Food, Weather and Critters

Laurie and I are more like cave dwellers than we are explorers in winter weather.  We like to dine out with friends, go to the occasional movie, take short drives when it’s sunny, etc.

This winter season lifestyle dictates what blog materials I have to work with…hence all of my recent restaurant reviews.  Fortunately, family visits broke up the steady diet of food commentary to some degree in recent weeks.

Today’s posting is a bit about food, the weather in East Tennessee and some local critters that are part of our environment…

As I’ve mentioned previously, I almost never waste leftovers!  In this case, I had a couple of leftover grilled hot Italian sausages and a generous helping of Bob Evans regular style mashed potatoes.  Laurie made up a mixture of spiced up flour for me to coat my mashed potato patties, I added pepper, a bit of onion powder and garlic and then I fried them to a golden brown.  When they were almost ready, I heated up the sausages in the same frying pan.   It made for a very satisfying lunch!

In a previous blog posting, I talked about Dawn Marie coming up from Miami to visit us for Christmas.  Her flight home was late in the day so we decided to stop at Windy City Grill for our evening meal. 

Dawn Marie opted for Steak and Queso Wrap and added the Mac n’ Cheese rather than the standard French fries or homemade potato chips. ($12.50) As you can see the mac n’ cheese was nice and creamy and the steak was fairly close to rare…which is Dawn’s preference.

Laurie ordered a Grilled Cheese Sandwich with house made potato chips. ($6.00) This triple decker sandwich is stuffed with American, Mozzarella and Queso, grilled and then topped with a tomato.  Laurie really liked it and said that she’d order it again.

I’m stuck in a rut at the Windy City Grill.  Once again I ordered the Cajun Burger with curly fries. ($9.50) This 8 oz. burger is grilled with Cajun seasonings and then topped with fresh jalapeno slices and pepperjack cheese.  I will continue to order this burger at least every other visit to this restaurant!

Windy City Grill is located at 2641 US Hwy. 411 in Maryville Tennessee.  Phone: 865-724-2508.  Their website can be found at: http://www.thewindycitygrille.com/home.html.

On the way home from errands the other day we came upon a huge flock of wild turkeys along the road in our neighborhood.  This is just a small portion of the flock that I estimate numbered 40 – 50 birds in total.  They certainly are big birds!

On the night of January 6^th we had our first snowfall here in East Tennessee.  It amounted to about 2.5 inches in total…but it was very cold as well.  We got down to 6 degrees one night, the coldest it’s been in about 2 years…

This was the early morning après snowfall view looking down the street in front of the house.  It was pretty.  The street was cleared later in the day but we had no plans to leave the house…a major advantage of retirement.  The other good news is that snow doesn’t stay on the ground long in this part of the country…We will have been in the 60’s for 3 days by the time you read this post.

To end this post, I thought that a photo of our cat J.D. (Juris Doctorate) would be appropriate.  He loves the sun and when it’s cold and cloudy all too frequently, he really values any chance to sunbathe!  The hotter the sun is on him, the happier he is…

That’s about it for now.  Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave