Green beans are a lot easier to grow and much more prolific than Fordhook Lima Beans, but they are not nearly as tasty. There are few foods anywhere than can rival the goodness of a freshly picked Fordhook Lima boiled to a tender doneness and topped with butter. It is one of my favorite foods in the world. Years ago, I had a garden at our small lakefront cottage in Greene County … [Read more...]

  Groceries are expensive, but fish are free – if you catch them yourself (or have a good friend who likes to fish.) I am aware of a certain fish that you can’t even buy in a store, yet there is no more flavorful fish found anywhere. The fish is a bluegill, which is classified as a game fish in Virginia; therefore they cannot be sold commercially. Bluegills, sometimes referred to … [Read more...]

  Vegetables. Face it, they’re boring. But we must serve them along with the main dish. It’s required Cooking 101. In fact, some only serve vegetables. Vegans, you know. But I have a hard time with ame old, same old veggies. A few days ago, I bought some zucchini, as a change of pace, and I tried a new recipe - Roasted Zucchini and Parmesan. It was delicious, and it’s really … [Read more...]

  I have been having fun with some Tex/Mex recipes – nothing fancy, stuff like Enchiladas, Tacos, Mexican Lasagna, and the like. I’m sure a real live Mexican would say, “What the hell is this? It’s not anything I’ve ever eaten or would eat.” But for those of us who the closest we ever get to Mexico is landing in Dallas, it’ll do. One thing that concerns me about cooking Mexican is … [Read more...]

By Nancy B   I have had customers ask me this question. They want to know if Nancy B is a real person or just a name I decided to use. Have you ever noticed how much people like to talk about themselves? I do and I also do. I thought I would tell you how I got into this business to begin with. Before our third child was born, we had a darling ladies and girl’s clothing business. … [Read more...]

Lonely they sit among the more popular vegetables in the produce section. There are usually just 2 or 3 of them in their given bin, but people pass them by. They are spaghetti squash, perhaps the tastiest of all the squash – winter or summer. There are two drawbacks to spaghetti squash. First, they run about $1.50 a pound, or about $5 or $6 each, and second, they are the dickens to cut … [Read more...]

  One of the classic Seinfeld episodes was about muffin tops. Elaine suggested to a friend that somebody should sell muffin tops, not the whole muffins, because the tops were the best part. Her friend stole her idea, opened a muffin top store and Newman ended up eating thousands of leftover muffin bottoms. It was one of my favorite episodes. Recently, I saw that Betty Crocker had a … [Read more...]

The Plantz family from Charlottesville had an exciting trip with Capt. Reese Stecher of BeachBumFishing.com at Oregon Inlet.  Site casting to vast schools of red drum, the family scored with fish after fish. Reese said there are plenty of stripers in the sound, but that there are too many drum around to mess with the stripers. He also said that the speckled trout are showing up now, but they … [Read more...]

  When we were counselors for the youth group at our church, we often served Sunday night dinner for the kids. Of all the meals, they overwhelmingly preferred Sloppy Joe’s and Spaghetti Pie. Spaghetti Pie may be the ultimate comfort food. It’s tasty, easy to prepare, and everybody loves it – especially kids. There are dozens of recipes for the pie, but as always, I go for the … [Read more...]

  There used to be an Opening Day of Trout Season and it was the equivalent of a Barnum & Bailey Circus coming to town. Men, women, and children headed for the mountains to try and catch a few of the hundreds of thousands of trout that had been stocked and were now hungry enough to eat raw worms. I have been a participant of lots of Opening Days during my fishing career, but one … [Read more...]