A local market serving the Rocky Hill community since 1990
Grocery Life July 10, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good morning from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week. I think a lot of people must be on vacation this week because it has been a little quiet in the store or maybe you ate so much over the holiday weekend you just aren’t hungry yet.
Now that the Fourth is over, I guess it is time to start thinking about Christmas. Believe it or not, we had to order the Christmas candy for the store last week. We ordered for Halloween weeks ago and the Valentine’s and Easter orders will be coming up soon. These are one shot deals and if we fail to get our orders in on time we do not get a second chance. It is hard enough to order seasonal items correctly during the season but to sit down in July when it is 90 degrees outside and get excited about ordering candy for Christmas is really difficult. We are basically trying to guess the selection everyone will want and also the exact amount they will buy. If we have a lot left over, it will be marked down or donated and we will lose money. No one wants holiday candy after the holidays.
One thing at Christmas we are already getting excited about is the first ever Rocky Hill Christmas Parade. Yes, Rocky Hill is going to have a Christmas Parade and it is going right down Northshore Drive from Rocky Hill Baptist Church through Morrell Rd. to Casa Don Gallo. The parade is going to be Saturday, December 6th, at 6 p.m. I do not know all of the details yet, but I do know there will be floats and the cashiers here are already working on the design for ours.
Steve and Claire Gillespie, who own Gillespie Import Service just down the street, are chairing the parade and have already spent a lot of time getting all of the businesses involved and planning the event. As I learn more of the details, I will pass them along to you. I think it will be a great event so mark your calendars. The bigger the crowd is the better the event.
Now that I have ruined everyone’s day by bringing up Christmas in July, I want to offer you a little Christmas in July.
Whole beef tenderloin is our favorite Christmas item here at the store. So I am going to have a one day sale on it in appreciation of all of you supporting this blog. Tomorrow, Friday the 11th, whole beef tenderloins will be $9.99 Lb. This sale will only be on Friday July 11, 2014 and will be limited to one tenderloin per customer while supplies last. I am not sure how many of you read this blog and how many of you like beef tenderloin, but I guess I will find out tomorrow. If it goes well, maybe I can start doing these special sales on the blog more often.
Thanks again for supporting the blog and the store, and I will see you tomorrow.
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Respond to:tom.butler44@gmail.com
Click here for past blogs
Butler and Bailey Market
7513 Northshore Dr.
Knoxville, TN 37919
(865)691-8881
Grocery Life July 7, 2014
Grocery Life July 7, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July weekend. I don’t know if there has ever been a more beautiful day of weather on the Fourth as we had this year. I can’t remember one. Saturday and Sunday weren’t bad either.
I worked on the Fourth but was off on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we had some friends out for a cookout. I finally got to try the beef brisket recipe a customer told me about. The only problem was they told me a couple of weeks ago so I couldn’t remember every detail. I really need to start writing things down. Here’s how I did it.
I wanted to get a small one but the guys in the meat department told me to get one that was thick. It is a pretty flat piece of meat so they said it would turn out better if it is thick. After choosing one, I injected it with beef consommé. I think the recipe called for some kind of beef base and since I was busy Friday, I just grabbed a can of Campbell’s beef consommé off the shelf to use. To inject it you need a syringe. We sell them, but I used the one we have in the meat department. I just poked it all over and shot the consommé into it. Once I had done this, I put a dry rub on the outside of it. This was one part kosher salt, one part sugar in the raw, and one part butt rub. I coated the brisket completely but not caked on. This was all done Friday the day before I cooked it.
Saturday morning I started cooking. I used a green egg and indirect heat, but I guess it will work in an oven or another type of grill as long as you can block direct heat. The green egg kind of works like a smoker so you get that smoke flavor. I set my temperature at 200 degrees and kept it there for the whole time. I laid the brisket on the grill fat side up and cooked it for three hours. I also put some water in an aluminum pie pan and put this on the grill to keep some moisture in there. At this point the internal temperature was about 155 degrees. I then wrapped it in aluminum foil and while doing so added about a cup of allegro meat marinade. I then continued to cook it at 200 degrees for five hours. About this time our company showed up so I took it off the grill and put it in a cooler, leaving it wrapped, for about two hours. I didn’t check the temperature when I pulled it off the grill but could tell when I removed it that it was ready. It was very soft instead of firm. Putting it in a cooler allows it to steam in its own juices and really tenderizes it. I always do this at least an hour for large pieces of meat like a brisket, Boston butt, and even a standing rib roast. The guys at Copper Cellar taught me this. (Note: There is not any ice in the cooler, just an empty cooler.)
When we were ready to eat, I just pulled it out of the cooler, unwrapped it, and sliced it. It stays hot in the cooler so you should not have to reheat it. You want to slice it across the grain between an eighth and a quarter of an inch thick. I had three kinds of sauces to serve with it but most preferred it without sauce which means I must have finally cooked a good beef brisket. Yea!!!
We had a great time with our friends that afternoon and evening and after everyone left it was shower time for the kids so we could get them in bed. When Lauren came to tell us goodnight, she said she didn’t feel well. Turns out she had a 102° temperature. I think she had felt bad all day but we were so busy getting ready for a party and having a party I don’t think we really noticed. Another great parenting job by Tom and Erica. We gave her some Motrin and put her to bed and she slept through the night.
Sunday morning her fever had gone down to 99.5° where it stayed most of the day. We typically go to church on Sunday mornings but obviously she was not going to be able to go. Usually I would still go and take Tyson and Erica would stay home with Lauren. Well Tyson wanted to go skateboarding instead of church and since I was on a pretty good run of bad parenting, we decided to go to the skateboard park instead. We did talk about church on the way to the skateboard park which is how I justified my bad parenting.
We always go to the one at Tyson Park. He likes going there because he thinks it is named after him or he is named after it. I like going there because it is close to Children’s Hospital and Fort Sanders Hospital so when and if one of us has a bad crash we won’t have far to go to the E.R.
On the way home, we always have to stop at the Pilot on Alcoa Highway to get an icee. This has become part of the father/son skateboard park tradition. The last three times we have stopped, the icee machine has been broken, which is a heartbreaker for Tyson. If anyone has Mr. Haslam’s phone number, could you call him and tell him it would be a big help to me if he could get the machine fixed.
It’s back to work this morning. I have eaten so much food over the weekend I don’t really feel like writing about food this morning. We will probably be eating a lot of salads this week until we recover. Hopefully I will be ready to talk about food the next time.
Have a great week!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Respond to:tom.butler44@gmail.com
Butler and Bailey Market
7513 Northshore Dr.
Knoxville, TN 37919
(865)691-8881
Grocery Life July 3, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week! We have been busy at the store this week and I hope it gets busier.
Mr. Johnson finished up our quarterly financial statement Tuesday. Considering what we have spent on upgrades and repairs the last six months, it looked pretty good. Pretty good means we aren’t going to have to borrow money to pay the bills. I hate borrowing money! My dad loaned me the money to get started here and several times he had to loan me money to keep going here. I think the biggest reason small businesses fail is they start out under-capitalized and they run out of places to keep borrowing money. I was lucky that my dad was willing to keep making loans or I would have fallen victim to this as well. I have friends that maxed out their credit card and borrowed against their house just to keep their businesses going. Some have become millionaires and some are broke without a place to live. I hated to have to keep going to my dad to borrow money but it was great motivation to work hard and make the store work. Failure is not an option when you owe a family member money.
Once I got him paid off I figured I would be on easy street. No more having to answer to my dad and no more monthly payments. I finally actually owned my own small business. Not long after that my dad passed away then three months later my friend and longtime partner, Mr. Bailey, passed away. This was in early 2009 which also happened to be the start of the second great depression for the U.S. economy. So much for easy street. Business got tough and I had lost my life-long mentors as well as financial support.
I moped around here for several months watching the business struggle and not having the motivation to do anything about it. At some point I had a moment of clarity and realized that all the employees that worked here were still working hard trying to make my business successful and they needed me engaged to make that happen. So what do I do? I did what small business people do. I went to the bank and took out a line of credit against my house so we could remodel the store. I have learned that there is no such thing as “easy street” in small business. There is always a new challenge just around the corner that will test you mentally and financially. I am lucky to have the support of a great staff and we are lucky to have the support of you.
We will always try to support small businesses by selling their products in the store and shopping with them in their stores. I don’t know all their stories but I would guess most of them have had to bet their house at some point along their way.Click here for a list of some of their products we sell.
Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. We will be open normal hours which are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
- The meat department will be cutting a great variety of fresh meats for the grill and preparing meats on the smoker.
- The deli/bakery will be frying chicken all day and making salads and desserts to go with it.
- The produce department now has South Carolina peaches as well as a wide variety of vegetables from local farms.
I am working tomorrow but Saturday I am going to try the beef brisket recipe a customer gave me last week. I will take home some ribs and chicken we cook here for back-up in case I screw-up the brisket. I am also going to take home one of Nancy’s peanut butter pies and if I get time, I will make thumbprint cookies with red, white, and blue icing.
I hope everyone has a great Fourth of July weekend!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Respond to:tom.butler44@gmail.com
Butler and Bailey Market
7513 Northshore Dr.
Knoxville, TN 37919
(865)691-8881
Grocery Life June 30, 2014
Grocery Life June 30, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone had a great weekend. In the last blog I told a story about my bus driver growing up. It turns out Burl might have been the most famous man in Rocky Hill. I have had a tremendous amount of responses from you telling your stories about Burl and his bus. Who would have thought he would have impacted so many lives? Thanks for sharing your stories with me.
We are just about to the halfway point of the year which means the end of the second quarter for the grocery store. At the end of every quarter we generate a profit and loss statement for the store. This is how we determine if we made or lost money over the previous three months. One of the biggest factors in determining this is the amount of inventory we have on hand at the end of each quarter.
We have about twenty-seven thousand different products in the store and each product has to be counted as well as the quantity we have of each product. We hire a company to count all of the items in the shelves out in the store, but we count everything else. This means everything in the meat, produce, and deli/bakery departments as well as everything in our storage areas in the back of the store. We started this task last Wednesday and we finished it up early yesterday morning. It is a lot of work for everyone but I feel like it is the most accurate way to get a true count.
Once everything is counted, these numbers are given to our bookkeeper, Mr. Johnson. He then plugs them into a spreadsheet along with all our sales and expenses for the last three months and a profit and loss statement is generated as well as a balance sheet. It will take him about three days. If I had to do it, it would probably be Christmas before it was completed.
Mr. Johnson has been keeping books for my family since the early sixties. He kept books for my grandfather in his business. He kept books for my father and uncle in their businesses and now he keeps books for my business. That’s over 50 years of keeping books for my family. He probably knows more history about my family than everyone in my family knows. I enjoy hearing stories from him about how my grandfather ran his business; he must have been quite the character. I was young when he died so most of what I know about him and his business I have learned from Mr. Johnson. I am grateful for all Mr. Johnson has done for my family the last three generations. They never had to worry about their “books” being right and I don’t either.
Today is the start of Fourth of July week. We like this week at the store. It will probably be the highpoint of business this summer. We are finally selling fried chicken in the store this week. We started last Friday. Until we get everyone trained up on it, we will probably only fry in the afternoon during the week and all day on holidays and weekends. Ashley also added smoked beef brisket to his menu of smoked meats. It has sold out every time he has done it and he is smoking ribs around the clock, they have become so popular. Feel free to call us if you would like to place an order for any of these items.
We are finally getting a good variety of homegrown produce in and that should only get better as we get into July, especially with the rain we have gotten recently. Our peach man is supposed to start bringing South Carolina peaches tomorrow. I will believe it when I see it. He told us the same thing last week.
The folks in our deli/bakery department will have plenty of salads and desserts prepared to make your holiday easier. I asked Nancy what she was going to make special for this week this morning and she hasn’t decided yet so I guess we will all be surprised. Have a great day!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Grocery Life June 26, 2014
Grocery Life June 26, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good morning from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week. Everything is going good at the store this week.
We had a cooking class Tuesday night and we have another one tonight. Every one we have had in June has been full and most of the ones in July are almost full. The one that is not filling up in July is on the 24th which happens to be my birthday. Maybe people are afraid they have to bring a present if they come to that one? Don’t worry about bringing a present, my son always does something special for me on my birthday. He takes me to Chucky Cheese. That’s what we did last year and I am sure he will want to take me again this year. Tyson loves to go to Chucky Cheese and I guess since he loves it, he thinks everyone must love it. I do not love chucky Cheese, I do not even like Chucky Cheese, but I love my boy and he loves his daddy so wherever he wants to take me on my birthday will be a special present to me.
Another thing happening near the time of my birthday is my thirty year high school reunion. I graduated from Bearden High School. I actually went to Bearden all twelve years. School zoning was different then because if you lived in the house I grew up in now, you would go to Sequoyah Elementary, Bearden Middle, and West High School. I kind of like the fact that I got to go to the same school my whole career. Maybe because I always went to Bearden or maybe because I lived in the same house during my school years, I always rode the same bus and always had the same bus driver, Burl Jones, bus number 143.
As a kid, Burl seemed like a gruff old man. He wore either grey or blue pairs of coveralls everyday and a cap in warm weather or a toboggan in cold weather. He never smiled that I can remember, but I do remember the glare he had in that big rearview mirror when kids got rowdy on the bus. I kind of feared him so my friends and I usually just sat quietly hoping not to get the glare. His bus was kind of like I perceived him, old and gruff. I don’t guess it had ever been washed or if it had it was so old it didn’t change in appearance. After I graduated from high school, I didn’t see Burl again until I started here at the store. It turns out Burl and his family lived right here in Rocky Hill, just around the corner from the store and came here to buy their groceries. He still wore either a grey or blue pair of coveralls after all those years but as I got to know him, I discovered he was a very kind and gentle man who had quite the sense of humor and he still drove bus 143. I always enjoyed the stories we shared about our bus riding days and couldn’t believe how many that we both remembered.
Several years later when Erica and I were planning our wedding, I decided I wanted to invite Burl and his wife to our wedding and I also wanted him to chauffeur us and the wedding party between events in bus 143. It took a little work to convince Erica that our wedding limousine was going to be my childhood school bus, but I think she was so busy trying to plan everything else she gave in pretty quickly.
Well when we walked out of the church after the ceremony there sat Burl and bus 143 just like I remembered it growing up, but on this day the bus seemed a little shinier and Burl and his wife were dressed to the nines in their Sunday best. Several of the guys in my wedding had grown up riding the bus with me and when we started filing onto the bus, we all greeted Burl just like we did every morning all those years ago.
It meant a lot to me that Burl was a part of my wedding day and I think it meant a lot to him because his wife would always ask me for more copies of the pictures we took on that day so she could send them to their friends and family.
The Rocky Hill community is full of great people like Burl and Martha Jones and I am glad I get to know so many of you by working here at the store. It is great to be part of this community!
Have a great weekend!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Respond to:tom.butler44@gmail.com
To look at past blogs click here
Grocery Life June 23, 2014
Grocery Life June 23, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good morning from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone had a good weekend! I think I must have overdone it this weekend because I sat down to write this blog about six this morning and it is now seven and I am still gazing at an empty sheet of paper. I usually start writing this the night before but since we didn’t sit down to eat supper until ten o’clock last night I went to bed instead. I will just be tired at work today but my wife will be tired with two tired kids all day. I will take tired at work over that every time.
Keith was out of town this weekend and Deana has been out sick so Ray and I have had double duty for the last few days. Ray filled in Keith’s shifts and I covered Deana’s. Deana’s schedule is kind of the opposite of mine so when I fill in for her I always see a lot of you at the store I don’t normally see. It’s always good to catch up with all the people I haven’t seen in a while. Keith is back to work this morning and hopefully Deana is feeling well enough to work this afternoon. If she’s not, I will get to be in charge this evening.
When I got home from work yesterday, we decided to take a boat ride down to visit some friends of ours who have a house on the lake. Since it was going to be pretty long boat ride, I decided we should get some gas for the boat so we headed over to Duncan’s boat dock.
About a month ago, I wrote about Ben Duncan and his boat dock in this blog and what a special place it is to my family. I didn’t tell Ben I was going to write it and probably figured he would never see it anyways. Well, when I walked in to pay for the gas and of course snacks for the kids yesterday, he told me a lady came to visit him two or three weeks ago. Before he went any further, I knew that her visit something to do with the blog I had written and I was hoping it met his approval. As Ben tells it, she lived in the Rocky Hill area but didn’t know about the boat dock until she saw the blog so she wanted to see it. Ben said she had one of those phones that could show pictures and tell stories and asked him if he wanted to use it to see the blog. He said he told her no, he wanted her to read it to him, so she did. I asked him if he liked it and he just kept grinning and chuckling. I have learned over the years that when Ben gives you that chuckle, you have made him happy. He couldn’t remember the lady’s name but said she was “right pretty.” I am glad that “right pretty” lady got to meet Ben and see his boat dock and I am glad Ben liked what I wrote. He is a real treasure, especially when he is chuckling.
This week at the store, we have a new two week ad with lots of items for the Fourth of July. One of the things on sale is beef brisket. I have never been a fan of beef brisket, but I am not sure I have ever had any that has been prepared well. I have tried doing them a couple of times and wasn’t happy with the results. A customer told me a new way to do it yesterday so I am going to give it another try. If it turns out well I will give you the recipe.
We also have pork spare ribs and Boston butts on sale. I typically have good luck with either one of these, probably because I do them at least once a week.
We tested some more fried chicken recipes Friday and I actually gave some to customers to take home and try. I am waiting to hear how they liked it. I think we are getting close to having it for sale, but I will see what they think first.
I am sure most of you have noticed that we have not perfected the formatting of this blog yet. Sometimes the pictures are upside down and the text will get scrambled. For some reason it workscorrectly on some devices and not on others. My mobile devices seem to be really inconsistent with the formatting, but my desktop computer always has it right. I apologize for this and Keith and I are working diligently to get the problems corrected.
Have a good week!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Respond to tom.butler44@gmail.com
To view past blogs click here
Grocery Life June 19, 2014
Grocery Life June 19, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. For those of us that like hot weather, we are getting a good dose of it this week. The weatherman on my phone says that it might cool off down into the eighties by this time next week. I am not sure that will be noticeable, and the phone weatherman is usually wrong anyways.
We have had a good week at the store so far. Business has been good and nothing major has broken for about six days straight, which is a vast improvement. I am tired of paying repair bills!
I spent a lot of time yesterday signing people up for cooking classes. The July schedule just came out and the menus must look delicious because the classes are filling up quicker than usual. You can check out the menus on our website and just call the store to make a reservation.
Another thing that has been popular this week is our ready to go meals in the deli department. Nancy and our staff in the deli do a great job preparing these take home meals and all you have to do is heat them up when you get home. I think the hot weather puts people out of the mood to cook and these meals are a good solution for that. I know that they came in handy for my wife when my mother-in-law had some health issues and wasn’t able to cook for herself. Erica would buy enough meals to last her mother for a week so she didn’t have to go and cook something for her every day. We get a lot of comments about how good they are for people that can’t cook themselves for various reasons so give them a try if you get in a pinch.
An obvious choice to buy this week is Mayfield ice cream and Trumoo ice cream. Both of them are on sale through Saturday and when the weather is this hot, nothing is better than ice cream!
We will have a new ad coming out this Sunday which will be our Fourth of July ad. Can you believe the fourth is already here? Time is flying by.
I have been writing these blogs for about two months now and usually do them twice a week. Every time I sit down to write one I think about my dad, especially this last week since it was Father’s Day.
When I was away at college, which has been almost thirty years ago, my dad and I wrote letters to each other. I went to the same college he did, which was Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Kentucky. This gave us a good topic to write about that we both had in common. I would write him telling him stories about my college life and he would write back telling me stories about his college days. We would always try to out do each other with our stories, which was hard for me because he was a funny man and an excellent writer. He could really spin a tale. I guess that’s what made him a good lawyer?
We didn’t always have the best relationship; we were probably too much alike. He was very reserved with his emotions and praise for others and I am probably the same way. When we were in a room together, the silence could be deafening (just ask my wife), but when we were writing to each other the words came easy between us. Until I started writing this blog I have not tried to tell a story in written form since those letters from college so every time I do this I think of him.
Another reason I think of him is I have his artwork hanging all over our house. When my father retired from his law business he started spending a lot of time painting. He had painted some throughout the years but really pursued it after his retirement. He actually became very good at it. Of course I would have never told him this since we didn’t exchange praise. He would often ask me what I thought of a painting he had done, and I would tell him it was okay regardless of how good it was. I would then tell him all the great artist like Van Gogh and Monet painted hay stacks and until he painted a good hay stack (they are now hay bales) he couldn’t be considered a great artist. Guess what I got for my next birthday, a huge painting of hay bales. I guess he showed me?
Many of you have told me about the paintings of his that you have in your homes. Just this week, a lady told me she rented a house at Pawley’s Island last week and in that house hung one of my father’s paintings. I don’t know how many paintings he did and where all they hang, but I do know it meant a lot to him that someone enjoyed his art enough to hang it in their home. It means a lot to me that so many people besides myself have gotten to enjoy his talents.
I can’t say all of the memories of my dad are good ones, but I choose to think about the good ones like the letters we exchanged and the art on my the walls.
Have a great weekend!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Grocery Life June 16, 2014
Grocery Life June 16, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone had a good Father’s Day weekend! We had a busy weekend at our house. My son, Tyson, was chosen to play in a baseball tournament this weekend so he had a game on Friday night and two games on Saturday. My daughter, Lauren, was gone to an overnight camp most of the week and came home Saturday. My wife had a baby shower to attend Saturday and then we had a going away party for some friends at our house Saturday night.
I talked about pecan crisp cookies in the last blog and our friend that gave us the recipe brought them to the party Saturday night. Those things are good! We all started eating them as an appetizer before dinner was served. I decided to make thumbprint cookies to see how they stacked up against the pecan crisps. Thumbprint cookies have been my favorite since childhood. When I was a kid, I grew up going to the Bearden Shopping Center with my mom. At that time White Stores was the grocery store in the center. There was also Whiteway which was variety store, Coffin Shoes which is still there, the Green Stamp store, Crenshaw’s Children’s Shop, Henderson’s Drugstore, Nancy Lynn Fashions, C&S Dry Cleaners, and Wade’s Bakery.
Wade’s Bakery is where I was introduced to thumbprint cookies. I remember getting two quarters a week for my allowance when I was a kid. It was always spent at Whiteway on some kind of toy or at Wade’s Bakery on thumbprint cookies. I can still vividly remember going into the bakery and asking how many cookies I could get for my two quarters. I also remember having to decide which colors of icing I wanted on my cookies. The cookies are really small, you could eat them in one bite, and I remember just nibbling on them on the way home to make them last longer. I have great memories of all the shops at the Bearden Shopping Center. We all knew the shopkeepers and they all knew us as well as who our parents were, who our grandparents were, and at Wade’s Bakery they probably knew the colors of cookies I was going to pick out before I told them. In those days there was no mall or internet so my family did most of their commerce in one little shopping center in Bearden.
The Rocky Hill Shopping Center and the businesses in close proximity remind me a lot of the ones I grew up with. We are all local, family owned businesses and you can just about meet any need with a walk up the sidewalk or across the street.
I hope all of us doing business in Rocky Hill are giving you experiences that produce the same fond memories that the Bearden Center did for me. Those were my “good old days.”
Here is the recipe for the thumbprint cookies. I actually have three recipes that all claim to be Wade’s Bakery’s. There are probably a lot more than that floating around. This is the one I used Saturday and it seemed to be pretty close to my memories.
Thumbprint Cookie Recipe
Cookie
- 1/2 Cup Shortening
- ½ Cup butter
- 1 Cup Sugar
- 1 Egg
- 1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract
- 3 Cups Plain Flour (Sifted)
- ½ Tsp. Salt
Icing
- 2 Cups Confectioner’s Sugar
- ½ Tsp. Vanilla Extract
- ½ Tsp. Salt
- Water
- Food Coloring
Cookie Instructions
Beat together butter & shortening until soft, add sugar gradually continuing to beat until mixed. Add egg, vanilla, and salt and mix. Add flour slowly and continue to beat until mixed. Portion out dough and roll into logs about one inch in diameter. It might help to refrigerate before doing this because the dough can get really sticky. Slice into ½ to ¾ inch rounds and place on greased cookie sheet. Press thumb into the center of each cookie making an indention. Bake at 400 degrees for 7-10 minutes. You want the bottoms to slightly brown but the tops should not.
Icing Instructions
Put confectioner’s sugar in a bowl and slowly add water while stirring. It takes very little water so go slow. You can always add more sugar if it gets too thin. Get a consistency to where it will barely drip off of a spoon. Mix in salt & vanilla. Once mixed add food coloring. I usually separate icing into two or three bowls so I can make more than one color. Fill in indention of cookies with icing and you are done. This recipe will yield 4 to 6 dozen cookies.
These things are not real easy to make but once you do it a time or two it becomes easier. When the kids help me, we always have to make a lot of different colors for the icing so don’t let them help unless you have all day.
We are starting the second week of our two week ad this week. Last week I was really promoting our prime Ribeye steaks. This morning Ashley, our meat manager, told me we sold a ton of them. He then said, “you know we didn’t make any money on them.” I guess I need to quit promoting things we don’t make money on? Maybe I should promote lottery tickets. Somebody in Knoxville made a lot of money on one of them last week. Well, we don’t even sell lottery tickets, so I guess I will just keep promoting the things I love to eat and the things you tell me you love to eat. It seems to have worked so far. Have a great day!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Respond to tom.butler44@gmail.com
Grocery Life June 12, 2014
Grocery Life June 12, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week! We are finally getting some rain this week. Unfortunately most of the rain has been accompanied by damaging winds. Tuesday’s storms knocked the power out here at the store right at rush hour. It stayed off for two hours which forced us to close. It also forced us to postpone our cooking class that everyone had just been seated for. When the power did come back on, Keith and a repairman had to spend several hours making sure all the equipment was back on and running properly. We have had a run of bad luck the last few days which I hope means good things are coming?
On a brighter note, Dylan is back to work. He was in a bad car accident several weeks ago and has finally healed up enough to get back to work. He says he has learned his lesson about driving 70 mph on back-roads. I hope so, he is lucky to get a second chance. Another one of our employees, Adam, is on the cover of the June 5th Metro Pulse magazine. Metro Pulse has done a feature story on Adam and three other high school students called the “Gang of 4.0.” These four students have become national figures in the debate over school reform. They also all carry grade point averages above 4.0. As you might imagine, Adam has been a good employee for us. He doesn’t get to work many shifts because of his extracurricular activities but that’s okay. Most all of the students that work her are involved in a lot of things. We keep a box up in the front office for them to put their schedule requests in. It always stays full. When we make out the schedule every week it is like putting together a jig-saw puzzle. Most of the notes are the students asking off for ball practice, music recitals, or family activities. Adam’s notes are usually asking off to meet with the school board, interview the governor, or change the world. While Adam’s accomplishments have been well publicized, all of the young people that work here are very impressive in their own right. I am glad the store gets to play a part in their lives. I hope you get a chance to read the article. You can find it by clicking here.
I mentioned in a previous blog that we have been talking to a company in Chattanooga about their gluten-free products. We got our first shipment from them yesterday. We put all of their products on an end-cap in the store so if you are looking for more gluten-free options you can find them in one place. So far, my favorite thing from them is the sea salt and vinegar kale chips. My wife’s favorite thing is the cranberry nut crunch. We also got in several varieties of gluten free pastas from them.
Speaking of gluten-free, one of our friends introduced Erica and me to some gluten-free cookies she makes. The cookie’s official name is “Pecan Crisps” but we all call them “Crack Cookies” because they are highly addictive. They are easy to make. Here is the recipe:
Click on Picture to Enlarge
Nancy and Melody, in the bakery, are making Oreo cakes this week. I haven’t tried one yet, but they look delicious. You might want to add one to your Father’s Day menu.
The meat department will stay busy the rest of the week cutting steaks. Father’s Day weekend is always one of the busiest for steaks. I am a New York Strip guy myself, but I think I will do the Prime Ribeyes this weekend. They are on sale and they look great. If you are not sure what kind of steaks you want, let the guys in the meat department help you. They always do a great job of picking out the perfect steak.
Have a great weekend!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
Grocery Life June 9, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good morning from Butler and Bailey Market. I can’t believe it is Monday already. The weeks seem to click off quicker in the summer than in other seasons.
I hope my Monday is like a Friday because last Friday was like a Monday here at the store. We had electrical problems. Friday about mid-morning half of the stuff in the store quit working. Lights were out, coolers and freezers stopped, and computers shut down. Oddly enough the other half of the store was working. I called the electrician who services the store and got his voicemail. This is the same electrician I paid several thousand dollars to this winter to rebuild our electrical service so things like this would not happen. I finally got him on the phone and explained our situation and he came immediately. Once there, he hooked up meters to wires, flipped breakers, and scratched his head for several minutes. He finally concluded that we had lost a third of our power. I am no electrician but I had concluded this before I had called him. He then explained about losing a leg, electrical phases, amp loads, and circuits which to my ears sounded like blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Anyways, about four hours later he had it fixed. Four hours later I was fit to be tied so I decided to start my weekend a few hours early and left work.
On the way home I rented a wood chipper and took out my frustrations by pulverizing all of the brush piles I had stacked around my yard into tiny little pieces. I felt much better after this. Pulverizing things with heavy equipment always makes guys feel better.
The weekend really improved after Friday. Erica and I took our son out fishing Saturday morning. He is seven and we are trying to teach him to fish with a fly rod. He seems to be getting the hang of it and we did catch a few small bluegill. What my wife did not know was when it’s just the guys in the boat we kiss the fish before we release them. I am not sure Erica approved of this so I later told Tyson some things just need to stay between a father and son.
He also now knows that we only play baseball in the house when mom is not at home. We both learned that one the hard way. Sunday we went on a family hike in the Smokey Mountains. It was a beautiful day and a nice way to end the weekend. Spending time with my family in the outdoors always cures work stress. I am a lucky guy to have them.
This week at the store, we have a new ad. It started yesterday and will be in effect for the next two weeks. You can find the ad on our website or pick up a copy in the store. Prime grade Ribeye steaks are on sale this week. Prime is the highest grade that the U.S.D.A. uses. Only three percent of all beef receives this grade. We have always carried Prime beef and I think we are about the only store doing so. Since Father’s Day is this weekend, it might be a good time to treat dad and yourself to the best.
I am sure Nancy in our bakery will be making some special deserts for Father’s Day. So far she is keeping them a secret from me so I will have to get back to you on them. Ashley told me he is really selling a lot of his meats off the smoker. You all must be enjoying them as much as I am. He also makes a Piedmont BBQ sauce that we sell in the store that goes great on his smoked meats, especially the pulled pork, so you may want to give it a try. I hope you all have a great week!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler
To view past Grocery Life blogs or look at our weekly ad click here