Eating “Out” During a Pandemic

During the Covid-19 pandemic, eating out is almost a foreign concept to those of us who actually care about surviving and being able to enjoy better times in mid to late 2021.  But, eating out is possible if you like fast food or you just want to get out and try something new as compared to being stuck at home for all your meals… Now we’re stuck in our car for dinner!

So we’ve experienced a couple of fast food ‘dinners’ in recent days.  One was new to us and the other was a known favorite.

Some friends had talked about how much they love the Sonic drive-in restaurant in Lenoir City Tennessee.  We don’t like eating in our car but when the situation…such as a pandemic…warrants such an activity, you just have to go for it.  The fact that the Sonic was very busy plus variety on the large menu made us hopeful!

As sides to our main dining ‘attraction’, we asked for a large order of French fries as well as a couple of medium ‘hand-mixed’ Sonic milk shakes.  The fries were OK.  I thought that the milk shake was too thick but it tasted OK.  Laurie didn’t care for her shake at all. 

The milk shakes were so thick that there was no way to eat them with the straws provided.  How thick were they?  From Sonic to our home, it’s about a 20 – 23 minute drive.  Add about 10 minutes to eat our food and the total time elapsed from the time that we got the shakes until we got back home and the shakes were sitting for about 30 minutes.  Even after getting hone the straws were still useless.  We had to resort to spoons to eat…not drink…our milk shakes.  It we’d wanted a big cup of ice cream, we would have ordered it…

Then there were our Sonic cheeseburgers.  We ordered them without lettuce or tomato, just with mayonnaise and pickles.  They were the worst excuse for a hamburger that we’ve had in many years!  If it wasn’t for the pickles, there wouldn’t have been any flavor at all… The burgers were actually hard around the outside and, as you can see from the photo, they didn’t look at all appetizing either. 

A few days later, we decided to go out for another drive-in/in car restaurant dining experience.  On the way, we encountered a fairly serious accident along TN Hwy 444 in Loudon County that had traffic stopped for quite a distance.  We didn't see the other vehicle...but this pickup truck was totaled! 

I didn’t take a photo of the outside of the restaurant or the drive-thru order board.  In this case, we chose a fast food dining experience that we knew we actually like…Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburger in Oak Ridge Tennessee.  This photo shows Freddy’s large order of French fries and their unique ‘fry sauce’.  Laurie loves the sauce with her fries, me not so much.

I decided to order something different from Freddy’s menu.  This was Freddy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich.  It was a good sandwich, much better than Wendy’s and far better than Hardee’s.  Chick-fil-a is still the chicken sandwich winner but we still have to try Popeye’s and Zaxby’s. 

We both ordered a Freddy’s Original Double Steakburger…a tried and true winner!  It may look messy and it is!  This is why Laurie in particular doesn’t like eating in a car.  There are too many opportunities to make a serious mess and, of course the car smells like whatever you ate for the next day or so.  But it was worth the risk!  The burger was great.  Freddy’s easily serves up the best fast food burgers that we’ve ever enjoyed…

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

This Time, It’s Nothing but Food! (Almost)

Continuing with my food saga…in this case almost exclusively.

Are you a bit bored with your life at the moment?  We are.  Any little bit of excitement is a win!  Thanks to our son, we now have Zoom and that has at least allowed us to see our family…while being seen.  Other than that addition, our Covid-19 ‘groundhog days’ just roll on.

Here is a sign of the times in many households!  This is our pile of face masks with more of them on order… If your home doesn’t have a supply of these simple ‘spreader preventers’ on hand for use as needed, you are part of the current problem.  Just my opinion…

Now onto the titled topic…Food!

On one recent night, we decided to make tacos.  We used large flour tortillas and made large tacos using just seasoned ground beef, shredded lettuce and cheese plus taco sauce and, in Laurie’s case, sour cream.  We decided not to include chopped tomatoes in the mix.

As usual, Laurie’s taco is much neater and more photogenic than mine.  She folds the end up and both sides folded in so it doesn’t leak any of the contents too…whereas I’m not that neat.

Then there was the most simple of meals.  In this case it was chicken soup and asiago cheese bakery bread.  Both the soup and the bread were purchased at Fresh Market.  The bread was the perfect match!  I thought the soup was good but Laurie gave it 2 thumbs up.

Of course, we also had leftover turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes to finish off.  So one night we both had reheated mashed potatoes with turkey heated up in the gravy slathered on top.  The second plate was the remaining reheated turkey and gravy…just poured onto my plate for final demolition!  It may not have been pretty but it was good...

I did retain some of the Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing for one final meal.  I cut up the turkey and heated it with the sage sausage stuffing in a frying pan with butter.  Butter does make everything better!

Once the turkey and stuffing were heated up and a little browned, I finished it off with a couple of easy over eggs!  It was a great breakfast…very satisfying in deed.

I’ll finish this post with more leftovers.  I know that this isn’t the most appetizing food photo I’ve ever posted. 

When we made the tacos, there was no way we could eat the full pound of seasoned ground beef.  First I placed strips of sharp cheddar cheese along the center of a large flour tortilla and zapped it in the microwave.  Then I took the leftover ‘taco meat’, added a little more hot taco sauce, heated the mixture and then scrambled it with a couple of eggs.  I ended up with a spicy 'quasi burrito', breakfast style.  It was a good way to start the day!

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

Mostly Food…Plus

As I wrote this post for my blog site, I glanced at the calendar and noted that Laurie and I had been in self-isolation with minimal outside contact or store visits for 269 days!  We miss the days of exploration that included museums, historic properties and towns, etc.  Those posts required research and more effort but we truly enjoyed the actual experience and I thrive on the research.

Such is life in the Covid-19 era…and in the challenging year that has been 2020!  The vaccine and 2021 can’t get here soon enough… Yes, masks will still be a part of life for a while to minimize the spread to the non-vaccinated, but we’ll live with it, no complaints!

So…this post is all about food and a bit of local miscellany. 

Neighbors are great to have!  This beautiful hunk of coffee cake was actually baked by our neighbor Mike.  He told us that he’d eaten the other half…and he didn’t want to keep this around or he’d devour it too!  It was excellent and just in time for our usual late breakfast.  This was my portion...

Laurie and I took several photos one recent foggy morning.  Fog is not uncommon around where we live given the nearby Tennessee River, its tributaries and three major reservoirs/lakes.  

I have a favorite…  Which photo do you like best? 

Our friend Larry, aka Big Dude at http://bigdudesramblings.blogspot.com/, gave me the idea in one of his recent posts.  When we make waffles, sometimes we make too much batter and then I overeat because I don’t want it to go to waste. 

As Larry had pointed out, he just freezes the extra waffles.  Duh!  Why didn’t I think of that?  Frozen waffles have been around for years… So finally I caught on and was able to enjoy a nice leftover waffle with blueberries and whipped cream for breakfast one morning.  I didn't do a good job of artistically applying the whipped cream though...

While I finished off my waffle, Laurie finished the last of the crumpets we’d ordered on-line.  She toasted them, then added butter and cinnamon sugar with a little whipped cream on the side. 

To refresh your memory, a crumpet is a small griddle cake made from an unsweetened batter consisting of water or milk, flour and yeast.  Crumpets are popularly eaten in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Of course, bacon and eggs sided with a few fried potatoes and a couple slices of toast is a favorite in our home!  Laurie loves bacon!  I usually fry a few extra slices which we use to perk up salads, sandwiches and other dishes.

Laurie is the queen of grilled cheese sandwiches.  She melts unsalted butter in the frying pan and then she puts the bread in, building the sandwich in the pan.  In this case she used Tillamook Extra Sharp thick sliced cheese that we’d purchased at Ingles supermarket. 

We sided our grilled cheese sandwiches with a nice salad with iceberg lettuce, more cheese, celery, and artichoke hearts.  As usual, Laurie’s grilled cheese sandwiches were better than anyone else’s!  The Tillamook cheese did give them a bit more ‘flavor status’ too…   

On subsequent evening, Laurie made another one of my favorites…meatloaf!  To be clear, I generally don’t like restaurant or other people’s meatloaves.  Laurie’s is special…using spicy sausage with the ground beef and with a parmesan crust on top. (We would never include a vegetable in the meatloaf mix or put a red sauce on top!) In this case, we had some leftover mashed potatoes and gravy which went well as a side.  The spiral frozen zucchini didn’t work too well though as they were just too soggy after microwaving.

Speaking of Larry, aka. Big Dude… His ladies were down in Florida and he’d was on his own at home with the family dogs so we invited him over for dinner one night.  He had been as isolated and careful as we’d been so he made a great guest.  Someone else to talk to in person these days is a really good thing!  Laurie snapped this photo of Larry and me.  

Comfort food was served… Pot roast, roasted potatoes and carrots, triple succotash, bakery bread, gravy and a bit of beer and wine just to wash it all down…

Laurie took this photo of a lone dove sitting on our deck railing… It appeared that he or she had lost their mate.  I thought that it was quite vulnerable in that position as we do have an occasional hawk in the area looking for prey.  In any case, nothing bad happened and Laurie is convinced that a new mate was found by this loner.

Recently we’d been out for a drive in one of our local neighborhoods, mostly just to do something but also to check out new home construction, (It’s everywhere!), and looking for deer as a bonus.  This very young fawn was the only deer we spotted.  It was pretty late in the year to see such a youngster.  Is it my imagination or is the deer sticking its tongue out at us?!  That reflector that appears to be protruding from the deer is just behind it…no worries.

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

Recycling, a Good Deed and Snow!

As the Covid-19 pandemic surges across the USA and the world, we have become even more cautious in our day to day lives.  I’ve even backed out of my physical therapy for my new knee for the time being.  I won’t lose the allowed sessions…but I’ll be doing my exercises at home until we see just how bad the situation becomes.

We look at every visit to the grocery store as a risk situation and the number of ‘safe’ friends and family is extremely limited.  So, when we come across something to do that can be considered a relatively safe activity, we jump on it…for our personal sanities sake!

So we were off on a drive to a nearby destination with no likely human contact…

Of course, we almost immediately established human contact!  We missed the turn at our destination and drove on down the road to a spot where we could turn around.  That’s when Laurie spotted this little 2+ year old towhead walking down the middle of the road.  He was focused and while he let Laurie hold his hand during his journey, he wouldn’t get in the car and he wasn’t much of a talker.  We went several blocks along the country road with me trailing them in our car.  Finally he came to a house where he announced that the dog barking at them was his.  About that time, his dad and older brother roared up on an ATV.  The dad told Laurie that they’d been playing around in a nearby creek and the little fellow just disappeared.  Apparently he’d just decided he was done and wanted to go home…

On to our original destination…a farm in the country.  A post on Nextdoor had requested that when folks in the area were done with their Thanksgiving pumpkins and gourds, this family would like to have them as supplemental feed for their rescue animals.  They gave their address so we could drop them off and they also offered to drive by homes to pick them up.  Looks like they had a great response with more to come.

These goats certainly seemed to like their special treat!  They actually had their heads inside the holes in the pumpkins.  These 2 basically ignored us…

There were several goats and this one was willing to pose for the cameras.  We also noted pigs and cows in adjoining fields…

Then this fellow showed up… Another member of the goat herd who is responsible for the herd’s protection.  He didn’t bark, he just kept a wary eye on us…

It turned out that the first dog wasn’t the only member of the ‘herd’ who was responsible for security.  This handsome guard dog hung out in the area until we departed.  The threat to goats in this area is coyotes…

Then I noted another barnyard variety at this farm.  Two emus occupied another nearby pen. 

