What Works for Breakfast!

Anyone at all who has followed my blog knows that I really like breakfast… Here for your consideration are a few of Laurie and my more recent ‘special’ breakfast creations…

This was a simple breakfast that I put together for myself one morning.  These are Costco Italian meatballs, cut in half and lightly fried then placed on buttered toast and topped with pepper jack cheese and a couple of easy over eggs.  For photographic purposes, I didn’t put the Tabasco on until later…

There was some lox left over following our wine tasting/food consuming party.  Laurie asked me to scramble a couple of eggs to put on top of her English muffin, cream cheese and lox.  She liked this morning wake-up call a lot!

For the same breakfast, I opted for some left-over smoked salmon on top of a buttered English muffin topped with a couple of easy-over fried eggs.  It was sooo good!  Yes…I did add Tabasco before consuming this meal…

For her next breakfast, Laurie went for a mix of olives, a bit of mozzarella cheese, and two English muffins with cream cheese topped with peppered lox.  She liked this even better than the lox and scrambled eggs!

Finally…we also had 3 left-over Latvian piragi that Martha had made for our wine tasting party. (Latvian version of a Polish perogi) I couldn’t let them go to waste so I split them in half, heated them in the microwave and then dropped an over-easy fried egg on each piragi.  This time, I did add the Tabasco before taking the photo!  This was another very satisfying breakfast…

Just click on any of the photos to enhance your breakfast experience!

Thanks for stopping by and sharing these breakfasts with us…

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

German Cuisine in East Tennessee

Since we’ve retired and relocated from Chicago down to East Tennessee, we haven’t eaten in some of the more common ethnic restaurants we’d become used to up north...  In this area we have visited Vietnamese, Mexican, French, Indian, Italian, Irish, Cuban, Chinese and Thai restaurants… 

We do have a lot of Mexican restaurants, a few places with French cuisine, a couple of pretty good Thai eateries and more Indian restaurants than we expected.  The only Vietnamese restaurant we’d found has since closed.  There aren’t any Greek restaurants within an hour of where we live…and we’ve only found one Chinese restaurant that we really like.  There are a couple of pan-Asian places that are fairly good. 

Up until now, we haven’t eaten any Korean, Polish or German food since arriving in the area… and we still haven’t found a good Greek restaurant anywhere in East Tennessee…even if we drive for more than an hour from where we live.  We do have a favorite Italian restaurant…and we have another one on our list to try. 

 When Lynne and George suggested that we all go to the only German restaurant in the area, we jumped at the chance!  Our friend Karen joined us for dinner as well.  It didn't hurt that I had a 50% off Groupon Coupon!

This is Restaurant Linderhof, the only German restaurant in the Knoxville area!  It isn’t a large place but it’s cozy and decorated in the fashion that would have befitted a member of ‘over-the-top’ German royalty.  The restaurant terms it as Austro-Hungarian décor…

For some reason, we didn’t capture a photo of the outside of the restaurant...and I couldn't find one on-line.  It is located in a strip shopping center which is partly vacant…but it is in a very nice neighborhood.  You can see Lynne, Karen, myself and George in the left-hand side of Laurie’s photo.

Restaurant Linderhof isn’t a huge place but it is a little larger than it first appears when you come through the front door.  These pictures were taken a little before 6 PM on a weeknight…and by 7 PM, Linderhof was quite busy.

When George requested his favorite gin, he was disappointed to learn that the restaurant didn’t carry it.  One of the owners came to the table and talked about their top of the line gin…his favorite brand.  Then he provided George with a small glass of the gin to taste.  He liked it and ordered his drink. 

When I found out that all of the beers that they offer are German…and I am a sissy when it comes to beer…the waitress brought me 2 small glasses of their mildest beers to taste.  I liked one of them very much and ordered a pint. ($5.95)  We really appreciated their efforts to find something that we liked to drink!

At Restaurant Linderhof, all Platters and Old World Specialties are served with a bread basket, a soup of the day, a small salad plate and a choice of one side item. 

Between us, we tried 2 different soups.  This is the Lentil Soup.  It was very good.  Our only issue was that it would have been better if there was just a little more soup in the bowl…and it could have been a little warmer.

This was the Beer Cheese Soup… It was excellent, although the portion size was obviously on the light side…about half a bowl…and it too could have been warmer.  On the positive side, if I had a big bowl of this soup with some good bread, it would make for a great meal in itself!

Now is as good a time as any to talk about our waitress… She tried to be helpful…as with the beer samples…and she did suggest menu items.  However, she was way too ‘familiar’…over the top and in your face casual and too personal.  She was also forgetful… She confused the orders, got the bills mixed up, and forgot to bring things to the table that we’d asked for… I found her quite annoying and I wasn’t alone in my opinion.

This is the small salad plate that came with our dinners.  It’s described as a tasting assortment of German salads, with potato salad, cole slaw, cucumber salad and red cabbage slaw.  We all agreed that it was unique and it was very good indeed!

I was the only person out of our group of 5 that didn’t order schnitzel.  This is Karen’s entrée…I believe that it was the Pork Schnitzel with Rahm sauce plus a side of German fried potatoes.  She enjoyed her dinner…

We had another issue that impacted our experience at Restaurant Linderhof.  Laurie, Karen and I found ourselves sitting on an uncomfortable bench during our meal.  It was hard with a super straight back and for me at least, the seat was too high in relation to the table and my meal.

This is Laurie’s Veal Schnitzel with German Fries.  There was plenty of food but she thought that her dinner was just OK… She is used to a more crispy crust on her schnitzel plus a bit more Rahm sauce.  Also, the Rahm or Paprika Cream Sauce lacked a bit of the distinctive flavor that she’d enjoyed at German restaurants in Chicago… She did like the glass of House Merlot ($6.95) that she had with her dinner.

The complete schnitzel dinner options are priced as follows: Chicken with any of the sauce preparations, (Jager, Zigeuner, Swiss, Holstein or Paprika Rahm), is $15.95.  The Pork Schnitzel dinner is $21.95 and the Veal Schnitzel dinner is $27.95. 

Both George and Lynne ordered the Swiss Schnitzel…topped with sautéed onions and melted Swiss cheese.  George ordered asparagus as his side.  They thought that their meals were OK too… They too lived in Chicago and other large metropolitan areas as well and they’d had better German food too.

There are 7 different wurst (sausage) meal options on the menu to choose from.  They are $14.95 each and they come with either sauerkraut or rotkraut…the latter is made with red cabbage.  Other specialty dishes of interest include Schweinshaxe (Pork Shank) $26.95, Veal Rouladen ($25.95) and Abgebraunter Leberkase (Bavarian Breakfast) for $17.95.  There is also a nightly chef’s special…

For my entrée, I decided against schnitzel and ordered the Hungarisches Gulyas (Hungarian Goulash) with a dumpling for my side item. ($18.95) This was described as ‘choice selections of beef roast in a rich Hungarian sauce’.  I expected the beef to be cooked to the point of fork tender…but instead most of it was actually hard and dry in the middle.  The gravy or sauce was fairly good and it ‘saved’ the beef… Regarding the dumpling, I guess that I expected a big bread dumpling but instead this dumpling was kind of mushy and sticky throughout.  The sauce helped that as well…

OK… This isn’t a big German community with lots of demand for top notch ethnic food.  We thought that overall…minus the waitress…the ambience and the food were OK…acceptable.  I probably should have ordered a wurst plate or the pork shank and also, it would have been better if we’d sampled a wider variety of the offerings on the menu.  From what we saw, Restaurant Linderhof is fairly popular, so after many years in business they must be doing something right…

Restaurant Linderhof is located at 11831 Kingston Pike (US Highway 11) in Farragut Tennessee.  Phone: 865-675-8700.  To learn more about this restaurant and to check out the menu, go to http://www.restaurantlinderhof.com/index.html.

