Christmas at Home – Part I

As is our practice, we spent Christmas at home this year.  However, we got lucky and were able to celebrate Christmas twice!  Our efforts to decorate for the Holiday this year did not go to waste…

Our first visitor arrived before Christmas.  Dawn Marie flew into Chattanooga from San Francisco via Dallas to spend time with us before heading home to Miami.  Here she is with ‘Mama’ Laurie!

Dawn Marie and I worked together at Montgomery Ward back in the mid-1990s.  She met Laurie and over time we’ve become very close, like family.  We see Dawn at least a couple of times a year when she can take a little time off.  She has a career that keeps her on the road much of the time.

Of course, part of any visit to our home by anyone involves a bit of eating.  We took Dawn to Mama’s Grits/Classico Restaurant in Tellico Village for breakfast.  Laurie tried the French Toast and she thought that it was pretty good.  However, she wished that it had been hotter when served. 

  

I only took pictures of items that we hadn’t ordered before at Mama’s Grits.  Dawn loves grits and she’s something of a grit connoisseur.  The grits at Mama’s Grits have quite a reputation so we held our breath when Dawn ordered them.  She added a bit of brown sugar.  She proclaimed that they were excellent, creamy and smooth as they should be!

Classico Restaurant in Tellico Village, aka Mama’s Grits is located at 206B Village Square across from the Chota Center at the stoplight at the corner of TN Hwy. 444 and Chota Road.  Phone: 865-657-6300.  The website can be found at http://mamasgrits.homeip.net/Classico/.

While Dawn Marie was here we also went out to dinner with friends and we did a little shopping as well.  Postings to my blog on both activities will follow…

One of the gifts that Santa gave Dawn Marie was this “Mermaid Cozy”, complete with scales and tail!  It was warm and very soft… When Dawn visits us here in the laid back paradise that is East Tennessee, her favorite activity is chilling out…

Our cat J.D. loved that Mermaid Cozy too!  Warm and soft are both right up his aged alley…and he spends much of his day curled up somewhere warm.  Dawn Marie departed from Knoxville on her way to Florida on the day after Christmas. 

Part II of our Christmas this year is the visit by our son David II, his wife Amy and our grandsons, Emmett Lee and David III!  It’s a long drive from Omaha to the Knoxville area.  We are sure looking forward to seeing the whole family, even our grandson’s parents! They will be arriving on the 28th of Dec. I’ll be posting some photos from their visit soon…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  May 2017 bring happiness and health to everyone!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave and Laurie 

Popular Local Restaurant

I decided to develop a list of restaurants that we hadn’t been to in years or that we’d never been to and then take on the challenge of dining at each of them over the next few months.  Some of them were the result of my negative comments about BBQ in East Tennessee, some came from research or a mental list we’d already put together and others were suggested by our neighborhood restaurant mavens, Linda and Norm.

The list is evolving with the count being at 30 so far.  I’ve already posted blogs about Fat Hats in Sweetwater, Fat Stacks in Madisonville and The Iron Skillet in Knoxville.  The next stop was in Vonore Tennessee…

The Countryside Restaurant is a local fixture in Vonore near the intersection of TN Hwy. 72 and US Hwy. 411.  This restaurant is usually packed at lunchtime as well as the evenings on the weekend.

Countryside Restaurant sits back from the highway and it looks very appealing with a bit of landscaping and a large parking lot.  As per their website, "Countryside offers a little bit of something for everyone."

There are 3 dining rooms, one in the front, this one in the center and another off to the right.  We were there for dinner on a weeknight and they weren’t very busy.  It’s important to note that Countryside Restaurant has been open since 1991…that’s 25 years…or an eternity in restaurant parlance!

Dinners came with a salad.  The lettuce was a little tired but they certainly didn’t skimp on the blue cheese dressing.  We felt that the salads were OK.

Our waitress was very young and not very confident or well informed.  She really didn’t know what various dishes consisted of and she brought our warm dinner rolls when we were almost finished with dinner.  FYI…the rolls were served with honey flavored butter.

Laurie felt like having soup.  As per our waitress, the soup of the day was “Loaded Baked Potato”…but she couldn’t tell us what that meant.  Laurie thought that it was OK but it could have been warmer. ($2.95)

For her entrée, Laurie chose the Country Fried Chicken Breast with Gravy. ($9.95) She actually liked the white pepper gravy but she was disappointed with the chicken breast…a boneless ‘formed’ piece of white meat.  She’d hoped for a ‘real’ chicken breast.  Her side dish of choice was the potato salad.  It was pretty good! American style with paprika on top. She at it all. It was the best part of her meal!

Other available sides include a baked potato, green beans, pinto beans, baked beans, rice pilaf, French fries, whipped potatoes, fried okra, coleslaw, turnip greens or corn.

I went for a tried and true favorite of mine…the Country Fried Steak with Gravy. ($9.25)  For my side, I chose the whipped potatoes with more of that gravy.  I brought my own bottle of Tabasco.  The potatoes were OK and I did like that white pepper gravy.  As for the country fried steak, I’d have to say that it falls in the lower quartile of all of the chicken fried steaks I’ve eaten.

We felt that the Countryside Restaurant was pretty much average…really just a ‘fuel stop’.  The food was just OK and we avoid “OK” restaurants.  I also found it annoying that the servers who were at the front of the restaurant spent a lot of time engaged in loud personal conversations…

Back to my initial observation…Countryside Restaurant has been around for a long time and it seems to be very popular.  Maybe we missed something.  Prices are reasonable.  The menu includes steaks, 11 other entrees, 1 of which is their popular Country Style Fish plus 11 sandwiches or burgers.  

Countryside Restaurant is located at 2021 US Hwy. 411 in Vonore Tennessee.  Phone: 423-884-6673.  Website: www.countrysiderestaurant.com.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by to see what we had for dinner!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Our December Wine Tasting/Dinner Party

First of all, our wine tasting parties have evolved and most of the time they are more of a dining experience than they are a wine tasting event.  Other options include 1 or 2 times a year where we just meet at a restaurant somewhere for a little gathering…

We usually skip our wine tasting/dinner gathering in December.  Too many group members are either in a pre-Christmas rush, have other big events, or they’re traveling.  However this year as it worked out, a pre-Christmas dinner was scheduled by our neighbors Jill and Paul at their home.  The tone for our little party was set by their nicely decorated mantle…

The mantle was complemented by this big, bright and festive Christmas tree! 

We started out with a bit of sparkling wine and some light appetizers…summer sausage, cranberry laced cheddar cheese with crackers and peanut butter pretzels to snack on.

Yes indeed, it was a small group on this particular evening.  Two of our 6 couples were traveling and another stayed away due to illness.  From the left we have Susan, Dick, Paul, Jill and my better half, Laurie. 

  

Larry and Bev were slated to bring the salad but Larry came down with a bad cold so they didn’t attend our little soiree.  They did come through though!  They delivered this great salad for the rest of us… It was accompanied by a very nice vinaigrette dressing.

This was my personal salad.  Diners had the option of adding walnuts and/or gorgonzola cheese to their salads.  I opted for the cheese.  I enjoyed this salad so much that I had 2 helpings! Thank you Larry & Bev!

Dinner was served buffet style.  We used these festive Christmas plates for our meals…

Susan and Dick brought these nice fresh carrots as a side dish…

Paul and Jill served up these fresh and warm rolls with dinner.  

Laurie and I brought this vat of mashed potatoes for the group…

We also brought Amish butter for use with those mashed potatoes and the rolls.  It’s so much better than the usual store bought butter!

The centerpiece for our dinner was this big server full of luscious beef bourguignon.  Jill and Paul had made this dish a day earlier which allowed all of the flavors to meld into the rich and wonderful main entree for our dinner…

This was Laurie’s plate with all the key elements on display… My plate was a bit more loaded and not anywhere near as photogenic! 

Following dinner, we retired to the living room for conversation, eggnog…with alcohol added or not…and some wonderful frosted gingerbread cookies.  I managed to snag 2 extra cookies to take home with us but I forgot to take a photo!  As you can see, Susan and Dick are always upbeat and positive and they always have a great time...

Here are our hosts, Jill and Paul, in front of their Christmas tree.  Thanks for a great party.  It was a nice intimate gathering in keeping with the season!  

FYI, Jill and Paul moved down to East Tennessee from the Syracuse New York area and they definitely appreciate our mild and relatively snow free climate.

One last photo... This is what the super moon looked like looking through the trees in our backyard.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by to see what’s been going on!  We hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas…

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave and Laurie

Fat Stacks in Madisonville Tennessee

A few days ago, Laurie and I decided to have a casual dinner at Fat Hats Restaurant in Sweetwater Tennessee.  We had learned that Fat Hats has a ‘big brother’ restaurant over in Madisonville Tennessee.  While Sweetwater is the largest town in Monroe County, Madisonville is the County Seat.

This time we headed out for a late lunch.  Fat Stacks is attached to a convenience store/gas station on TN Hwy. 68.  This location used to be occupied by the American House of Pancakes.

The interior was upscale compared to Fat Hats over in Sweetwater.  For one thing, the bathrooms in this diner style restaurant have indoor entrances! This is a typical local diner.  In the first of these 2 photos you can even see what appears to be the edge of the former diner style counter along the left wall.  The restaurant was clean and the service was just fine…

WOW!  This platter of breakfast goodness (Tabasco already on the eggs) cost a miniscule $5.99!  It consisted of 2 easy over eggs, 2 sausage patties, 2 slices of marbled rye toast and a large order of hash browns.  The hash browns were crispy as I requested!  For the money, this breakfast is hard to beat…

Note: Fat Stacks serves breakfast all day long!  This is important to us as we love breakfast anytime…

Laurie opted for one of her favorite sandwiches… This is Fat Stacks Patty Melt with their 6 oz. super burger patty. ($5.00) With the fries, her meal totaled $6.00.  The patty melt was excellent…juicy with lots of grilled onions and that marbled rye bread.  It was so large that Laurie felt that she would have been better off with the 4 oz. burger. ($4.00) The French fries were OK if nothing special…

Fat Stacks menu is extensive with 2 pages of breakfast items ranging from pancakes and waffles to traditional breakfasts, omelets, skillet and breakfast specialties, grab and go sandwiches as well as the option of build your own breakfast… Then there are appetizers, salads, chili, sandwiches, burgers and hot dogs plus 9 different dinner options.

It’s hard to beat the value at Fat Stacks, especially when you consider the quality of what we’ve tried so far.  Fat Stacks is located at 4915 New Tennessee Highway 68 in Madisonville Tennessee.  Phone: 423-545-9540.  I couldn’t find a website or Facebook listing.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by to check out what we’ve been up to!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!  May your holidays be bright… Peace…

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave and Laurie 

Dinner at Fat Hat’s Grill – Sweetwater TN

When our friends Linda and Norm overwhelmed us with the vast array of East Tennessee restaurants that they’d eaten at, we kept looking and listening for an opportunity to actually visit a restaurant somewhere in the area before they got around to it! 

I’d remembered our friends mentioning Fat Stacks for breakfast over in Madisonville Tennessee.  They’d also mentioned that they understood that another restaurant was owned by the same folks over in Sweetwater Tennessee… I thought that they said Fat Max.  Then I was listening to the old time Sweetwater rock ‘n roll station and I heard a restaurant ad for the 100^th time.  The young lady doing the ad spoke so softly that I could never understand what the name of the place was…

So I turned up the radio and focused one night about a week ago…and I heard that young lady say “Fat Hat’s”!  Off we went for dinner… The concrete block structure looks like it may have been a soft serve ice cream outlet at one point.  FYI…the bathrooms have outside entrances on the far side of this picture.

When I looked at the menu I did recall a couple of items that were advertised on the radio.  It was all about the burgers and the onion rings!

The back of the menu features the Friday Fish Fry which was another item mentioned in the radio ad.  Unfortunately it was a Monday when we stopped in…

This is definitely a local down home kind of place.  Our server’s kids were doing their homework at one of the tables.  Everyone was very nice.  We learned that the soft spoken announcer who did those radio ads was the owner’s daughter. 

There was one other customer in the restaurant when we arrived and Laurie decided not to include him in the photo.  Despite the lack of sit down business, the stream of take-out customers was steady while we were there.

Laurie went for Fat Hat’s Super Burger, their 6 oz. best seller.  She added cheese and bacon and picked a small order of the onion rings for her side dish.  The burger was juicy, the bacon was plentiful and the onion rings were awesome!  Even though this was a small order, she couldn’t finish them…

When I saw a 3 piece chicken dinner on the menu, I decided to ignore the radio ad.  Other than fast food joints, actual fried chicken that isn’t fingers or strips is a rare commodity!  The chicken came with some decent coleslaw, a big slice of buttered Texas toast and I chose French fries for my main side dish.  The French fries were a little mushy and needed a touch longer in the fryer.  However the chicken was very tasty with a nice crunchy crust!  I would order it again although I want to return the next time for that fish fry.

So this isn’t quite the end of the story.  On Tuesday night our friends Linda and Norm texted Laurie to let her know that they were at Fat Hat’s and Linda was scarfing down some of those great onion rings.  We took some pride in the fact that we’d beaten them to this restaurant by one day!

Fat Hat’s Grill is located at 411 Sweetwater-Vonore Road in Sweetwater Tennessee.  Phone: 423-337-3686.  I couldn’t find a website but they are on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fat-Hats-Grill/115027528698182.

On the way home from dinner, Laurie took this photo along TN Hwy. 72 in Loudon County.  It’s the super moon reflecting off the cloud cover along the mountains in the distance…  Sorry about the windshield reflection.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a nice casual dinner!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Dining Here and There…

What follows is a summary of recent miscellaneous dining experiences, both at home and in local restaurants.  I’ve posted both of these restaurants previously but this time we tried different appetizers or entrees than we did before…

Our first stop is at Wild Wings Café in the Knoxville Tennessee area’s Turkey Creek shopping area. (Not to be confused with Buffalo Wild Wings) This restaurant/sports bar/entertainment venue is huge and it’s located at 11335 Campbell Lakes Drive in Farragut Tennessee.  Phone: 865-777-9464.  Website: http://www.wildwingcafe.com/locations/knoxville-tn.

We started out with one of our favorite appetizers…but I didn’t take a picture of it… FYI, it was the Buffalo Chicken Dip…shredded chicken in a creamy and spicy sauce with a hint of blue cheese and served with warm tortilla chips. ($7.29)

Laurie decided to try one of the ‘Wild Wraps’.  This is the “Buffarella”. ($8.29) She chose the homemade chips as her side.  The wrap is filled with spicy chicken strips dipped in a hot sauce of your choice, with lettuce, diced tomatoes, mozzarella and cheddar cheese with ranch dressing.  She likes wraps and this one was very satisfying indeed!

I decided to go for the Big Buffalo Chicken Salad. ($9.29) I chose the fried chicken with the parmesan and garlic marinade as the topping for a big salad bowl with greens, cheese, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, bacon and homemade blue cheese dressing.  I’d had this creation before on several occasions but I thought that it wasn’t quite as good as before.  It seemed to me that the chicken pieces were more small ‘nuggets’ than the sliced fried breast meat that I remembered.  It was still very satisfactory…

Back in our own kitchen and it was time for breakfast… Fortunately my better half hadn’t been able to finish her Pasta Carbonara from our dinner at Classico at Tellico Village.   So for the first step I just heated the leftovers in a frying pan…

FYI… Classico Restaurant at Tellico Village is located at 206B Village Square across from the Chota Center at the stoplight at the corner of TN Hwy. 444 and Chota Road.  Phone: 865-657-6300.  Website: http://mamasgrits.homeip.net/Classico/. 

I added some cracked red pepper flakes and a lot of parmesan to the pasta carbonara as I heated it in the pan…

You guessed it!  When the pasta was nice and hot, I fried up a couple of easy over eggs and dropped them on top of the parmesan loaded pasta.  The creaminess of the eggs and pasta blended together like it was meant to be!  I will do this again if I ever have any leftover pasta with Alfredo sauce to work with…

A couple of days later we went out to eat with our friends Lynn and George.  We had recently been to K Town Tavern in Knoxville but our friends had never eaten there. 

Lynn decided to go with a steak as they are prominently featured on K Town’s menu and it’s one of her favorite foods.  This is the 9 oz. Seasoned Sirloin Steak with a side of French fries. ($16.99) Yes, that is a slice of pizza on her plate! It was a sample of George’s choice for dinner that he shared. Lynn enjoyed her steak and didn’t offer any negative comments.

 Laurie ordered one of K Town Tavern’s 12” Pizzas, this one with Pepperoni and Italian Sausage. ($14.49) She had spoken to the pizza chef on her way into the restaurant and she had told him that she likes her pizza with a crispy thin crust and cut into squares (St. Louis style) instead of slices.

The ingredients were very good…with flavorful bites of sausage and a nice quality pepperoni.  She got her square cut pizza but the crust wasn’t thin enough or crispy enough for her taste.  However it was a good pizza, ranking 3^rd in her opinion in the greater Knoxville area.  Number 1 is Little Joe’s and number 2 is Rosati’s Pizza.

George went for a Margarita Pizza with fresh mozzarella, tomato, garlic basil and olive oil. ($11.99) He went for slices rather than squares and he was very happy with his choice.

Since steaks are so prominently featured on K Town Tavern’s menu, I decided to jump out there and go for a ‘seared premium cut’ and the most expensive steak on the menu.  This was the 12 oz. Grilled Marinated Ribeye accompanied by parmesan roasted potatoes. ($25.99)

I took the photo after I’d already attacked the potatoes.  Unfortunately, they were the best part of my meal.  The steak wasn’t all that flavorful, there was a lot of fat and waste, it wasn’t very tender and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who likes steak.  Win some…lose some!  We have liked everything else we’ve eaten here…

K Town Tavern is located at 320 North Peters Road in Knoxville Tennessee.  Phone: 865-691-8144.  Website: http://ktowntavern.com/.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by to see what’s on the menu!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave