RV Travel – Toqua Campground Rally – Part 2

We began our first full rally day with an early lunch at Donna’s Old Town Café about 10 miles down the road in Madisonville where I went with the buffet and thought the fried chicken and the fish were both very good.

RV Travel – Toqua Campground Rally – Part 1

As the Wagon Master (trip coordinator) for our Tennessee Travelers FMCA Chapter, I’m always well pleased when one of our members volunteers to host a rally (Rally Master) and when the Lusk’s volunteered for June, I jumped at the offer.  After a little discussion we thought that Toqua Campground in Vonore, TN would be a good location as the attendees would be there for the short drive to our annual meeting on Wednesday.  The Lusk’s are very familiar with the area so many good events had been planned.

Happy Father’s Day

Here’s hoping all you Dad’s out there have a terrific day.

 According to their local newspaper and Wikipedia - "After Anna Jarvis' successful promotion of Mother's Day in Grafton, West Virginia, the first observance of a "Father's Day" was held on July 5, 1908, in Fairmont, West Virginia, in the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, now known as Central United Methodist Church.  Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the loss of her father, when in December 1907, the Monongah Mining Disaster in nearby Monongah killed 361 men, 250 of them fathers, leaving around a thousand fatherless children. Clayton suggested that her pastor Robert Thomas Webb honor all those fathers."

Fairmont is my hometown and if I ever knew this I had forgotten.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

Air Fryer And English

I’ve posted before that I am not a fan of specialty kitchen gadgets and as I walked into the room recently there was a commercial on TV for an air fryer so I watched a couple of minutes.  Then, I went online to do a little research on them and discovered they work by having a fan circulate hot air around the food. 

I, then, realized I already have two of them on hand – a full-convection kitchen oven and a full-convection toaster oven, so no air fryer needed - $100+ saved.

Also, I continue to be concerned about the degradation of the English language and it’s no wonder we have communication issues as the meaning of words keeps changing (and this doesn't even count the new text shorthand).  In my younger days when mom said we were having fried potatoes, I knew they would be cooked in a pan (usually cast iron) with some type of fat (usually bacon) and I never had to ask if they were to be cooked in the oven or in the air fryer.  Per Webster – fried: to cook in a pan or on a griddle over heat especially with the use of fat.

So when you read about a dish coming from Almost Heaven South, you can usually assume the following:

Fried – in a pan with fat

Baked – in an oven

Nuked – in a microwave

Griddled – on the flat griddle

Grilled – over an open flame device (gas, charcoal, wood)

But wait, there are obviously some exceptions such as a grilled cheese sandwich which is cooked on the griddle or in a skillet and to make it more confusing, as a kid, we called them toasted cheese sandwiches even though they were cooked in a pan and not the toaster.  So if everyone will just start calling them fried cheese sandwiches I think all will be fine.  Hopefully this brought a little grin to your face.J

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

Mediterranean Salmon & Fresh Veggies

Even though I haven’t been gardening lately, we are still spoiled when it comes to vegetables and will try to find good fresh ones, so today we made the 60 mile round trip to the farmers market run by the Englewood Mennonite Community and we came home with a car load.

Snapper Veracruz & Grilled Tuna

It was time for fish and while freezer diving, I found a piece of tuna for Cindy and a package of snapper for the rest of us, both from our trip to the Florida panhandle last winter.

For the snapper, I used the following Bobby Flay recipe for Snapper Veracruz and followed it as written except we only had three pieces of fish and I cooked the sauce to nearly done before grilling the fish.

Memorial Day

While many have served, thankfully, our family has not lost anyone to a war, but many have and I am thankful for those sacrifices that have protected this great country in which we have the privilege of living.