Nature, a Cheese Shop and More

By the time this post is published, we’ll be semi-free, covid-19 wise… Our 2 week waiting period after the second ‘jab’ will be up and we’ll be ‘masked up’ as a courtesy to others…not just for our personal protection!

So this is the last post written purely from our ‘self-isolation’ life style…

With spring upon us, let’s start with a nice sunrise… What the heck were we doing up so early in the morning?!  We’re usually late to bed and late to rise folks…

This is one of our red bellied woodpeckers, welcome, eye-catching and regular visitors to our feeder.  This one stayed on the tree for a long time, allowing Laurie to snap a plethora of photos!  This is the time of the year that the males pound on anything that make a lot of noise in order to attract a mate.  They love metal stacks on houses... but this one was after a nice bug of some sort.

How about this cheeky visitor!  Despite the fact that Laurie was right on the other side of the sliding glass door, this squirrel was relaxing and ‘chilling’.  The good news for our birds is that for the last 2 years, these cute little tree rodents haven’t figured out how to get at our feeder.  In years past, some had learned to climb the screens on our screened in porch and then jump to the feeder… No genetic imprinting is a good thing! 

Now onto to a bit of food.  These are our new favorite potato chips!  We purchased this bag of Keogh’s Irish Atlantic Sea Salt Potato Crisps (chips to us) at our local Fresh Market.  They are really tasty! 

Keogh’s offers 12 different styles/flavors of crisps, ranging from Shamrock and Sour Cream to Flame Grilled Irish Steak.  They also sell easy to cook potatoes and 3 different flavors of popcorn.  I looked on the Internet and discovered that in addition to Fresh Market, some of these items are also available at Cost Plus World Market, Publix and of course, Amazon.

We also decided to give Planet Oat’s oat ‘milk’ a try.  It’s gray and quite tasteless.  We wouldn’t recommend it unless someone needed it for health reasons

This was an exciting ‘find’!  The Euphoric Cheese Shop recently opened in a strip center in the west end of Knoxville.  We love cheese!  The two ladies that own the shop are friendly and helpful…and sampling is encouraged! 

This new shopping destination doesn’t just sell cheese.  They also stock meats for a charcuterie tray, jams, chocolates, coffee, humus, honey, shortbread and imported beer.  Oh yes, they also sell actual charcuterie boards from a local maker…

We have a hard time walking away empty from most stores that sell specialty foods and the Euphoric Cheese Shop was no exception.  We purchased 4 different varieties of cheese…Idiazabal, Swiss Raclette, Red Dragon Chedda and 833 Cheddar.  In addition we bought a mini-baguette, a bag of Cucina Viva Fennel Crostini, a bag of Knoxville Coffee Company’s Dark French Roast Coffee and two jars of jam…Peach-A-Cot and Strawberry Lemongrass.

We visited the Euphoric Cheese Shop just a couple of days before their grand opening on March 19th and we will return!  This specialty food shop is located at 139 West End Avenue in Knoxville Tennessee.  Phone: 865-392-1199.  Website: https://euphoriccheese.com.

By the time we created our own charcuterie tray, that mini-baguette had already been devoured.  Of course we had the crostini…but I also wanted some bread with our feast.  We picked up a loaf of Breadeli Rustic Flatbread with garlic butter at our local Food Lion.  It was quite nice…

And this was our completed charcuterie tray.  We’d put this together for dinner one night.  The tray and immediate vicinity includes the flatbread mentioned above, the 4 cheeses from the Euphoric Cheese Shop, the crostini (not in the photo), some smoked Gouda cheese spread, as well as salami, pepperoni, sliced baked deli ham and peppered roasted turkey.  Of course, our usual Amish butter was also on the table…

It was a fine meal indeed! 

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