Ceramic stove tops don’t like it when you tip over a glass bottle of olive oil on the edge of the stove top. They crack right down the middle and you have to buy a new stovetop. Happened to me a few weeks ago and now I keep a plastic bottle of olive oil handy – not glass. When Doug’s Maytag delivered my new ceramic stove top. I asked about cleaning, as this has been a genuine pain, … [Read more...]

  I had heard about the ability of underwater lights to attract fish at night, but I was skeptical. Nonetheless, I ordered one from Berkley last year before the Oyster Festival. We dropped the neon green light at the base of the dock and it drew lots of bait, but not any gamefish. They simply weren’t around. This year, I tried again, this time with much success. The first night drew … [Read more...]

Salt is pretty cheap. A box of table salt is less than a buck, but Kosher salt? Not so much. A 16-ounce carton of Morton’s Coarse Kosher Salt runs about $2.99, and I go through that stuff like crazy. I season nearly everything I cook with Kosher Salt. On the program, “Chopped”, one of the biggest criticisms for the contestants – and these are all professional chefs – is the lack of seasoning, … [Read more...]

Last Christmas, my fishing buddy, Tim Tigner, gave me one of the neatest accessories of all – a pair of rubber fishing gloves, Latex actually. They are a must-have item on fishing trips and extremely useful around the house. I once went croaker fishing with Courtney Craft and we caught about a hundred fish. I didn’t have my fishing gloves with me and took the fish off the hooks with my bare … [Read more...]

Nancy and I bounce around from coffee to coffee. We like many brands including Folgers, Dunkin’ Donuts, and several store brands, but we have recently found ourselves drinking Chock full o'Nuts on a daily basis. Nancy goes to a morning gym class and has enjoyed the coffee served there. When she asked about it, they said it was Chock full o'Nuts. Our daughter Laura heard that Mimi enjoyed this … [Read more...]

I had forgotten how good a Honey Baked Ham can taste, but my sister-in-law, Laura Patterson, brought one to a family reunion and it was – as always – incredible. Honey Baked opened their first retail store in Detroit in 1957. The initial owner, HarryHoenselaar, actually patented the spiral-slicing process which is still prevalent. The Honey Baked Ham Company, LLC has since grown to over 200 … [Read more...]

  I cannot sharpen a knife. If I ever need a really sharp knife, I’ll go out buy a new one. New knives are sharp right out of the box, but I have never been able to put a keen edge on an old knife. Daddy could. About once a month, he’d get out an old whetstone with three sides and methodically sharpen every knife in the kitchen. More than once, I cut myself just opening the knife … [Read more...]

  It’s hard to screw up a good steak. Unless you cook it until every drop of juice is gone and it’s as dry as shoe leather or if you serve it so rare that it crawls off your plate before you can kill it with a steak knife, most any steak will be good. And well it should, because steaks come from the choice parts of a steer, generally the loin or rib area. Steaks are one of the first things … [Read more...]

I don’t know how many bags of mulch my wife Nancy has used in the last 10 years – probably enough to mulch the state of Delaware. but in the future, we won’t be needing quite as many of those heavy 50-pound bags. That’s because we now have a new Electric Wood Chipper. There is nothing I hate worse than dragging plastic bags filled with twigs and sticks to the curb for Monday morning trash … [Read more...]

I have been cooking barbeque chicken for a thousand years. Well, maybe not a thousand, but at least eight-hundred and fifty. It was the first thing I cooked dating back to my bachelor days. After all that practice, I more or less have it down to a science. The only time I bombed is when I once slammed shut my Weber Grill and tipped it over on our patio – chicken, sauce, ashes and coals - all in … [Read more...]