Shopping and Seafood!

 ...continuing with Bonnie and Bill's visit from St. Louis Missouri.  We're always happy to have them come and stay for a bit.  Laurie really enjoys spending time with her sister but, as you'll see in the next few blog posts, they do love to shop, or at least browse a lot!  At least I get some exercise by just wandering around the selected stores.

I do participate in these shopping/browsing excursions in that I do some research in advance, in an effort to find stores or outlets that might be interesting to everyone.  Bargain Hunters Antique and Flea Market Mall was chosen even though we'd visited it about 2 years earlier.  I knew that there was a lot of variety re: merchandise for sale and that does enhance the browsing experience. 

As the preceding 3 photos show, you can find something for almost every taste and/or need at Bargain Hunters Mall.  This booth style mall is loaded with variety...from clothes and boots to metal roosters, signs, socks, scents, art, crafts and more.  I did feel that there were fewer antiques being offered for sale then we'd noted on our last visit.  In any case, the key item of interest many males accompanying their spouses, were the benches and seats at the front of the store where the guys can chill while the ladies do their thing. 

The good news for me is that Laurie only made a couple of small purchases.  The good news for this bit of older retail space, actually a former Big Lots Store, is that Bargain Hunters has occupied and repurposed the space...paying rent to the property's owners.  This mall, with its 300 booths, is open from 10 AM to 6 PM daily.  It is located at 4006 Chapman Highway in Knoxville Tennessee.  Website: https://www.bargainhunterstn.com/knoxville-tn.  I did note that Google Photos for this mall still features 18 or so photos from our last visit... 

The browsing wasn't complete though... E-Clec-Tique (cute) in Maryville Tennessee was next on the agenda.  We'd been here several years ago so it was time to take another look.

E-Clec-Tique is much smaller than Bargain Hunters but the quality of their antiques is significantly superior.  They also feature gift and home decor items.  I managed to escape any purchases but Laurie did spot a couple of items that had me sweating...

This retailer is located at 746 West Lamar Alexander Parkway in Maryville Tennessee.  They are closed on Sunday but the store is open from 10 AM until 5 PM all other days.  Their website is under construction...but when finished it will be at https://e-clec-tique.com/.  

This is The Shrimp Dock, a fresh seafood store in Alcoa/Maryville Tennessee.  Two other Shrimp Dock locations can be found in our area, one in Farragut and the other in the Bearden neighborhood of Knoxville.  

A fisherman from New Orleans started the Shrimp Dock in 1993.  He is a shrimper and fisherman.  He started driving to the Knoxville area and selling shrimp from the back of his truck on a weekly basis.  After a bit that evolved into a storefront operation.  With the involvement of new owners, the Shrimp Dock expanded into what it is today.  The original owner...that shrimping captain from New Orleans...is still operating fishing and shrimping boats out of Louisiana, and the Shrimp Dock stores are still the recipients of much of his watery harvest.  Other suppliers also replenish the fresh seafood inventory for the stores on a daily basis.     

Not only can customers buy a wide variety of seafood to take home, but they can also purchase meals and sandwiches to go or they can eat in the Shrimp Dock.  They do have a dining area.  The menu boards above are a little tough to read even when enlarged.  There is a whole series of items that can be served fried or grilled with a variety of seasonings all accompanied with 2 sides.  You can order a Po' Boy, a number of Signature entrees, appetizers and small plates...and even a Low Country Boil.

I've included a photos of a couple of the seafood display cases just to show some of the variety of seafood products available.  The top shelf in the top photo contains soft shell crab, king crab, claw crab meat, lump crab and crab roe.  The bottom 2 shelves are all about lobster, warm water and cold water lobster.  The items in the middle photo are easy to read and include salmon from Scotland.  The bottom photo is all about different size/types of shrimp plus crab cakes and a number of seafood dips and spreads.  We bought the shrimp dip and everyone loved it!  We also purchased a couple of quarts of New England clam chowder.  Laurie loved it but I like my clam chowder creamier and thicker than she does.

Our primary purchase at The Shrimp Dock was these 12 big and beautiful fresh sea scallops!  When we got home, Laurie and Bonnie went to work preparing the fresh scallops as our entree for dinner.  Despite claims that this is a simple recipe, only the ingredients were 'simple'.  The preparation involved a number of steps or actions and it was all about timing.  The ladies were scrambling to get it right...stress levels were high!  In the end however, our meal of Pan-Seared Scallops with Lemon Caper Sauce served with linguini was perfect!  A fine seafood restaurant couldn't have produced a more delicious meal!  Kudos to the chefs...

To view the recipe as well as the process required to provide this seafood masterpiece, you can just go to https://bakerbynature.com/pan-seared-scallops-with-lemon-caper-sauce/.  

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

Thanks for stopping by to see what we've been up to!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

At Home - This and That

 ...back home again, just hanging around, watching the wooded areas in the neighborhood disappear and playing with a couple of food items we hadn't tried before.

This was the wooded lot diagonally across the street from our home.  Other than the lot next to our home, this was the last wooded lot in our 2 block area.  A new house, directly across the street from us was being built on the lot to the left of the woods shown above.  We believe that the lot next to us is tied up for now with legal issues but that can't go on forever...

...and this is a view of that same 'wooded lot' just a couple of weeks ago.  We used to see trees as we rounded that curve toward our home... Now all we see is construction and the backs of other homes.

Unfortunately, unless specified by the home builder or the person who is having a home built, the common practice is to just strip the lots bare.  It simplifies the new construction and holds down some cost.  Even worse in this instance is that the subcontractor who was hired to clear the lot didn't even stick to the property at hand.  The homeowner in the first house past the cleared lot was very unhappy when the equipment operator took down trees on the common ground between homes as well as a couple of trees that were actually on the edge of their property.

But we especially felt sorry for the new homeowner in that white home at the left.  When Jane and Roger got title to the home, that treed lot was lovely and verdant.  When they actually moved in the trees were gone and so were 2 or 3 trees that were part of their property.  

Now for some food topics...

In my never ending effort to create a salad that my medications allow and that satisfies my urge to munch on produce, I've been playing with my options.  Iceberg lettuce isn't an issue but just how many wedge salads can one person eat...much less enjoy?  In this instance tomatoes and iceberg lettuce served as the base and then I covered it with radishes and slices of yellow squash.  I decided that this iteration was OK but now when I make similar salads, I don't use that blue cheese dressing, but instead I opt for a red wine vinaigrette.  The vinaigrette provides a fresher taste than the blue cheese dressing and its a bit healthier too.

Recently we were inspired by Big Dude at https://bigdudesramblings.blogspot.com/2024/07/creamed-chipped-beef-on-toast-and.html#more, to make our own creamed chipped beef on toast (SOS for those who served in the military).  We wanted to make extra so we could freeze a batch for a second meal sometime in the future, so we doubled the recipe from Big Dude's blog site.  To be honest, I'd never noted the dried sliced beef in a jar in the grocery store...but there it was.  So we chopped up the beef!

Next we created the slurry that serves as the base for the creamed chipped beef...butter, flour, garlic powder, onion powder and dried rosemary.  We upped the seasoning, adding a bit of pepper and red pepper flakes as we like our SOS a bit spicier.  

These photos show the result of our culinary copying efforts.  First that big pot of creamed chipped beef and then two containers from that pot...one for dinner and one for the freezer.  The whole effort was simple enough...but how did we fare with the actual resulting taste test?

This was my serving of creamed chipped beef on a slice of toast...in this case it was from that batch we didn't freeze but which was left over from our dinner 2 nights earlier.  

Yes, that is Tabasco on the SOS!  I put Tabasco on almost any creamy entree, even on Alfredo entrees in restaurants.  Now for the moment of truth... We did deviate from the recipe published by Big Dude.  We don't keep whole milk in the house as we don't use that much of it and it goes bad too quickly and I hate wasting food.  So we only buy half and half milk, the advantage being that it has a shelf life of 4 or 5 weeks.  The problem with making creamed chipped beef with half and half is that the resulting cream sauce is too rich, overwhelming the spices and producing a product that looks like the original intended product...but which just isn't as tasty.  Live and learn!  The next time we'll buy enough regular milk to make SOS the way it was intended.

As we recently wandered through a plethora of local markets, farmer's markets and boutique malls, Laurie spotted this package containing the makings of Dakota Cheese Soup.  We both like cheese soup so it was a natural impulse.

After Laurie followed the directions on the package and made the soup for dinner one recent evening, this was the result.  Laurie liked it but I thought that it was too 'thin'...and not cheesy enough.  Sometimes these 'special food items' are complete winners and sometimes they just aren't.  

A recent 'winner' was a jar of Amish "B-E-A-R" Jam.  It's made with blackberries, elderberry juice, apples and red raspberries.  It is excellent jam.  Sorry no photo.  Check out the available sources and varieties on-line by just searching for "Bear Jam".   

The perfect ending for this 'hanging at home post' is this photo of the sunset as taken from a traffic jam on the I-75 bridge over the Tennessee River/Watts Bar Lake as we returned home from a local gathering.  Laurie just snapped the photo out of the car window...

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them...

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Flowers, Food and Bugs

This post involves items for the home, related happenings, a bit of cooking and an insect invasion… One issue locally is will the rain ever stop?!  YTD we’ve had more rain than either Seattle Washington or London England…

This year Laurie decided to replace her old clay based planters.  They were falling apart.  She wanted something eye-catching and bright that would last for a while…hence these large yellow pots.  They are filled with a variety of colorful annuals and perennials.  Another advantage is that she found rolling bases for the planters so we can move them as needed due to the weather or just to clean the area around them.

She also bought a hanging planter…which we may not hang.  It is easier to take care of them and they dry out more slowly when they aren’t blowing in the wind.  This flowering plant is one of over 100 species of the genus Portulaca or Purslane.  Purslane is widely consumed as an edible plant although is some areas it is considered to be invasive.  These plants are eaten with great relish by chickens.

Laurie and I love a good sausage gravy over biscuits for breakfast.  In my case, over-easy eggs are a frequent accompaniment.  Good sausage gravy is hard to find in restaurants.  As I noted in an earlier post, Laurie noted a recipe that was published by the Pioneer Woman. The Pioneer Woman – Recipes, Country Life and Style, Entertainment.

In any case, we took Ree Drummond’s recipe and modified it…actually several times.  This time we wanted a double batch of sausage gravy so we doubled up on the sausage.  We prefer Jimmy Dean’s sausage and in this case we used a pound each of Jimmy Dean Hot and Jimmy Dean Regular pork sausage.  I cooked the sausage, breaking it up as I went.  When the sausage is ready, the recipe states that we shouldn’t drain the grease…and we don’t. 

This is the finished sausage gravy in a deep pan.  In the past we’ve made this recipe with all regular sausage, all hot sausage and with varying amounts of milk.  We’ve also made it with half and half milk.

In this instance, with a double batch, we used a half cup of flour, 4 cups of whole milk, a half cup of half and half milk and a bit of salt and pepper. 

Once the sausage is browned, we mixed in the flour, stirring it until the white color of the flour has been blended into the meat.  Then we added the milk, the pepper (leaving out the salt), and continued to cook on medium heat until the mixture began bubbling.  We turned the burner down to low and, stirring occasionally, the gravy thickened.  We poured the gravy into storage containers, freezing one for later and keeping the other one in the refrigerator until its use the following day.

This photo shows the breakfast we enjoyed the next day!  Excellent!  We’ve had good sausage gravy in restaurants a few times over our 45 years together but we’ve never had a better version anywhere else.  Off camera I did sprinkle my breakfast with Tabasco...

The Pioneer Woman specifically states that canned biscuits are not preferred with the gravy.  Actually she states “Never canned biscuits”.  She recommends Pillsbury Grands Frozen biscuits…and that’s what we used in this instance.  They worked well but Larry, aka “Big Dude”, at https://bigdudesramblings.blogspot.com/ had a better idea. 

He purchased a dozen biscuits from Bojangles, a fried chicken chain of fast food restaurants that is primarily located in the southeastern USA.  The company is expanding westward and they currently have over 820 locations.  A quick check on the internet revealed that Bojangles’ biscuits are the highest rated biscuits of any fast food restaurant chain.  To learn more about Bojangles, go to Order Fried Chicken Now | Bojangles.

We do have mac ‘n cheese from time to time.  It’s simple and filling, especially if I have a couple leftover hot dogs to add to it.  During a recent visit to our local Food Lion grocery store, I spotted a vastly different ‘take’ on mac ‘n cheese.  It is Guinness Cracked Black Pepper Mac n’ Cheese and it contains Cabot Farmers Reserve Cheese sauce and radiatore pasta.

This version of mac ‘n cheese definitely imparts that bold and malty flavor found in Guinness stout/beer.  The blend of the Cabot cheese and the malty Guinness flavor was actually quite enjoyable.  Laurie ate her mac ‘n cheese by itself but I accompanied mine with a leftover grilled bacon wrapped sweet Italian sausage.  It was an easy and satisfying meal and we will purchase this mac ‘n cheese outlier again!

FYI, I also found that there is a Guinness Black Truffle Mac ‘n Cheese…and many, many more Guinness related food items.  Learn more at guinness related food products - Search Shopping (bing.com).   

I do have a difficult time telling a hairy woodpecker from a downy woodpecker.  I think that this pair are hairy woodpeckers.  The adult was teaching is offspring how to eat…but from time to time the adult would still feed its fledged offspring.  Hmmm, human adults and teenagers…an interesting comparison.

FYI, hairy woodpeckers can be found all across North America…from Alaska to Newfoundland and as far south as Panama.

We were surprised that the woodpeckers would bother with the feeder giving the abundance of fresh insects available.  Perhaps they were overwhelmed by the millions of eatable insects and they wanted a change of diet.  See below…

Here in Loudon County and in at least 7 other counties here in East Tennessee, Brood XIX cicadas, (aka The Great Southern Brood) began emerging around the second week in May.  This brood has been biding its time and growing underground for the past 13 years.  While the south has annual cicadas as well, the periodic cicadas have those red eyes.  Annual cicadas have green bodies and black eyes.  The brood will be with us until about mid-June.  Laurie captured this photo from the internet.

Luckily we are not located in an area of the USA where the 17-year Brood XIII and the 13-year Brood XIX are emerging at the same time.  While we hear annual cicadas during evenings and at night, these Periodic cicadas make their noise in an effort to attract a mate during the day.  It is a hum…but not as high pitched as the annual cicadas in their personal effort to attract attention.  We also noted that the periodical cicadas seem to stop ‘humming’ when it rains.

As we surveyed our yard we wandered over to the edge of our lot which abuts a wooded lot.  That’s when we spotted these holes.  With only a bit of moss here and there it was easy to see hundreds of holes that our Brood XIX cicadas had emerged from.  It was a bit unnerving actually…

The process begins with mating.  Then the females start to lay eggs by making slits in twigs of woody plants using her knife-like ovipositor.  She lays about 2 dozen eggs in each slit and a single female can lay between 400 to 600 eggs.  The eggs hatch in 6 or 7 weeks.  The nymphs…which are white and ant-like in appearance, drop to the ground and bury in the soil to find suitable roots to feed on.  They suck the sap from the roots but they don’t seem to have a noticeable effect on the trees.

The nymphs burrow from 12 to 18 inches into the soil.  They begin to emerge when the soil beneath to ground reaches a temperature of 64F.  Once the nymphs dig their way up from under the ground, they molt and the adults emerge…taking flight up into the trees.  Note the exoskeletons by some of the cicada’s holes as well as the one shown on the brick wall.  That wall was littered with the remnants of the nymphs.

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

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

A Mixed Bag – This and That

Continuing with our home town centric posts… In this edition there are a couple of local area photos, a bit of shopping, home cooking and a breakfast at a new local restaurant we hadn’t tried before.

I’d taken photos of the Norfolk Southern Railway Bridge across the Tennessee River at Loudon Tennessee but I’ve never taken a photo of a key bridge that everyone takes for granted as traffic flows north and south on US Hwy 11.  I think that it has a certain appeal to the eye. 

