What to Write About?

So, after 82 days in self-isolation with limited excursions to the grocery store and only a couple of ‘social distancing’ events at our home or neighbor’s homes, what is there to post on my blogsite?  So, it’s back to the usual…a bit of food, local news, birds, more food and a good look at the moon.

As I’ve mentioned previously, we aren’t into creative cooking…or at least frequent creative cooking.  All that prep and measuring is just too stressful for daily consumption so, for the most part we keep it simple.  Also, we just have never been comfortable cooking fish at home so we buy it ready to cook… In this case, we’d purchased this box of Scott Foods Haddock filets with lemon dill butter at Costco.   

Laurie followed the instructions and we plated the haddock filets with jasmine rice and zucchini.  I used plenty of butter, pepper and onion flakes when I sautéed that zucchini.  We both enjoyed our dinner!  The haddock was nice and mild yet firm and the lemon dill butter was perfect.

FYI, Scott Foods is all about seafood to include fish burgers, 8 varieties of fish filets, cedar planked seafood and 3 styles of shrimp quesadillas.  To learn more, go to http://jscottfoods.com/products/.  

Well, when we made the haddock dinner, we made 3 filets so there was one leftover for one of my special breakfast.  I heated it briefly in a frying pan, then laid it on a piece of buttered toast…and then topped it with an easy-over egg.  It was quite a nice start to my day in self-isolation…

Yes, I know… This looks like a duplicate from the recent past.  If you read my blogs you may remember that I made my ‘famous’ moist and cheesy scrambled eggs for Laurie’s Mother’s Day breakfast.  You may also recall that I received several demerits for ‘experimenting’ with her favorite eggs, especially on Mother’s Day!  I’d added a heaping tablespoon of Boursin and garlic cheese spread…and it ruined the eggs for her.

Redemption time!  This time I made her eggs the way she likes them but I did add a special ingredient this time too… However, I obtained her approval before taking another chance.  So…after mixing my eggs with cream cheese, Manchego cheese, sharp shredded cheddar and lots of pepper, I added crumbled bacon…but not just any crumbled bacon.  We had bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches and we had used Benton’s Bacon to make them.  Benton’s Bacon is heavily smoked and quite pungent.  A little goes a long way!  In this case, ‘Benton’s crumbled bacon’ was the perfect addition to my egg mix.  I was given a couple of merit awards for my effort!

FYI, Benton’s Bacon and Ham is on the menu in hundreds of restaurants across the USA…and it’s made here right in East Tennessee.

…and another one bites the dust!  The Covid-19/coronavirus pandemic has been a restaurant killer.  Rendezvous was a fairly new addition to our local dining scene.  They were open for breakfast and lunch but the loss of sit down traffic was too much for the owners to handle.  Wishing them well…

Love our little goldfinches!  They are so cute looking but when it comes to their food, they can be terrors… They’ve been known to guard the feeder against other small birds.

Back to food again… Being in self-isolation for so long, we are always looking for different food items to try when we go to the grocery store.   In this case, I spotted a box of Crav’n frozen ‘Spicy Breaded Pickle Slices’.  Since Laurie is a fried pickle chip fanatic, it was a no-brainer purchase.  The second photo shows the pickle chips right out of the oven.  They were actually pretty good…and they temporarily satisfied Laurie’s cravings…

I’ve since learned that Crav’n products include a variety of pizzas, pizza bites, jalapeno poppers, pot stickers, egg rolls, crab Rangoon, Wasabi green beans and more.  We’ll have to give some of them a try the next time we go to the store.  See https://cravnflavor.com/products/.

Yes, I know that I’ve featured hot dogs recently and I know that purists gag at the sight of ketchup on a hot dog… But, the reason I included this photo is that this time I grilled the hot dog buns just to enhance the hot dog experience…and it was a good decision!

I decided to end this post with Laurie’s recent photo of the moon.  It is one of the best ever photos we’ve taken of our nearest neighbor in space.  The craters and various features really popped! 

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

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Stay Safe and Take Care, Big Daddy Dave