Emus are the second-largest living bird by height, surpassed only by the ostrich.  Emus can reach 6 ft. 2 in. in height.  Emu farming in the US and around the world was quite the rage about 20 years ago but the numbers have drastically declined.  They are primarily raised for their low fat meat, leather, feathers and oil.   Interested in raising emus?  Check out the possibilities at the American Emu Association website: https://aea-emu.org/.  I looked on-line and found that I could order various cuts of emu meat for between about $5.50 up to $20.00 a pound. 

Right on cue!  We woke up on December 1 to see the results of our first ‘snow storm’ of the year.  Loudon county Tennessee averages about 6 inches of snow over the winter season.  This dusting came to about a half inch and it quickly melted.  Winters are a breeze here as compared to our previous experiences in the Chicago area!

This is our ‘flat’ Christmas tree.  It was actually a display item in a local gift shop that they’d readily agreed to sell us.  We loved it because it was small and flat, taking up a minimum amount of space.  Best yet, it was pre-lite.  We decorated it the first year with many of our favorite ornaments…and now we just store it (ready to bring out) in our Christmas storage closet right off our living area.  It was one of the best buys we ever made!

Note ‘Grandma Beth on the shelf’, actually on top of her old china cabinet.  She’s watching to ensure that we’re behaving as Christmas approaches.  No elves on the shelf this year as we don’t know where they might have been or who they might have been exposed to!

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

It was a Covid-19 Thanksgiving!

For most of us, Thanksgiving 2020 was much different than usual…and not in a good way.  Normally we would have been off to St. Louis and then to Omaha, spending time with Laurie’s family and having Thanksgiving with our son and his family before heading back home.

Covid-19 and the pandemic crushed those plans and, like many others who would be at risk out among the non-compliant public, we opted to stay at home for the holiday.

Yes indeed!  Here are the folks who celebrated Thanksgiving at our house this year…just Laurie and me.  I took the first selfie ‘blind’ with my usual camera while Laurie took the superior photo centering the two of us using her smart phone.

We did do the traditional Thanksgiving meal… We had a 13.5 lb. Butterball turkey to work with.  It was a bit of a challenge since we hadn’t roasted a turkey at home in last several years.  We coated the bird with Costco’s poultry seasoning and Laurie put 2 orange halves in the bird’s cavity.  As you can see, visually the effort turned out to be very photogenic. 

Laurie’s plate is always more presentable (photographical) than mine.  She organizes her food much better than I do with little overlap.  As you can see, we had our very moist and flavorful Butterball turkey with asparagus (Fresh Market), mashed potatoes (Bob Evans), sage sausage stuffing (Jimmy Dean and Stove Top) and store made turkey gravy (Fresh Market).  It was an excellent meal with minimal effort involved!

Later on Thanksgiving eve we did indulge in some terrific pumpkin pie direct from Fresh Market topped of course with whipped cream. (Reddi Wip Extra Creamy)

Pumpkin pie has a good shelf life so we were able to spread this treat out for three more evenings!

For me, the best thing about the two of us having Thanksgiving at home (with a 13.5 lb. turkey) and a vat of sausage stuffing, is that there are plenty of leftovers!  The night following Thanksgiving we decided that we’d make turkey sandwiches for dinner.

Both our son and I love to layer mayonnaise, stuffing and turkey on our post-Thanksgiving traditional sandwiches.  This year I used rye bread as my base and before I put the second slice of bread on top, I liberally sprinkled Tabasco on my creation!  Despite the way it may look to you, it was a great sandwich!

Laurie of course created a more compact and orderly turkey sandwich using rosemary salt bread from Fresh Market.  No stuffing or Tabasco on her sandwich…just mayonnaise.  She made her sandwich with the dark meat as that’s her preference… Love those dark russet potato chips!

So, as the sun set over the horizon, yet another family-less holiday faded into history.  Laurie and I enjoyed our Thanksgiving but it just didn’t measure up to past celebrations with family and friends.  Hopefully, we are on track for Covid-19 control and a much more healthy and positive 2021.

We still do have to deal with the latest pandemic surge and self-isolation for the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.  However, our son David II has improved the Holiday outlook for us by sending us a Zoom camera.  We’re now installed and ready to celebrate!

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