Community Involvement

    My husband I have talked a lot about becoming more involved with our local community. We talked about it when we lived in Naples, and then we moved up to Sarasota to be near my family, and since then we've talked about it some more. Well, instead of just talking about it, we've actually done something about it for once! Haha.

    For the past six months or so, we've been becoming more and more involved with a local group called the Sarasota Sportsmen's Association. This SSA was started about twenty five years ago by one of my parents good friends and a group of other local guys. Every year, they host a spring banquet and a fall banquet that helps fund the scholarships and free educational events for children that they host.

    In the past, we had attended a spring and fall banquet each, thanks to my dad, and had a fantastic time. After witnessing the amazing things they helped do for local kids, we decided that we wanted to be involved.

    So far, we've helped coordinate the spring banquet and we helped host a fishing event for kids. The best part of the spring banquet, in my opinion, is that the attendee's can sign up to compete in a cooking competition where they create something based on whatever game they had hunted that year.

    For example, the winner this year had created a moose taco with a strawberry crema sauce. It was amazing. The winner had not actually hunted the moose herself- a friend had- but she is the owner of a local farm and she used all of her own produce to create the sauce and the salsa that was on the taco's. They were incredible! One of the best things that I've ever tasted!

    At the spring banquet, they gave away scholarships to five local teens. They also raffled off TONS of goodies from local businesses and there was a full BBQ dinner served, courtesy of The Oaks BBQ.

The spring banquet is held at the Sarasota Farm Bureau every year.

I'm about three months late in posting this, as the banquet was held in March, but we've been loving our involvement with the group and we look forward to continuing to help.

My husbands restaurant, Geckos, donated gator sausage for the event and my husband and I cooked them up with peppers and onions for the patrons.

    I'll do another post about the fishing event some other time. I just wanted to share with you how fun it can be to get involved with local organizations. You just have to find something that interests you and jump in!

Here are some more photos from the spring banquet.

This is Keith, my parents friend who helped found the association.

Venison being cooked up to be served in a srirachi sauce.

This is the creator of the amazing moose tacos, and also the owner of the farm where all of those delicious fruits and veggies you see there were grown.

The items that were up for bid! There was everything from fishing trips to guns to restaurant gift certificates!

Our scholarship winners for 2016!

    If you're in the Sarasota/Manatee county area and you want more information about the Sarasota Sportsmen's Association, please contact me through the email provided on my contact page. Our Facebook page and websites are currently down, as I'm working on updating everything.