Eating Our Way through 2020 – Plus!

Ahhh…the Covid-19 era.  Self-isolation, quarantines, closed businesses, unemployment, events cancelled, mask vs. no mask as well as sickness and death.  What a year!  The good news is that it appears that there is a vaccine on the horizon and this slow moving nightmare may actually come to an end sometime in mid to late 2021.  Hopefully, the economy will spring back once the vaccine in administered to enough people here and abroad.

So Laurie and I continue to semi-cocoon…avoiding crowds and other high risk situations, plus people who don’t mask up or take too many chances.  Of course, this has meant a limited number of posts to my blog site and an even more limited variety of topics.  Food continues to be #1 followed by nature, local sights and happenings, and rarely ‘safe’ social outings or visitors from other places.

For this post to my site, we’ll start with a couple of avian visitors…a bluebird and a gold finch.  In this instance they are partaking from Laurie’s ‘watering hole’ that is mounted on the railing of our deck.  Note the last photo above.  It consists of a round bracket and clamp as well as a plastic bowl that fits into the bracket. We’d purchased this inventive product from a local store and we immediately had a viewable attraction for us and a popular spot for our local bird population.   

Laurie took this photo of some colorful red cypress trees in our neighborhood.  We both love the look of these trees but we just don’t have the space in our yard to plant our own…

Now for some food related items!

The carnivore in me truly relished this dinner.  It was the first time I’d used the grill since my knee replacement surgery so it was sort of a celebration.  We’d purchased a couple of quality ribeye steaks from Benton’s Bacon/Ham and we simple sided them with a mixed vegetable and some nice garlic bread that we layered with cheese before heating.

Note: In addition to bacon, ham, prosciutto and sausage, Benton’s also offers ribeye and strip steaks, bologna, top notch hot dogs, cheese, eggs and much more.  Their retail store is located at 2603 US Hwy 411 in Madisonville Tennessee.

Yet another satisfying meal...especially for me!  These thick breaded and baked boneless pork chops were accompanied by a nice helping of cheesy scalloped potatoes.  I love a good pork chop but it must be moist, that is, not over-cooked. 

We recently purchased these raspberry crumble cookies at Costco.  These large and relatively thick cookies have a dollop of raspberry filling in the center and they had both the texture and taste of shortbread in my opinion.  We both agreed that they were the best cookies we’d had in quite a while!  They were big enough that it would have been difficult to eat more than one at a sitting.  There were 12 cookies in the package and the price was $8.99.

As a lead-in to yet another carnivore style meal, we started out with this large bowl of salad.  We had to eat something truly healthy!  The salad contained romaine lettuce, cucumber, grape tomatoes and celery.

The salad was paired with these lamb loin chops from Costco’s amazing meat department.  As far as we’re concerned, no one in the area offers better lamb chops at a reasonable price. 

The first photo shows the chops seasoned and ready for the grill while the second photo shows the delicious finished product! (Medium rare s'il vous plait!) 

This is my new favorite potato chip!  It’s one of the ‘UTZ Kettle Classics’, in this case “Dark Russets” cooked in peanut oil.  To me these potato chips are more satisfying than the standard variety of potato chip. 

Utz Quality Foods, Inc. is a large snack food company that’s based in Hanover Pennsylvania.  It produces as wide variety of snacks under several different brand names.  To learn about the company’s products and availability, just go to https://www.utzsnacks.com/.

One night we had a salad along with a bag of Foster Farms Hot and Spicy Wings.  Not much effort required and easy clean up after dinner.  Laurie thought that the wings were very good.  I thought they were good but needed a little more time in the oven to crisp them up a bit more.  The ‘heat’ or spice level was right on point for both of us…

Foster Farms offers a wide variety of fresh and frozen food items.  To view their products, go to https://www.fosterfarms.com/products/.

This was yet another of our recent dinner time offerings.  Rana brand sausage ravioli paired with fresh frozen microwavable asparagus spears.  Can you tell which plate shown above is mine?  Hint…I put Tabasco on almost all pasta with cream based sauce!

Rana has restaurants in New York City and London England.  The company was founded by Giovanni Rana in Italy.  Rana products include filled pasta, flat cut pasta, gnocchi, sauces and meal kits.  You can view the company’s offerings at https://www.giovanniranafs.com/products.  To learn about Giovanni Rana himself, (who is 83 years old), just go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Rana.

I thought that I’d end with a sign of the times…controversial as it may be to some.  Here’s hoping that Covid-19 and related conflict, pain and suffering is brought under control during 2021.  As for 2020, its end is near but it has been memorable, that’s for sure!

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