Just click on any of Laurie’s photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for another meal with Laurie, our friends and myself!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Good Eats Café – Lenoir City Tennessee

This restaurant used to be located in downtown Lenoir City.  However, parking was a bit difficult or awkward and the space inside the restaurant was very limited.

So…after closing the old location and looking for a new spot, the owners of Good Eats Café finally found a site that met their needs… This time they’re located on the primary highway bisecting Lenoir City…US 321, which stretches from I-75 all the way to the Smoky Mountain National Park.

This spot isn’t the most attractive and the parking lot needs some attention.  However, visibility is good and every time I’ve driven by, Good Eats Café has been busy… At lunch time the parking area is packed!

Since we’ve lived in the area, (almost 4 years), there have been 2 BBQ joints and a Caribbean themed restaurant in this building… It’s been like a revolving door! 

Nice shot of my bald head…my fault as Laurie told me not to put my head down.  In any case, once you get past the glare from my skull, you can see that this looks like your basic diner type restaurant.

This photo shows the front end of Good Eats Café… It’s pretty standard as well but that’s what we expected as we knew that the food offerings consist of basic diner cuisine. 

This is one side of the menu… The positive news is that Good Eats Café serves Breakfast ALL DAY…or at least until they close in mid-afternoon.  This is a vast improvement over most local restaurants who only serve breakfast until 11 AM.  We like breakfast out and we truly are late risers and late starters…

This is the reverse side of the menu… One fact that must be helping to attract so many customers to date is probably the prices.  You can have a grilled cheese with a small side for only $1.99 plus tax and tip!  Or…you can chow down with the daily special for only $5.99…or a cheeseburger with a side for only $6.28.  Another advantage is that it isn’t fast food per se…you also have table service at what are almost fast food prices.

Laurie ordered the French Toast with a side of bacon. ($6.98) They take rustic French bread, dip it in cinnamon, sugar and egg batter, grill it and then serve it with fresh berries and whipped cream.  Laurie liked the French toast and would order it again.  The bacon was OK…if not exceptional.

I ordered this side of hash browns to go with my breakfast. ($1.79) They could have been cooked a little longer and I would prefer them a bit crispy.  I’ll order them that way the next time we eat breakfast at Good Eats.

My breakfast entrée was listed on the menu as ‘My Dad’s Breakfast’.  It was 3 eggs easy over with 2 pieces of sausage and 2 biscuits covered with sausage gravy.  The eggs were done right and the biscuits were OK.  The sausage gravy lacked any real flavor…it was kind of bland.  The Tabasco helped a bit… You might have noted that I only have 1 sausage patty on my plate.  When the waitress brought the food, she told me that they were cooking up another patty and she’d bring it a.s.a.p.  The good news is that she brought me 2 more patties before I was done eating!  The sausage patties were quite good…lots of good sausage flavor…

We will return to Good Eats…definitely for breakfast…but we’ll also try out the lunch menu.  They serve good food at a fair price.  It’s not the best we’ve ever had but it sure filled our yearning for breakfast food!

Good Eats Café is located at 521 US Highway 321 N in Lenoir City Tennessee.  They are open for breakfast and lunch.  Phone: 865-816-3281.  Their website is currently ‘under construction’, but when it is completed the web address will be http://www.goodeatscafeandbakery.com/. 

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by and sharing breakfast with us!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Robert James Thomson – Artist

Robert James Thomson was my brother… He was born on June 2, 1948 and he passed away on April 25, 2013 at the age of 64.  While he lived what must be termed as a challenging life, he seemed to have been born with an artist’s genes.  In fact, his father Hugh, his brother Ian and his sister Anne, as well as our mother Elizabeth, all had these genes/talent to one degree or another.

This is Robert “Bob” at 9 years of age, sitting at an easel completing a pencil drawing…

This is one of those pencil drawings from that stage in his life…and I can’t even draw a straight line using ruler!

This is another early pencil drawing…all by free hand and with tremendous detail!

This is one of my favorite pencil drawings by Bob… I like ships and the detail in this drawing is spectacular!  This drawing is probably from the late 1960’s.

Robert’s father died when Robert was only 10 and his father was his hero.  It seemed to change the course of his life.  Trouble found him in many ways over the ensuing years and he struggled for the rest of his days.

This is definitely one of my favorites… ‘The Fish Mongers’.  I know that this drawing was copied from another work by a different artist but the skill level with the pencil has always dazzled me!

This is a photo of Bob/Robert at work at a home he owned in Kansas City Kansas.  While he was in the VA hospital for a lengthy stay and in critical condition, the power in his home was turned off and the house was left sitting empty.  The house burned down… As per a fire marshal I spoke to, it was definitely a case of arson.  With no insurance on the house, he spent the last few years living in a trailer park… Even more significant, he lost all of his art work, equipment and other belongings.

 

His primary medium was oil paint.  Much of his work is quite linear…leaning towards graphic art.

Some of it is a bit startling…like this cat on a railing.   Note the cat on the couch next to the painting.

He worked for the railroad for a while and he really liked trains or anything related to the railroads.  This study showing the drive wheels of a steam locomotive is a graphic example…

Railroading was the best job he ever had…and when he was laid off in a cut back, he never really held a good job after that.  He kept trying to duplicate the salary and those jobs were just gone forever.  His trains kept coming though, via his paintings…

…and, if not trains, such as the less graphic but ‘warmer’ painting above, many of his paintings were at the very least train related.

Like this painting of a railway trestle…

…or this view along one side of Union Station in Kansas City Missouri.

Then there is this 30” x 40” painting showing Union Station and the Kansas City skyline.  An art collector, dealer and antique collector in the Kansas City area owns this and several other paintings by Robert.

But, just when one thinks that they have Robert and his style ‘pegged’, he would come up with a surprise or two…

My son has this stylized painting of a mountain lion hanging on a wall at his home in Ohio…

He also has this painting…which Robert painted from a photograph he took in Hong Kong while in the Navy.

Then there is this very large painting…in my own collection.  This is Robert’s wife’s grandpa from down in Arkansas and she assured me that the shotgun was right next to him on his right side…

When I saw this painting, I was very surprised… Its style and composition was unlike anything I’d seen Bob create.

His skills continued to evolve…with another nod to railroading and a windmill.  This painting and most of the others were painted before he lost his house. 

Robert did spend a few years in the US Navy aboard the USS Kearsarge.  This was during the Vietnam War… It wasn’t too surprising that he drew and painted boats and ships as well.   

The William S. Mitchell was an Army Corp of Engineers Side-wheel Dustpan Dredge.  She was built ca. 1934 and was retired in 1986.  This ship was 277 feet long and 87 feet wide.  She spent most of her working life dredging the Missouri River in order to keep the shipping channels open.

This is another of Robert’s paintings that belongs to the collector in Kansas City.  This ship has had quite a history.  It was known as the ‘death ship’ because of all the crew members who died during the working life of this vessel. 

There was also a major incident that happened in Kansas City when this ship broke loose from its moorings and floated downriver, crashing into bridge after bridge.  For a video re: this news story, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jJG9r4t7lc.  Amazingly, this ship still ‘lives’.  It is now a tourist attraction…the USS Nightmare…a haunted ship moored at Newport Kentucky, right across from Cincinnati.  Check it out at http://www.ussnightmare.com/history.html.

We really like this painting… It has some of the linear qualities of his earlier works but it has much more character.  I have no idea what happened to this oil painting.  Robert may have sold it… He sold a number of paintings over the years, usually for amounts well below their value, often because he needed some money to pay the bills…

 

This pencil drawing is the last piece of art work that I have from Bob… This is a portrait drawn from a photograph of our brother Ian.  At this stage in Ian’s life, he was dying from cancer.  Robert truly captured the humanity…the suffering that Ian was experiencing…

Robert had a lot of talent…and many demons as well.  He mellowed out and was more in touch with family in the past 4 or 5 years.  I hope that he has found the peace that he struggled to discover all these many years.  Hopefully, his art work will survive as a lasting memorial to his talents here on earth…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by and viewing an art exhibit by Robert James Thomson.

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Another Mexican Restaurant…

Once again we’re out and about…and I have a coupon for another Mexican Restaurant, this time in the Turkey Creek shopping area in Knoxville Tennessee.  Actually the ‘coupon’ is from one of those ubiquitous books that are sold in many metropolitan areas to raise money for one cause or another…

What has stunned me is the number of restaurants that are in the book that have gone out of business in the past year…the Vietnamese Bistro, Sequoyah Grille, Ayala’s, Aegean, Riverwalk Grille at the Carmichael Inn, plus the Silver Spoon moved, invalidating that coupon.  I know that the restaurant business is tough but this seems like a very high ‘mortality’ rate!  One could speculate that restaurants listed in the book are not doing that well or they wouldn’t participate in the program.  I guess that’s a possible explanation but we liked the food in several of these places and there are many restaurants in the book that are strong and that are even opening additional locations…

Moving on… This is La Parrilla Mexican Grill and it’s located in one of Turkey Creek’s many strip centers along Parkside Drive, not too far from Campbell Station Road. 

The interior of this restaurant is a cut above average…although with all the signage, it sort of resembles a sports bar…sans the TV’s.  Note the homey touch with the children’s art work at the cash register…

Here’s another view of the restaurant.  As usual, we weren’t there during normal dining hours so the place wasn’t very busy.

About the menu at La Parrilla… It is as big as any Mexican, (or Chinese), menu we’ve ever seen.

There were: Appetizers (Botanas); an A La Carte menu (with 25 choices!); Ensaladas (Salads); Soups; Fajitas; Pollo (Chicken); Special Dinners for 2; Seafood; Enchiladas; Tacos; Vegetarian Dishes; Nachos; Chimichangas; Especialidades La Parrilla (House Specials); Burritos; and Quesadillas.  And then there is a Make Your Own Combo section; Lunch Specialties;Lunch Favorites; Sides; Postres (Desserts); a Kid’s Menu (Para Los Ninos)…and there are even 3 sandwiches on the menu!

Of course, they started us out with the obligatory basket of corn chips and salsa.  The chips were ordinary and we like them a little thinner.  I liked the salsa well enough but Laurie thought that it lacked any pizzazz! 

So after reading the menu for about 15 minutes, we finally made our choices…

This is the pretty photo of Laurie’s lunch…i.e. as it looked when it came to the table.  Yes…it is a quesadilla!

Laurie really liked her quesadilla, so much so that she would order it again and she wanted to expose the ingredients for this photo.  This is La Parrilla’s Spinach Quesadilla. ($7.99) It is a flour tortilla filled with melted cheese, spinach and mushrooms…and then it’s grilled.  As you can see, it’s served with lettuce, sour cream and guacamole.

For my meal, I ordered the Chunks of Steak Chimichanga. ($9.99) This consisted of a flour tortilla stuffed with pieces of steak then topped with cheese sauce, lettuce, sour cream and guacamole.  There was a choice of rice or beans as an accompaniment.  I gave my guacamole to Laurie…not my thing…and I chose the beans over the rice. 

The meal was good…although I thought that the cheese sauce was too thin…almost watery.  Fortunately for me, we had lots of salsa on the table so I was able spice my food up a bit…

The price was right and the food was a little better than average.  If one is shopping in Turkey Creek and craves Mexican cuisine for their food break, this is a good place to stop.  La Parrilla Mexican Grill is at 11639 Parkside Drive in Knoxville Tennessee.  Phone: 865-966-3001.  Check out their Website and menu at http://www.laparrillaknoxville.com/index.html.  

Just click on any photo to enlarge it…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave