Grocery Life March 12, 2019

By Tom Butler

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market. I hope everyone is doing well. I was hoping to be bragging about going without rain for three straight days, but Mother Nature snuck another shower in on us yesterday. It looks like we are dry today and tomorrow and then more rain Thursday. One of these days the rain will stop, it will get hot and the mosquitoes and weeds will take over the world so I should be careful for what I wish for.

   We started a new ad this week in the store. My favorite things in this ad are Cowboy Ribeye steaks and Argentine Red Shrimp.

   The Cowboy Ribeye, which is basically a bone-in ribeye, is probably the heartiest cut of beef we have. You will not get up from the table hungry after eating one of these. I usually just lightly season them with salt and pepper, throw them on a hot grill, burn both sides and I’m done. I eat mine rare so if you like it more done you should probably back off the heat a little and cook it longer. It is a very flavorful, tender cut of meat so you should give one a try if you haven’t.

     The Argentine Red Shrimp come frozen in a bag. You can get them shell-on or peeled and deveined. I usually get the peeled and deveined. We usually keep some in our freezer at home and just take out what we need for our meal. My favorite way to prepare them is on the grill.  I put them on wood skewers and then melt butter mixed with some olive oil and garlic powder. I brush the shrimp with the butter mixture and set them aside while the rest of the meal is being prepared. The shrimp cook quickly so you can pretty much have everything else ready and on the table before you start cooking them. I usually give them about two or three minutes on each side on a medium grill and they are ready. If you cook them just right they melt in your mouth.

   Last week I wrote about cooking Cheshire pork chops which we carry in the store. Ironically or coincidentally, a day after that blog came out I got a call from a magazine publisher. They are apparently doing a “Top Chef “ issue and wanted to know if I would like to advertise in that issue since the chefs will be using Cheshire pork along with several other local and regional brands that we sell in the store. I told them to email me the information and I would consider it. After looking over their proposal, I came up with two to four thousand reasons not to place an ad in their magazine. Along with Cheshire pork, they are also using Benton’s bacon and ham, Springer Mountain chicken, Sweetwater Valley cheeses and some super foods like quinoa and chia seeds. We carry all these things at the store as well as many other local and regional items. I know “The Grocery Life” blog does not have the same glamour or coverage as an ad in a slick magazine but it fits my budget a little better. Maybe if you read this, you could pass the word along that we carry these things and “top chefs” use them?  Plus, I can save the money for stuff like rent, payroll, insurance, taxes and my most expensive personal vice, fishing!

     Speaking of fishing, the Bass Master Classic is being held in Knoxville this weekend. This is like the Super Bowl of bass fishing. Fifty of the top bass fishermen in the world will compete in the three-day tournament to decide who is number one and the winner will take home a nice trophy and three hundred thousand dollars. It is also projected to pump more than Twenty-Five Million dollars into the local economy!  

      You will probably see several fancy trucks and boats rolling around town this week wrapped with all kinds of advertisements to promote their various sponsors and if you are in sight of Fort Loudon Lake, you will see hundreds of boats following the pros around watching them fish. Several fishermen from East Tennessee made it into the tournament this year so I guess I will pull for one of them to win.

     Probably my favorite professional bass fisherman is Brandon Coulter. He missed making it into the Classic this year but he fished in it last year. Why is he my favorite? Because he lives right down the street in Forest Brook and he and his family shop in the store, and I’m all about supporting “local”. You might have even seen his truck and boat parked out in front of the store. It would be the one with the fancy company logos all over it. Most of you probably don’t care a whole lot about fishing but I think it is really cool to have one of the best fishermen in the world living in the neighborhood.

     Maybe one of these days I will splurge and buy an ad in a fancy magazine. I guess it might even end up making me rich and famous? I guess right now I will just depend on this blog and word of mouth to promote our business. On second thought…. maybe I could buy an ad on Brandon’s boat… (I’m sure I could fit that into my budget). I think the Butler & Bailey Market logo would look great on the side of his boat as he travels all over the country fishing. It may not sell a lot of groceries but it might get me a few fishing trips with him. To me, that would be a lot more rewarding than any fame and fortune a magazine ad would bring!

     I hope everyone has a great week and thanks for letting us be a part of your community!

Tom Butler

Respond to:tom.butler44@gmail.com

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Butler and Bailey Market

7513 Northshore Dr.

Knoxville, TN 37919

(865)691-8881

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market.  I hope everyone is doing well.  Rain seems to be the recurring theme these days, but it looks like we may go two or three days without any.  The flip side of that is we might freeze to death in the process.

For those who haven’t seen what the rain left, click here for a post from local station WVLT, showing aerial footage of West Knoxville flooding.

Business has been good of late.  All the heavy rain has actually helped us.  It turns out access to some of our competitors got blocked by flooded streets, so we became the most accessible place for people to shop.  I should probably feel sympathy for them, since their businesses were hurt by such a catastrophic event, but in my mind I’m thinking…Ha Ha!  I finally got the upper hand on the big grocery chains…if only for a few days.  I think those companies spend every waking moment trying to figure out how to run small, local folks like us out of business, so we enjoyed our few days “in the sun”, even as the rains kept falling.

Everything seems to be getting back to normal now.  The water has receded, and everyone can shop where they normally do.  Now we have to get back to earning your business the old-fashioned way, which requires a lot more work than when it just falls in your lap.  Oh well!  That’s what we have been doing for the last twenty-nine years, so it’s pretty much all we know anyways.

I am on a different work schedule this week.  I am in charge of the kids for the next few days, so my work schedule has to coincide with their school schedule, as well as extracurricular activities.  My wife is gone this week to watch a tennis tournament.  I would have thought you could have found one to watch at say, the Knoxville Racket Club or some other tennis facility around town, but apparently the closest one she could find is in Indian Wells, California.  This is day two of her trip, so she has probably had an anxiety attack by now wondering if our kids are getting fed and practicing good hygiene, much less showing up for school.

I did make supper last night.  I went for comfort food, since it was cold outside, and mom was gone.  Comfort food for us usually includes fried okra, so we had pork chops and fried okra.  I probably could have just skipped the pork chops, but I would have been frying okra all night.  This family is like a bottomless pit when it comes to fried okra.  The one upside to mom being gone is I can make all the food spicy, so the pork and okra had a heavy dose of “Slap Ya Mama” Cajun Seasoning on them.  My kids and I love spicy hot food; mom not so much.  At least I have done one thing right raising them.

When I dropped the kids off at school this morning, I told them I would take them out to eat tonight, if they can get their homework done.  I hope it works out because, if I have to cook every night, we may run out of clean plates and silverware before mom gets home.

If you need a little comfort food for these cold or rainy days, you might want to try our menu last night.  I got the thicker cut boneless Cheshire pork chops, and as of this morning, we have some really nice okra that came in prepackaged from one of our produce companies. 

I browned/seared the chops on both sides in a hot skillet with a little olive oil and a lot of butter.  I then put the skillet in a 325° oven.  Once I put the skillet in the oven, I started frying the okra.  For the okra, I sliced it crossways, probably a little less than a quarter of an inch thick.  I then put some cornmeal in a gallon storage bag along with seasoning.  I started adding okra to the bag, stopping to shake the bag to make sure all the pieces got a good coating before I added more okra.  Okra is really sticky when it is fresh sliced, which is what you want.  This helps the cornmeal stick to it, but if you dump all the okra in at once, it sticks to itself instead of the cornmeal.  While I am doing this, I had cooking oil in a skillet heating up.  The whole trick to this is making sure your oil is hot enough before you put the okra in.  My grandmother used to put a match stick in the oil and when it lit, she knew the oil was hot enough.  In the next breath she would tell us grandkids not to play with matches, so I don’t guess I’m allowed to use the match stick trick.  I just dropped a piece or two of okra in to check it.  You want it to start frying immediately, not just float around and bubble a little.  Once you add the rest of the okra, the oil will cool a little, so you need to start off hot! It usually takes about ten or twelve minutes to fry which by default is how long I cooked the pork chops in the oven.  They both turned out perfect.  I guess if you aren’t using fried okra as a timer, eight to twelve minutes for the chops in the oven.  This is probably not the most physically healthy meal, but it sure gave us comfort after all the rain, all the cold, and mom being gone.

I hope everyone has a great week and thanks for letting us be a part of your community!

Grocery Life November 16, 2018

By Tom Butler 

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week. The sun finally came out today which I think is the first time this week. Better late than never.
       

I wanted to send out a quick reminder that our Holiday Open House will be tomorrow from 11 A.M.  to 2P.M. This is our biggest event of the year, so I hope you will join us. The store will be full of vendors sampling all of their holiday goods for you to try. Also, our staff will be preparing some of our holiday favorites for you to try. I am not sure what all we will make but I did see a lot of Prime Rib and Beef Tenderloin being prepared this morning.     

My family will be here helping as well as the families of some of the other staff. It has become a holiday tradition for us and I hope it has for you as well.
       

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!

Tom Butler

Butler and Bailey Market

7513 S Northshore Dr.

Knoxville, TN 37919

(865)691-8881

Grocery Life November 2, 2018

By Tom Butler

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market. I hope everyone is doing well. I have not written in a while, but we are getting into the busy season, so I need to get back to it. We have some important events coming up at the store and in the community that I need to let you know about.      

The first event is our annual Holiday Open House. This is our version of a customer appreciation day and since it falls right before the holidays it gives us a chance to let you sample all our favorite holiday recipes as well as those from our local vendors. I think all of our vendors from past years will be back this year and we are adding several new vendors. 

   A couple of our new vendors this year will be introducing their products in the store for the first time. One is a toffee maker from Dallas, Texas and the other is a cake and bread maker from Highlands, North Carolina. You might wonder how I discovered these folks and their products, and the answer is, I didn’t. Our customers find them and then they play matchmaker between us and the vendor. It is kind of like going on a blind date except its food. I’m not much of a blind date kind of guy. Most all of the blind dates I have been on, I felt like throwing up before they started and sometimes, I felt like throwing up when they ended. I will have the upper hand on this blind date because I am inviting hundreds of my friends to go on the date with me, so I hope you all will help me decide if their food creations are worthy of a second date for the store.   

The open house will be Saturday, November 17th, from 11 am until 2 pm. You all are invited and the best part, it’s free. This is our biggest event of the year, we are excited, our vendors are excited, so I hope you can come.     

The next event I want to tell you about is the 5th annual Rocky Hill Christmas Parade. It is December 1st and the festivities start at 3 p.m. I think the actual parade usually starts around six but let me check on that.  

This year there will be more live music, more food options, more activities for the kids and the parade itself is going to be bigger. The parade planners do a great job of organizing this every year! I think what they do best is somehow they make it bigger and better every year but still has that small community feel about it.         

Once again, the store will be one of the presenting sponsors of the parade. This community has been so kind to support us over the last twenty-eight years, I figure the least we can do is throw our support behind an event that has become so important to the community. People always ask me why we sponsor the parade but don’t do a float. Well, we get a float and then we donate it to Rocky Hill Elementary school to decorate and ride on. I figure no one wants to see me riding on a float and if they did, it would be only because they wanted to throw something at me. So, for your safety and mine, we will keep giving the float to the school. My family and I will enjoy watching the parade with the rest of the crowd. I hope you will join us!     

Getting back to blind dates, the last blind date I went on was with my wife. The way I remember it, she immediately fell madly in love with me. After our date, she bought me gifts, wrote me letters, baked me cookies and called me most every day. I remember being very cautious, somewhat skeptical and wanting to take it slowly. She was sure we were a match made in heaven and was really persistent in trying to overcome the cold shoulder that I continued to give her. Somehow her tactics finally prevailed, and we began a relationship. While I was still unsure of the potential of our relationship, I let it go on, figuring she would finally give up. Well she didn’t, and we ended up married.
Okay, okay ,okay, I just made every bit of that up. The only true part of that is the blind date and we got married. Well last month we celebrated twenty years of marriage which I am very proud of. She probably had no idea what she was in for and probably feels like throwing up every now and then but I’m glad she chose me to be her lifelong grocery man.       

I am also glad you all have chosen us to be your grocery store! I hope I keep having wedding anniversaries with her and business anniversaries with you!      

Hope to see you at the Open House and at the Parade!

Grocery Life November 15, 2017

By Tom Butler

Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week!
I just wanted to send out a quick reminder about our Holiday Open House coming up this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The football game is at night so you can come enjoy all the foods we are preparing, go home, take a nap, and be ready to go by game time.

Our meat department will be using our favorite recipes to prepare beef tenderloin, prime rib, ham and pork tenderloin. Our bakery department will have several desserts you can try.

Barbara Tenney, our cooking class instructor, will be here with some of her favorite holiday foods along with the recipes to prepare them and a couple of our wine vendors will be on hand to help you with wine pairings for your holiday meals.

We will also be sampling numerous St. Claire and Sysco side dishes including cornbread stuffing. All of these sides are fully prepared so all you have to do is heat them up which is a big time saver.

Some of our local vendors will be here as well. Those will include Vienna Coffee, Doug Carnathan with Carnathan Honey, Gringo Salsa, Blackberry Farm Brewery, Mayfield Dairy, Planet H20 water, Mamie’s Cheese Wafers, Better in Blue, and Fanatic Brewery. Those are the ones I can think of the top of my head but am sure I have left some out.

I think my whole family will be here to help out. It has become somewhat of a tradition for us and it also signals the time when my kids start asking me repeatedly, “when are we going to get a Christmas tree?” I hope you and your family will join us!
See you Saturday and thanks for letting us be a part of your community!

Tom Butler

Click here to view past blogs

Butler and Bailey Market

7513 Northshore Dr.

Knoxville, TN 37919

(865)691-8881