Road and too much noise to her neighborhood. She also worries about the environmental impact boaters will have on the Intracoastal Waterway, where she routinely observes dolphin and manatees from her back porch.

McCarthy said the environmental issues will be fully vetted during the state and federal permitting process, which begins this summer for the boat ramps and piers. Commissioners unanimously praised the revised park plan Friday, calling it a valiant attempt to balance the concerns of neighbors with the need for more boating access. "I think it's really nice," said commissioner Nora Patterson. "I followed all of the concerns from citizens. I think it answers them, short of just making it a passive park." There are more than 22,000 registered boats in Sarasota County and about 16,000 moorings. Residents without a boat dock or marina slip must vie for the limited parking spaces -- between 500 and 600 -- at the 12 Sarasota County parks with boat ramps. McCarthy said Blackburn Point is the first Sarasota County park purchased to expand boater access to the water. "This is really without precedent and it's all because the public said they wanted more access to the water," he said. The park is expected to cost between $3 million and $4 million. Money for the project will come from the 1-percentage-point sales tax reauthorized by voters last year, and is not affected by budget cutting.

On Friday, Osprey retiree Ron Buettner watched as snook, sheepshead and mullet swam in the Intracoastal near the future park. Kayakers paddled nearby as a Sarasota couple ate lunch at a picnic table. "This is a nice place," Buettner said. "I'm glad more people will be able to enjoy it." By Zac Anderson Published Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 4:30 a.m. Herald Tribune

Curry Creek Cafe

Lunch at casual Curry Creek included Rofie's Egg Rolls, light and crispy, good to the last bite. Hearty Little Gasparilla Seafood Stew is shellfish and grouper, tomatoes and vegetables, all in creamy shellfish broth with garlic, herbs and wine. Bibb & Watercress Salad with dried cranberries, candied almonds, sweet onions and blue cheese was wonderful. Pan-Fried Crab Cake Sandwich had so little filler, it fell apart. Mini seafood potpie was full of seafood, peas and carrots, topped with a round of pastry. Mango cheesecake was light and not too sweet, with a graham cracker crust. Desserts and breads are made in-house. Wine and beer. 920 S. Tamiami Trail, Nokomis; 485-6560.

Oscar Scherer State Park

Oscar Scherer State Park offers visitors a number of recreational activities, as well as a preserve of Florida's natural habitat and wildlife. Several threatened species, including the Florida Scrub-Jay call the park home. Bald eagles, bobcats, river otters and alligators can also be seen in the park.For bicycle enthusiasts the park offers several trails totaling approx. 15 miles. Mountain bikes are recommended due to the sandy nature of many of the trails.

Canoeing in South Creek is one of the more popular activities at the park. You can bring your own, or rent a canoe or kayak by the hour or day. South Creek, fed by rainfall, flows through the park and out into the Intracoastal Waterway which leads out to the Gulf of Mexico. A variety of wildlife can be seen from a canoe or kayak including heron, egret and other wading birds.

Oscar Scherer wouldn't be a Florida State park without fishing. Lake Osprey, inside the park, is a 3 acre freshwater lake offering anglers a chance to catch bream, bluegill, largemouth bass and channel catfish. A fishing license is required for anyone over 15 and can be purchased at most bait and tackle shops or at the Sarasota County Tax Collector's office just up the road across from Sarasota Square Mall about 4 miles north.

Picnic areas are available in the park along with picnic tables, charcoal grills, pavilions and a playground. The South Creek picnic area has a restroom, pavilion and canoe launch. At Lake Osprey, there's a bathhouse and nature center and a small swimming beach on the lake.

Florida state parks are open from 8 a.m. until sundown 365 days a year.

Casey Key

Casey Key is a spectacularly lush barrier island 15 miles south of Sarasota. Named for Captain John Charles Casey—an English-born army officer who graduated from West Point with General Robert E. Lee—Casey Key stretches from Siesta Key on the north to the Island of Venice at its southernmost tip, allowing boaters and fishermen easy access to the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of the island is a conservation district, established in the early 1970s by the Florida State Legislature. Casey Key has matured well, its charm being its single greatest attraction.

Visitors and residents enjoy the beaches and recreational opportunities on the island. Shore-side activities include volleyball, picnicking and simply soaking up the sun and scenery. Fishing is also a beloved activity.

Historic Spanish Point

Historic Spanish Point was named for the Spanish and Cuban sailors and traders who paid regular commercial visits. It is a 30-acre site which juts into the waters of Little Sarasota Bay. It is bordered by mangroves on its west and pine flatwoods (and a residential neighborhood) to the east. Historic Spanish Point was first occupied as early as 3,000 BC, as evidenced by a prehistoric Calusa Indian burial mound and two shell mounds. Here, you have a rare opportunity to walk INSIDE a midden, one of the high shell mounds created centuries ago. Similar to modern land fills, these high mounds contain society's cast-offs, including broken tools, pieces of pottery and bits of bones and shells