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

The Year 2020 continues…Just Hanging around the House

This year has been a doozy don’t you think!  Covid-19 with over 225,000 deaths in the USA, the politics/election, civil rights issues, rioting, storms, wildfires…the list goes on and on.  It’s been one nasty year for sure.  By the time I publish this post, we should know who our next President will be.  Will that settle things down…or will they get worse in the near term?

Like most of you, we’ve really limited ourselves to ‘hanging around the house’.  We used to view this relative lack of activity as an occasional relaxing break in the action.  Now it’s the norm...and it’s getting to us!  Can you spell boredom?  

So once again…this post will be about food, views around our home and Halloween, such as it was.

Let’s start with food, not ‘just food’, but rather top notch comfort food!  In addition to the fresh rolls that friends Larry and Bev brought us recently, they also dropped off some amazing cream of potato soup.

Laurie served hers as designed…add shredded cheese and green onions and serve with a roll.  My serving of potato soup was sprinkled liberally with my favorite condiment…Tabasco.  In either case, the soup was excellent!

Oh yes, I had a roll left for my dinner as well.  I slathered it with some Amish butter and applied a generous amount of multi-berry jam… It served as my dessert and it was immediately consumed after I finished my soup.

On a recent sunny fall day, Laurie took this photo along one side of our house.  There already was some fall color showing and you can see the Smoky Mountains in the distance.

Then one day, we decided to finish off the remaining deep dish pizza that I’d received with a Chicago themed food gift pack.  It was either to celebrate Father’s Day or my birthday.  Two of these pizzas were part of the gift pack but we already had the deep dish sausage version.  Lou Malnati’s is famous for their deep dish pizza and they also make a great thin crust version.

We’d lived in Chicago for 27 years and we’ve been outspoken about the one thing that we really miss after moving to East Tennessee.  One word – FOOD!  Chicago hot dogs, ethnic cuisine, local bakeries and butcher shops, steaks, pizza and more.  We are thin crust pizza aficionados though and never really got into deep dish pizzas.  That said, we did prefer this deep dish pepperoni pizza over the sausage version we’d eaten before.

Back to faux cooking…prepared food in lieu of bothering to do it ourselves!  We’d picked up this package of Main St. Baked Scalloped Potatoes during a recent visit to Costco.  How could we go wrong with cheesy scalloped potatoes!  So what should we use for a main dish with this comforting side dish?

The answer to the above question also came from Costco.  This is our package of A La Cart Sesame Soy Beef Short Ribs.  Like the potatoes, this entrée could be ready in minutes!

…and the combination of the previous 2 pre-cooked ready-in-minutes food offerings is shown above on Laurie’s dinner plate.  Note: For something healthy we did have a small side salad before attacking the main course. 

The short ribs were very tender and very tasty but the sauce was a bit too sweet for my taste.  Laurie didn’t think so though… We both agreed that the potatoes were about as good as one could make at home with all fresh ingredients.  Excellent!  Yes, that roll on Laurie’s plate was furnished courtesy of our friend Bev and Larry.  

Now for a non-food photo or two!  Halloween here is very tame.  No sidewalks, dark roads and few children…it all equals no trick or treaters.  Nor does that stop us from consuming a bag of ‘just in case any kids show up’ candy, but that’s another story.

This was about as close as we got to seeing kids at Halloween.  Laurie is their great aunt and they live in the St. Louis Missouri area.  From the left, Delany, Charley, Avery and Elliot.  Arya is standing guard over the group.  They aren’t a spooky bunch but they are cute!  There was some fancy pumpkin carving going on, that’s for sure…

I’ll end this post with a photo that Laurie took of the full moon (a blue moon) on Halloween eve.  I like that misty image shining through the semi-bare branches of our oak tree. 

A blue moon isn’t necessarily blue.  It actually is the second full moon in the same month.  This relatively rare occurrence happens once every 2.5 years on average, hence the saying, "It'll happen once in a blue moon!"  However, this particular ‘blue moon’ was even more special.  It was the first full moon seen in all U.S. time zones since 1944!  It won’t happen again until 2039…

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

Accumulations – One Grouping Reviewed

We used to think of ourselves as collectors but, in retrospect, we should call ourselves accumulators!  Why?  The answer is fairly simple.  Collectors generally acquire objects that fall into set categories, they tend to focus on 2 – 3 categories at the most and they continually ‘grow’ their collection.