The bridge is relatively new, having been completed in 2004.  It is 260 feet long and it has a navigation clearance underneath of 78 feet.  That’s important as the Tennessee River provides navigation for both pleasure craft and tow boats with barges, all the way from nearby Knoxville to the Ohio River or, via the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Located just downriver from the US Hwy 11 Bridge, this is the much older Norfolk Southern Railway Bridge.  I obviously borrowed this photo from the Internet.  I just don’t do a good job of filing and then finding my older photos.

This high level deck cantilever truss railroad bridge was built in 1963, so it’s recently celebrated its 60^th birthday.  Its main span is 375 feet long plus there are another 9 approach spans that serve to keep the tracks level as trains pass from one side to the other.

…now onto buying things we don’t need!

We have 3 destinations that are definitely ‘shopping weaknesses’.  They are Fresh Market, Costco and, in this instance, World Market.   World Market has so many weird and wonderful food items available that we never escape the store without more than we should have on hand at home.  My favorites in this assortment include the pretzel “Splits”, the “Beer Nuts” mixture and those Bahlsen cookies from Germany.  We do try to just have one or two of these treats open at one time…

To find a World Market store near you, just go to www.worldmarket.com.  This chain has roughly 250 locations…

Time to do some cooking!  Thanks to our handy and persistent friend, Morrie, our grill is back in business after a long hiatus.  The problem was the squirrels that kept eating through the hoses that supply the propane gas.  Morrie found a metal hose that hopefully will cure the problem for the life of the grill.

In any case, I recently re-baptized our Weber grill when I grilled these pork steaks, caramelizing and sealing in the moisture via the generous application of Famous Dave’s Rich and Sassy BBQ sauce.  We sided them with mashed potatoes and hunks of cantaloupe.  Of course I also added a bit of Famous Dave’s Devil’s Spit BBQ sauce to my pork steak.  This was indeed a happy meal for both of us!

These are Laurie’s special cranberry-orange cookies…special in that they are delicious and loaded with pops of sweetness and fruity flavor.  They aren’t easy to make.  Prep time per the recipe, is 2 hours and 10 minutes.  Then they need to be refrigerated for a minimum of 2 hours…or as long as 72 hours.  Baking time is only 12 minutes.  While the original recipe states that extra cookies can be kept in an airtight container for 3 days…we’ve learned that they do last longer than that.

You can find the original recipe…at least the one Laurie uses…on the ‘Mom on Timeout’ site on the Internet.  Check the recipe and instructions at Cranberry Orange Shortbread Cookies - Mom On Timeout.  Trish’s site has 20 pages of dessert recipes for your baking pleasure…

…and then it was time to try a new restaurant for breakfast.

This is Angie’s Kitchen in downtown Loudon Tennessee.  It occupies a space that has seen several other restaurants over the past 14+ years that we’ve lived in the area.  The restaurant the preceded Angie’s was abysmal at best. 

Angie’s holiday décor at the front of the restaurant was warm and very much ‘down home’.  The dining area inside has that very much small town ‘diner look’ and appeal.  We were eating a late breakfast so there were just a few other customers in the restaurant.  Angie’s Kitchen was clean and the servers were very friendly. 

 Both of us stuck to the basics when we ordered our breakfast.  Laurie ordered bacon, 2 eggs over medium (runny yoke), potatoes and a biscuit.  We do prefer hash brown potatoes but these fried potatoes were just fine.  The eggs and bacon were cooked perfectly.  Cost - $7.99.

For my breakfast, I ordered 2 eggs over medium, potatoes, sausage patties, and a biscuit with sausage gravy.  No Tabasco but they did have a hot sauce that worked for me… The biscuits were good and the sausage gravy was decent.  I was stunned at the amount of sausage that I was served!  Three large hand formed sausage patties made with quality sausage…Hooray!  Cost - $9.98.  We also shared a large orange juice and we both had coffee.

