Food plus the End of an Amazing Career

So…a little more food at home, dining at a new restaurant and a beloved ophthalmologist/surgeon decides to retire after many, many years serving his patients and the United States…

I do like…really like cornbread!  We were buying pre-baked cornbread from our local Food Lion store, but it was too sweet for Laurie and a full pan of it was too much for me to eat by myself.  Laurie found a compromise that she liked that wasn’t too sweet for her but still sweet enough for my taste…apparently acquired since moving to the South.  She buys Zatarain’s Honey Butter Cornbread Mix and now we’re both happy.

I enjoy my slab of cornbread with Amish rolled butter and local honey drizzled on it or alternatively, some nice strawberry jam.

Thinking back to what canned or prepared foods I ate when I was much younger, a few weeks back I’d purchased a can of Hormel Beef Tamales in Chili Sauce.  They were filling…and, if you’ve had great tamales in a restaurant or from a food truck…filling is about the best you can say for the prepacked/canned version.  But I did have a couple of them left over plus some no bean chili and I hate to waste food.  Tamales, smothered in chili and topped with an over easy egg.  A very satisfying breakfast!

Ya Rona Craft Pizza and Cocktails opened relatively recently in Vonore Tennessee.  It replaced Genovese’s, another Italian restaurant and pizzeria.  Although the number of customer reviews were limited because the restaurant is new, almost all of them were very positive. 

So I was curious… What does Ya Rona mean or stand for?  I assumed that it was something in Italian.  No such luck unless it’s slang.  In Hebrew “Rona” means “My joy” and Yarona means “She will rejoice”.  Ronas in Spanish means dirt or grime.  Ya Rona in old English means “cry”.  In Tswana, spoken in South Africa and Botswana, it means “to be unsuitable”.  Rona is also used in a couple other African languages and in Maori.

Then I discovered that Rona is a girl’s name of Norse origin and that it is a popular name in Scotland.  So I decided that someone from New Jersey or Brooklyn had just called out “Ya! Rona” and it stuck.  I can hear it now…

Since we’re always looking for great pizza, (failing almost all the time), we recently had dinner at Ya Rona.  It isn’t a big restaurant and it would be tough getting a seat during prime dinner hours.  As you can see, it is a cozy place…love those ceiling lights…and Ya Rona was very busy despite our early dinner hour.  

Laurie started out her dinner with an adult beverage, a Spicy Mango Mule. ($11.00) Then we ordered 6 Chicken Wings as an appetizer and to compare with the many other restaurants that offer them.  Ya Rona offers 12 different wing ‘sauces’ or flavors.  We went for the Honey Hot.  The wings were excellent, some of the best we’ve had in the last year or so!  We will return for dinner completely focused on a larger order of chicken wings... 

There are lots of options when it comes to pizza at Ya Rona.  We thought that the most interesting craft pizza is the Greek version…with lamb, feta cheese, garlic olive oil, sundried tomatoes, purple onion and Kalamata olives. They do offer 8 “Craft Pizzas” but with my likes and dislikes, we opted to build our own.  It was a large thin crust pizza with ‘cupped’ pepperoni and hot sausage. ($16.00)

We loved the thin crust, one of the best we’ve come across in the last couple of years.  The cupped pepperoni is a good idea as the pepperoni is more flavorful when ‘cupped’ as it releases more of the oil and spices.  An additional win was that Laurie likes her pizza cut into squares, St. Louis style.  Sadly, the positives for Ya Rona's pizza were outweighed by the negatives.  If the sausage was really spicy, we couldn’t taste it…or it was just overwhelmed by the overly sweet tomato sauce.  Even the pepperoni was masked by the sauce.  In our opinion, and when it comes to pizza, opinions are like….well you know what I mean...our Ya Rona's pizza just didn't measure up.

If we try another pizza at Ya Rona, it will have to start with garlic olive oil and feta or goat cheese and go from there…without that sweet tomato sauce.  This is the south though and sweet is ‘in’! 

Ya Rona Craft Pizza and Cocktails is located at 1255 US Hwy. 411 in Vonore Tennessee.  They are closed on Sunday and Monday.  Phone: 423-884-2383.  Website: https://www.yaronacraftpizza.com/.

From my last post, a few people noted that they’d never heard of a Hoya plant or seen a Hoya flower before.  In that post I had just shown an individual blossom or blossom cluster.  This photos shows a complete Hoya plant with several clusters of blossoms.

I’ll end this post with a bit of a tribute to Paul Wittke, MD.  He has been my ophthalmologist for about 12 or 13 years, beginning within a year or so after we moved to East Tennessee from the Chicago Illinois area.  He is 87 years old and he’s finally retiring…sort of.  I was just 16 years old when he graduated from the University of Michigan in 1958.  Then he earned his M.D. degree from Wayne State University’s School of Medicine in 1962.  That was followed by his internship…

Following his internship, Dr. Wittke joined the United States Air Force, serving as a general medical officer before doing a 3 year ophthalmology residency at the Kresge Eye Institute/Harper Hospital in Detroit Michigan. He received an honorable discharge from the Air Force in 1973 and he started his practice in the Knoxville Tennessee area.  Then in 1981 he joined the Tennessee Air National Guard…serving for 10 years as a flight surgeon.

Dr. Wittke retired from the United States Air Force in 1992 and has continued to work at 3 Tennessee Eye Care locations, Knoxville, Kingston and Lenoir City.  But in June of this year, Dr. Wittke is officially retiring.  I just had my last appointment/exam with him.

While chatting about his upcoming retirement, we learned a few things about him.  First of all, he’s never had to have surgery for anything, he’s never been hospitalized and the only pill he takes is a daily vitamin! (I’ve lost track of the number of pills I take…) Talk about great genes!

Then we asked Dr. Wittke what he’s going to do once he retires.  “Semi-retirement” was the answer we gleaned from our conversation.  After all, his medical license is still valid!  He is an active member of the Knoxville Lions Club, helping with their vision related efforts.  In addition, Dr. Wittke is a member of the Board of Directors of Remote Area Medical, where he participates in their various free clinics for those in need.  If you are unfamiliar with RAM/Remote Area Medical and their good works, check the organization out at https://www.ramusa.org/. 

Congratulations to Dr. Wittke and his well-deserved ‘retirement’.  But, like the Eveready Battery bunny, he just keeps on going!  Thanks doctor for taking such good care of me and my vision…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave