Every Christmas my son spoils me with a few hand-selected cigars from a high quality shop in Atlanta. These aren’t like my two-bit stogies, they are really good cigars. Each one is an experience to itself. Jimmie’s friend, the Cigar Meister, carefully selects a half dozen or so of some of his finest smokes and tucks them neatly in a wooden cigar box sprinkled with a few cigar leaves … [Read more...]

Americans spend a lot of money to pay a butcher to slice and package meats – especially chickens. Why not save some of that money and slice and butcher the meat yourself? Case in point. I felt like barbequing some chicken and thought that a couple leg quarters would be perfect for the two of us – plus, I like dark meat best when push comes to shove. The butchers at Kroger’s were not very … [Read more...]

Every product I’ve ever tried from Trader Joe’s has been first-rate. It is a great grocery store. But I hate going there. First of all, I hate Stonefield Shopping Center. It’s the devil to get in and out of and the parking is screwy. Apparently, others agree with my assessment and many of the storefronts are vacant and a number of restaurants there have failed. Trader Joe’s, a smaller store … [Read more...]

Sounds sorta’ goofy, doesn’t it? But let me tell you something. Peanut Butter Pie is unbelievably good. The recipe is in a cookbook Nancy gave me for Christmas – “The Happy in a Hurry Cookbook” by Steve and Kathy Doocy. Steve is the longtime morning host of Fox & Friends. He is a laid back, family kind-of-guy who happens to love to cook. Nancy saw him prepare a few of his recipes, live on Fox … [Read more...]

I have always said that I would gladly pay more in order to get a ripe, sweet melon than throw 3 or 4 dollars down the drain for a tasteless, unripe melon, and apparently I’m not alone. There is a new melon on the market from Brazil. It’s called a Dino melon because it looks a bit like a dinosaur (dino) egg. It’s white-ish with some specks of green on the skin. The flesh is also a light color and … [Read more...]

I have recently become a big fan of potato bread and rolls – made with potatoes and not wheat. I think I bought a bag of potato hamburger rolls by mistake and really liked them. It turns out, they have fewer calories than regular bread and as much, if not more flavor. They also have zero cholesterol. One of my favorite buys is a package of Martin’s Party Rolls. The 15-oz. bag has 24 rolls – … [Read more...]

Lots of folks give hams this time of the year. If you haven’t bought one yet, or need a last minute gift, consider giving a Gayle’s Ham for that special someone. I used to spend lots of time fishing Mossy Creek, near Bridgewater in Augusta County. My drive over the Blue Ridge Mountains via Rt. 33 took me through Elkton, McGayheesville and Penn Laird before I turned off on Rt. 256, a bypass … [Read more...]

Boy, what a deal. On a recent trip to Sam’s Club, I was poking around in the meat and deli section and saw a package of chicken breasts salvaged from the leftover rotisserie chickens. They had put 4 breast halves in a package for just $3.98. Not only was this a super buy, it is a super time-saver for cooking. I had intended to buy some chicken breasts anyway and cook them, then chop them up for … [Read more...]

Grumble, gripe, bitch, moan. That’s me going through the meat department at most grocery stores. That’s because it’s always the same-old, same old, especially when it comes to pork. They no longer have real butchers in the back room. They are basically meat sorters. Shipments of pre-wrapped pork and beef now come from the big butcher in the sky, who also determines which cuts of meat and … [Read more...]

Last Christmas, my granddaughter Berkley - who knows how much I love to go to the grocery store - gave me three shopping bags from Harris Teeter, heavy duty bags with straps. It was perfect timing because I had just opened the back of my Jeep and had a cantaloupe escape from one of the plastic bags and go rolling down the driveway. I despise those plastic bags, but in some stores, that’s all they … [Read more...]