Just a hunch, but I doubt many of my Cville Buzz readers will be cooking up a batch of “toads” anytime soon. But if you ever get the chance, don’t pass it by. By “toads”, I am referring to Puffer Fish or Blow Fish, commonly called “toads” by the locals. Puffers happen to be an ocean delicacy. We had some last week and they were delicious. The local seafood market in Deltaville had them on … [Read more...]

  Homemade Reese’s Bars - It's a fun treat to make, especially for kids, but hey, everybody loves Reese’s Cups. Put out a big bowl of assorted candy and no matter the age, Reese’s Cups go first. Chocolate and peanut butter is a winning combination. Last week as a change of pace, I decided to make a batch of Homemade Reese’s Cup Bars instead of my usual Chocolate Chip Cookies. It’s easy … [Read more...]

  We were three high school buddies from Lewisburg. Dave, Harold, and I had played ball together, we had gone to school together, and as boys, we had spent hours and hours fishing on the Greenbrier River. Through the years, Dave and I have stayed in touch, but I lost track of Harold about 60 years ago. He contacted me through CvilleBuzz and we have been great pen pals for the last 7 or 8 … [Read more...]

  There have always been mockingbirds in our neighborhood. In past years, they have staked out vantage points in my neighbor’s yard. Occasionally, they would come to my yard to drink from the birdbath, but mostly they were my neighbor’s mockingbirds. But not this year. For the first time, a dominant mockingbird has claimed my back yard as his turf and woe be to the other mockingbirds who … [Read more...]

  I’m always on the lookout for different ways to cook chicken. Like it or not, chicken is better for you that steak or lasagna or pizza or any number of other yummy dishes. The trick is it to have chicken taste (almost) as good as the yummy things. I saw a recipe for Southern Baked Chicken and the “southern” part got my attention. With the exception of chitlin’s, most anything … [Read more...]

You can’t really buy a small ham. If you want the goodness of a big, fat ham portion, it’s going to be 9 or 10 pounds or more. Ten pounds makes a lot of meals for two people. But I buy hams anyway and eat sliced ham for breakfast, for lunch as sandwiches and chip away at it before freezing the remains and making soup at a later date. After my latest ham purchase, I found a recipe to help finish … [Read more...]

Salmon has become a staple in our house. It’s good for you, it’s a nice change of pace from beef, pork and chicken and it tastes good – most any way you prepare it. I bought a pound and a half filet this week and decided to experiment – slightly. I decided to make Salmon Pilaf. It sounds exotic, but it’s really not. I simply baked the Salmon on a nice bed of Rice Pilaf. According to the … [Read more...]

I don’t often make soup. That’s because I consider soup a medicine, like aspirin or NyQuil, for when you’re sick. When it’s dinnertime, I want meat and potatoes. But Nancy likes soup. She likes soup even when she’s not sick. So, I decided to make soup. The easiest possible recipe I found, other than opening a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup (which I considered as an option) was one for … [Read more...]

We are enjoying a bumper crop of okra this summer. Our fresh produce bins in the fridge runneth over. Nancy has a few plants in her above ground garden cage, and I have a dozen or so healthy plants in my garden. We have to pick okra every day or the pods get too large to eat. Our favorite way to enjoy fresh okra is to cut the pods into small pieces, roll them in corn meal ad pan fry them. But I … [Read more...]

  Nancy and I are huge fans of Long John Silver’s. In days gone by, on a typical Sunday night, my wife would send me along with a twenty-dollar bill to Long John Silver’s on Emmet Street where I returned with a basket of fish, chicken, slaw, and hush puppies. We loved their chicken and their fish. Then they up and left town! The closest Long John’s now is in Orange, but a 90-mile rounds … [Read more...]