Our first meal at Angie’s Kitchen was a winner… We were quite happy as finding a consistently good breakfast near our home is a challenge.  Angie also serves lunch and the restaurant is open for dinner on Friday nights.  Angie’s Kitchen is located at 502 Grove Street in Loudon Tennessee.  Phone: 865-657-9727.  For more information and a lot of food photos, just go to Angie’s Kitchen Loudon, TN | Loudon TN | Facebook.

My current plan for my next post to my blog site is to resume recapping our family visit to the Delmarva Peninsula, which took place this past September.  Lots of history, architecture and food to come!

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Breakfast Time!

 I hope that you like breakfast!  It is our favorite meal…  I’m one of those guys that will put an egg on or with just about anything.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that every breakfast has to include eggs.

What follows is a selection of my recent breakfasts at our house.

OK, this one is pretty basic…but I like simple and basic.  In this case I heated up a slab of Laurie’s fantastic meatloaf, melted cheddar cheese on it and then added my easy over egg. 

On another morning, I had a little deli style ham lying around so I did a simple scramble…adding feta cheese to the mix.  Note the pan grilled hot dog bun as my accompaniment.  Waste not, want not!

Spam, in its original form is just too overpowering for me…too much fat and too much salt.  But Spam now offers Spam ‘Lite’.  It contains 37% fewer calories, 50% less fat and 25% less sodium than the original Spam.  For me at least, Spam Lite is a winner…maybe once every 5 weeks.

So…I started this breakfast with a toasted buttered bun, halves face up.  Then I added 2 slices of fried Spam Lite to each section of the bun.

Then of course, to push the limits of dietary wisdom, I ladled Hormel Chili (no beans) over the buns and the Spam.

They say that eggs are good for you so to complete my meal, I placed a couple of over-easy fried eggs on top of my creation. (Note my generous application of Tabasco) I was a happy camper!

We love good sausage gravy.  Most sausage gravy that we’ve found lack much sausage…or uses some bland sausage that lack any seasoning.  We do have a local restaurant that produces the best sausage gravy in the area, bar none to date.  It's so good, we have purchased a quart to take home at times...

Then Laurie found a recipe for sausage gravy that we could make at home… We like spice…a little heat…so our version incorporates Jimmy Dean’s Hot Pork Sausage.  As you can see, we made a vat of sausage gravy!

Then what?  The first time we had our homemade sausage gravy, we just spooned it over some biscuits.  Of course I added Tabasco to mine after the photo was taken…

The second time I had ‘our’ sausage gravy, I did it up even better than before by heating it in the frying pan and adding a couple of over-easy eggs!  Yum!  In this case I used a leftover hamburger bun for the base.  Biscuits are better but the bun was what I had handy.

FYI, here is the recipe we use for sausage gravy.  Thanks to the Pioneer Woman!  Other than the spicy Jimmy Dean sausage, our only other major variation from the original recipe was that we used half and half milk.  It does tend to make the gravy thicker.  We keep half and half milk in the house because it has a really long shelf life as compared to regular milk.

Note the Pioneer Woman’s caution at the bottom of the recipe.  If you aren’t making your own biscuits, do not use Pillsbury’s canned biscuits.  Instead use Pillsbury’s Grands…from the frozen food case.

Leftovers don't survive for long at our house.  Laurie doesn't care for them but I view them as an opportunity.  I toasted and buttered a couple of small slices of bread from a baguette.  Then I fried some leftover pork from a roast, also heating up the carrots and a couple little pieces of turnip in the frying pan.  At 2 easy-over eggs and I had a satisfying start to my day.  

For my last breakfast in this post, we had eaten at Aubrey’s, a local chain here in East Tennessee.  Laurie had ordered the panko crusted Alaskan Pollock with their fried potatoes for dinner a couple of nights earlier.  She couldn’t finish all of it so I took the opportunity to reheat the Pollock in a frying pan along with a couple of their left over thick fried potatoes plus a couple of mine… Then add a couple of eggs, (and of course Tabasco after taking the picture), and I was set until dinner time!

FYI…I have a complaint for the Heinz Company!  They have apparently stopped making Heinz Ketchup with Tabasco… L I’ve had to go on-line and order a six-pack of Brooks spicy ketchup.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for coming by for breakfast!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave