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Last weekend Roberto and I had a chance to go and visit our friends, The No Fear Family. Although we initially “met” through the Wonderful World of Food Blogging, Judy from No Fear Entertaining and her husband T (and their girls and pups too!) have become really good friends of ours outside of the blogging world. Even though we both live in Florida (which is close compared to other food blogging friends I have), they still live about 5 hours from us, so we don’t get to hang out as often as we would if we lived closer…that said, we decided we needed some hang time and so they were gracious enough to host us AND Pepino at their beautiful house in Cape Coral. Now that is a good friend!

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We got there just in time for Judy to leave and pick the girls up from school. So I made sure to get myself to work while she was out. Judy showed me prior to leaving (why is it that even in a rush, food bloggers find time to give another food blogger a “tour” of their fridge the moment they arrive???LOL!) that there were some eggplants that were on the verge in her fridge, so I decided to make some Baba Ganoush. Now T used to not be a big fan of the stuff, but he has recently been converted, thank goodness, and claimed that he liked mine, so I was feeling pretty good. For dinner that night we had Peter from Kalofagas’ famous Pork Souvlaki which really lived up to all the prior praises. We had it with home made tzatziki and bread, roasted potatoes and a delicious Greek salad – Judy, I really need the recipe for the dressing. It was great! I wish we had more pictures of the food and us preparing it, from that night – but we were too busy gabbing that we forgot to take many!

The next day Roberto and T went to a local Italian market while Judy and I stayed home and…BLOGGED. Yep folks, that is how addicted to blogging we really are! We also worked on the Daring Baker’s challenge for this month. Even though I have officially dropped out of the group, we thought it would be an awesome thing to do together, since we have been talking about doing a DB challenge together forever! But I can’t say any more about it, because it is a SECRET.

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When the guys got back they came with provisions for sausage lasagna and sausage for lunch (I hate to tell you we ALSO had sausage the next morning for breakfast – Judy’s homemade that is!). Actually I was kinda sad I didn’t see this awesome market – that Roberto claims is “just like being in Vegas at the Venetian” (not that I have been there either…), because it sounded incredible. So maybe next time they will let a girl come!

T grilled up some pinwheel sausages for lunch and then the rest went into the 25 LB LASAGNA that he made for an impromptu NO FEAR dinner party they had that night. It was a wonderful time meeting some other friends of theirs (and a friend of their friend!!!). The lasagna was some of the best I have ever had, and we all had a blast – especially the dogs, and the kids!

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I don’t think Pepino will ever forget this weekend. He had a BLAST and has pretty much been sleeping ever since we got home!!! (Actually when we got home he hid under the bed for an hour, pouting because he missed his new friends!!!).

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The next day before heading back we had a great morning exploring Sanibel Island and Captiva. These are world famous beaches that I have never been to before. The water was beautiful and both beaches are great for shelling – we also saw jellyfish, sponges, horseshoe crabs and various other cool sea life.

We had a wonderful weekend and you can be sure there will be many others to follow! If you want to read Judy’s account – check it out here!