In our case, we’ve picked up something here and there…widely varying items which happened to catch our attention…but with no particular collector’s goal in mind.  However, looking at our ‘accumulations’, I’ve noted that in a couple of instances we have gathered a number of related items…  When does an accumulation of themed items become a collection?

So…as I was looking around the house, I noted that we had an accumulation of Native American items that we’d picked up over the last 40+ years as well as some related artistic creations from my family that we were given… While none of them are valuable per se, we do have a decent grouping on hand.

The first clay jar from the southwestern USA as shown above was purchased in a local Elgin Illinois auction about 28 years ago.  There wasn’t much competition for it but we’ve always liked it.  It measures about 10.5 inches across and 8.5 inches tall.  The artist is unknown but it is an Acoma polychrome painted pot…

We purchased the second pot for $45 while on our 2006 vacation in the southwestern USA.  It was made by Norma Jean Ortiz from the Pueblo of Acoma in New Mexico.  It measures 6 inches across and its 4.5 inches tall. 

Norma Jean Ortiz has lived at Acoma Pueblo for most of her life.  She supports her family by creating pottery.  All of her designs are in her head, not written down, and each piece is unique.  To view more of her creations, some of which are quite pricy, you can just go to: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=norma+jean+ortiz&qpvt=norma+jean+ortiz&form=IGRE&first=1&scenario=ImageBasicHover.

Laurie and I can’t remember where we bought or how we acquired the first basket shown above.  It is a tightly woven but thin sided Native American basket.  The second basket was purchased in TLC Summer Place, an antique shop located in Harbor Springs Michigan.  It is a well preserved Papago basket that came from a collection that someone put together in the 1940s.  As per the note that came with the basket, a ‘hammered construction’ technique was used to make the basket.  This little 6 inch across by 3 inch high creation is really tight and has very little ‘give’ to it.

I thought that I’d covered the Native American baskets found around our home…but I’d forgotten more recent acquisitions.  Laurie has a lot of baskets!  The larger basket was purchased in Etowah TN a few years ago.  It was made by Lucille Lossiah, a highly respected basket maker from of the Eastern Band of the Cherokees.  To learn more, you can go to https://www.blueridgeheritage.com/artist/lucille-Lossiah/#:~:text=Lucille%20Lossiah%20makes%20double%20and%20single%20weave%20baskets,Mary%20Jane%20Lossiah%2C%20and%20her%20grandmother%2C%20Betty%20Lossiah.

The second photo is of an egg basket made from white oak strips using walnut and bloodroot dyes.  The maker was another well-known artist named Annie James.  This basket was purchased many years ago at the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual in Cherokee North Carolina.  To learn more about Annie James and the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual (co-op), just go to https://quallaartsandcrafts.com/.

It was 44 years ago when I acquired these 2 ‘Eskimo’/Inuit soapstone carvings.  They were purchased in a store specializing in ‘Eskimo Art’ that was located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  The 10.5 inch tall primitive human figure was carved by Alikaswah who was from Eskimo Point on Hudson Bay in Manitoba Canada.

The second carving is 8 inches tall and 7.5 inches long.  It’s a primitive reindeer and it was created by an Inuit artist named Nashanetook from Spence Bay, which is now called Taloyoak.  This settlement, the northernmost town in Canada, is on the Boothia Peninsula in what used to be called Canada’s Northwest Territory.  The Northwest Territory is now called Nunavut.    

Then we’ve also gathered a few prints and lithographs that depict Native Americans.  This colored lithograph that we bought at auction 28 years ago, features Itcho-Tustennuggee, aka Halleck Tustenuggee, a famous Seminole War Chief. 

The original lithograph (this is a later lithographic copy) was included in “The History of the Indian Tribes of North America”, a 3-volume collection of biographies and lithograph portraits published in the USA from 1836 to 1844 by Thomas McKenney and James Hall.  The majority of the portraits were first painted in oil paints by Charles Bird King.  Only 295 of the original 300 painting survived the horrendous Smithsonian fire of 1865.  A set of the 3-volume books sold not too long ago for $156,000.  

This is a Flathead Indian warrior who was named H’co-a-ho’co-a-h’cotes-min.  The original hand-colored lithograph was completed by George Catlin and it was published in D. Prichard’s “Natural History of Man” which was published in 1842.  We picked up this subsequent lithographic copy in 1988 at a gallery in Winter Haven Florida.

FYI, George Catlin (1796 – 1872) was an American lawyer, painter and author who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the western USA.  He began his portrait quest in 1830 when he joined Governor William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi River into Native American Territory.  Catlin’s base of operations between 1830 and 1836 was in St. Louis and he visited fifty different tribes during this period.

Again at auction, Laurie and I acquired another George Catlin related work of art in 1990.  It’s a watercolor based on Catlin’s “Three Indian Chiefs” or “North American Indians”…the latter is a more likely title.  It’s a decent early copy of Catlin’s original work.

In the latter portion of the 1830s, Catlin ascended the Missouri River for more than 1,900 miles, as far as the Fort Union Trading near the current North Dakota-Montana border.  The tribes in this area were still relatively untouched by European culture and he visited 18 tribes ranging from the Pawnee in the south to the Blackfeet in the north.  Later in his career he made trips along the Arkansas, Red and southern Mississippi Rivers as well as visits to the Great Lakes area and Florida.  All in all, he produced more than 500 paintings!  The almost complete surviving set of Catlin’s first Indian Gallery from the 1830s is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection. 

To view some of George Catlin’s portraits of Native Americans as well as his impressions of their lives, you can go to https://www.google.com/search?q=george+catlin+paintings&oq=George+Catlin&aqs=chrome.2.0i355i433i457j46i433j0l3j46j0l2.8311j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.  The collection is quite impressive…

My brother Robert (Bob) Thomson had significant artistic abilities.  Unfortunately, he was never able to cash in on his skills.  From time to time, he would send me odds and ends that he came across at flea markets, swap meets and the like.  In this case, for my birthday one year he sent me 4 pictures that I believe are prints.  We had them framed.

I hate trying to take photos of art works that are glassed in. (Note: my image above) Reflections are a real challenge when it comes to the quality of the photos.  The following is the best I could manage with my brother’s 4 Native American portraits…

This print is of Chief Louison, a tribal chief from the Flathead or Salish Indian Reservation in Montana.  I found one account that stated that Chief Louison had a big herd of cattle and horses that were estimated to be worth $15,000 or more at the time.  The print and any lithographs with this image were copied from a stereograph photo taken by N.A. Forsyth in 1898.

This is a portrait of Hattie Tom, a Mescalero Chiricahua Apache woman.  This 1898 image was taken from a gelatin silver print photo by Frank Albert Rinehart at the Omaha Indian Congress that ran from August until the end of October. 

Over 500 members from 38 different Native American tribes attended this gathering, including the Apache chief Geronimo who was actually a prisoner of war at the time.  Rinehart’s photos are regarded as one of the best photographic documentations of American Indian leaders around the start of the 20^th Century.

This image is from another photograph taken by Frank Rinehart in 1898.  This is Chief Wolf Robe, a council chief from the Southern Cheyenne Tribe.  He was reputed to be a fierce warrior in his youth but was known as a pacifist as he grew older.  He was actually awarded a Benjamin Harrison Peace Metal for his work with the Cherokee Commission.  Metals were frequently ‘awarded’ to prominent chiefs who assisted in ensuring peace between the American/European settlers, the US government and the various tribes.

Chief Hollow Horn Bear was photographed in 1913 by Adolph F. Muhr.  However, he was photographed and painted by many artists.  He was a Brule Lakota leader who took part in many battles including the Little Big Horn where General Custer was defeated.  Known as Matshehlogego to his people, he also was known for his defeat and total destruction of Captain William Fetterman and his troops in 1866. 

By the late 1870s he began favoring peace with the US government and he led several delegations to Washington D.C. for negotiations.  He became quite a celebrity in the east.  In 1905 he took part in the presidential inauguration of President Theodore Roosevelt.  Then in 1913, he led a group of Native Americans in the inauguration parade for President Woodrow Wilson.  While in Washington for Wilson’s inauguration, Chief Hollow Horn Bear caught pneumonia and died.

FYI, Chief Hollow Horn Bear was featured on this 14-cent stamp.  It was issued on May 1, 1923 in Muskogee Oklahoma and Washington D.C. and it was the first 14-cent stamp issued by the United States Postal Service.  The portrait used for this stamp was taken by staff Smithsonian photographer De Lancey Gill in 1905.

I thought that I’d end our accumulation of Native American items, art and artifacts with these 3 large pencil drawings.  They are very accomplished and detailed freehand drawings that were completed by my brother Robert.  I’m sure that he copied them from images created by other artists and, with time I’m guessing that I might be able to find photos of the originals on the Internet.  Our son David II has the first 2 of these drawings hanging on the walls of his home.

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

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Stay Safe and Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

 Happenings…and Wildlife

Fall has arrived but we are still semi-trapped by Covid-19 and are likely to be until mid-2021.  Still, it is a beautiful time of the year.  Blog topics are a challenge without hitting the road but such is life.  Travel means exposure and risk…so we’re doing our best to stay safe.

Laurie always decorates our front porch during the month of October.  It’s a combination of celebrations…the fall season as well as Halloween.  This modest display includes real pumpkins and gourds, stackable metal jack-0-lanterns, a small metal ‘bag’ with a jack-o-lantern face and a few ears of colorful Indian corn.

Indian corn, also called flint corn, is one of the oldest varieties of corn.  It’s a type that Native Americans taught the colonists how to cultivate.  This corn’s colorful kernels are ‘as hard as flint’, giving this type of corn its alternative name.  It is less prone to spoiling and dries uniformly.  Flint corn can be used by people and livestock and it’s used in such dishes as hominy and polenta.

Laurie has continued with her efforts to capture the best bird photos possible.  In this case, it was a male yellow finch working over one of the remaining cone flowers.

Then there are the larger birds that regularly wander through our yard as well as the wooded lots across the street and along one side of our home.  We do see a lot of turkeys around here…

Who doesn't love bluebirds!  We seem to be very popular with these pretty birds, especially when we feed them mealworms.  However, in this case, he was just looking for a drink of water from our deck railing mounted 'water hole'.

We’ve got woodpeckers!  This hairy woodpecker had just grabbed a great nut from our feeder when Laurie snapped this photo.

Yet another woodpecker!  In this case a red-bellied woodpecker stopped by for a snack…

No…Laurie didn’t take this photo of a yellow-bellied sapsucker.  I borrowed the photo from the Internet in order to illustrate a bird story.  Laurie has rescued many birds over the years.  Recently a yellow-bellied sapsucker crashed into one of our windows at dusk.  He was stunned and out of it but still breathing.  Laurie picked him up, stroked him and talked softly to him.  When he became more alert, she placed him on out deck railing…and a short time later he flew off into the woods.

From time to time, a number of these colorful birds show up at our feeder.  This is a rose-breasted grosbeak.  This visitor stayed at the feeder and gorged itself until it was satiated…

…and of course, we always love to see our neighborhood deer.  There are about 4 regulars with occasional other strays, plus a buck or two from time to time.  One recent evening as we returned home after midnight, we spotted deer bedded down on a neighbor’s lawn…  The first photo was taken late in the evening and the 'fuzzy' photo of the buck was taken through a screen.

Once again you are correct!  This photo of a house wren was also borrowed from the Internet…and yes, there was a recent incident that caused me to include the photo.  The other night we had our front door open and our sliding screen door in place.  When it was time for bed, Laurie went over to slide the screen door closed and shut the front door. 

No sooner had she closed the screen door than a pretty little wren decided to come in for a ‘visit’.  It was 11:30 PM!  We’d stopped putting wreaths up on our front door because the house wrens love to perch on them at night…and because we’d already had 3 other wrens in the house since we’ve lived here. (On one occasion, 2 wrens came in at the same time…and our cat at the time about had a heart attack!)

This time it took a little more than a half hour to convince our wren to fly out an open sliding door.  It had taken up residence in the guest bedroom.

Another day and another appointment with one of my physicians… As we drove east on I-40, nearing the doctor’s offices, we came across this rather spectacular fire.  A large RV trailer had erupted in flames and it was parked right under a bridge.  The trailer was destroyed but all involved apparently survived although one person had to be rescued.  We wondered how the fire started…

…and then there was action right in our driveway!  When neighbors Mike and Sherry had their house built, the builder did so much damage to this tree right next to our lot that it just didn’t survive in the long haul.  A tree removal service took down a couple of large dead trees 2 homes up the street and then took a few minutes to dispose of this sad remnant of the woods that used to be next door.

I thought that I’d end this post with a recent photo of some of Laurie’s family members.  These cute kids are actually her cousins from Scotland.  When we last saw them in person at a Scottish family gather in 2016, they were a wee bit younger and smaller.  From the left we have Della, then Moir and last but not least, Maura.  Laurie and her sisters are planning a return trip to visit their Scottish relatives in 2021 or more probably in 2022.

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