Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market!
I hope everyone is having a good week. Still having beautiful weather, but it looks like it’s about to get cold for a few days. Maybe a change in weather will help get everyone in the holiday mood.
I have a couple of follow-ups for you on previous writings. It looks like this will be the week we will finally get Peach Fresca through official channels. It was approved for us a couple of weeks back, but it has finally shown up on everyone’s computer, so maybe it will happen this week. I also wrote about Regas seasoning last week. That has not been available for several years. Well, out of the blue last Friday, Matt Regas called to tell me they are going to start producing it again! He brought me a bottle of it to try and said he would bring us some to sell in the store in the coming days. He asked me if I would put it on our social media to get the word out, and I told him I had just written about it and had done so several times in the past. He apparently is not one of the three people that reads this nonsense regularly.
As we get closer to Thanksgiving, I want to make you aware of a few things that might save you some time preparing your meal. We will have fresh turkeys & turkey breast starting next week. If you don’t want to go through the time and process of thawing one out, this would be a good option. We will have a free-range option as well as a regular turkey; same with the breast. Some people swear by the free-range turkey, and others prefer the regular one. I’m not a huge turkey fan, so I can’t really speak on the merits of either one. A lot of people prefer to just get a frozen one because that is what they have always done, so why rock the boat? At the end of the day, it’s probably all about the cook who’s preparing it.
I have done all the options for our Thanksgiving dinner at home through the years and don’t notice a real big difference in any of them. It’s more about convenience to me which really means, whatever we have left at the store on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, is what I take home. I do always brine my turkey overnight before I cook it. I think that makes a difference. It’s not a fancy brine, just salt water, about a cup of salt per gallon of water.
Another time saving option is our St. Claire’s frozen side dishes. The most popular one is the Cornbread Dressing. All you have to do is heat it up. I know plenty of good cooks that no longer make their own dressing because of the ease and quality of the St. Claire products. Other options from St. Claire include Dutch Crust Sweet Potato Casserole and Baked Potato Casserole. We have two pound packages, as well as an almost five-pound option. Right next to those in the freezer are the Sister Schubert’s Rolls. We have several varieties of those. Once again, a lot of good cooks have quit making rolls after trying these. All you have to do is heat them up, and you are ready to go. Last, but not least, we have butter in the shape of a turkey. Yep, a sculpted turkey made out of butter. I don’t know if you have ever tried to sculpt a turkey out of butter at home, but I will just tell you, it will save you a lot of time to just buy one already done. For those that measure things, it is equal to one stick of butter.
My week has been a little aggravating. On Sunday, I decided to take on a little project at home that I’ve needed to get taken care of. In hindsight, it might have been a project for a lumberjack instead of me. Anyways, while I was trying to complete the project, I felt my rib pop and the pain that goes with that. Well, me being me or any typical dumb guy, that made me intent on completing the project. I wasn’t going to give up and let it beat me! So, I did complete the job running on anger and adrenaline and came inside. When I got in, my wife asked me what I had been doing, so I bragged to her about taking care of that tree I had told her about. She then asked me why I was standing funny and holding my side? I told her, I think I cracked a rib, and it really hurts, but I won the battle with the tree. She wasn’t as impressed as I was and then asked if we needed to go to the ER now that I had conquered the tree. I told her no. I would just go ask Lauren, my daughter, what I needed to do. After all, she has been in physician assistant’s school for two months. So, I went and found Lauren and told her what had happened. She asked if it was on my left side or right side. I told her it was my right side, why? She said if it was on my left side, it can do some medical term I didn’t understand to my spleen and I could die. So, I asked her again about it being on my right side and she said, I have no idea what you need to do, and she went back to studying. I guess two months of school isn’t enough to diagnose a right rib injury. Anyways, my wife found me again and asked me what Lauren had said, and I told her she said that if it was on my left side I was going to die. Since it is on my right side, it’s inconclusive. As you probably figured, I didn’t go to the doctor, I just decided to power through it. It’s really not that bad, as long as you don’t need to breathe, move, or sleep.
So, Monday I came to work already irritated about my ribs. I was taking it pretty easy around here, which basically means I was hanging around the front office trying not to breathe or move. Not much different from my normal job except for the breathing part. While I was standing up here, I felt something crawling up the sleeve of my shirt and tried to shake it out and turns out it was a yellow jacket and it stung my arm three or four times before it escaped out of my sleeve. Here it was, only Monday afternoon, and my week was already going from bad to worse. I just decided to go home at that point. One, I was really irritated and two, I didn’t know how my body would react to the bee stings. Sometimes it doesn’t react well. By that evening my arm had swollen up, was bright red and hot to the touch. My wife insisted that I take some Benadryl for my arm, and she said it would knock me out, so I would sleep better. Turns out Benadryl does not help you sleep when you have damaged ribs, but maybe it helped with the stings.
Tuesday is my normal day off, so they didn’t have to put up with me at work. Wednesday, I was back to work with an aching arm and ribs and by Wednesday afternoon, I was in a dental chair with teeth problems. To me, the dentist is worse than aching ribs or arms. Apparently, I have some fillings in my teeth that are failing after fifty years. Fillings just don’t seem to last like they used to? I guess the only good thing about all this is every new misfortune kind of takes your mind off the previous misfortune. I’m always looking for the silver lining in the clouds.
And here we are on Thursday, everything is starting to feel better, (maybe not my ribs). I clearly have had a lot of time to write, probably even have time to carve a turkey or two out of butter, since I’m just sitting around healing, but the weekend is just around the corner. I’m guessing by Sunday, I will feel good enough to make another bad decision to start a new project at home… and probably get a similar result. I guess I’m always learning that I never learn.
I hope everyone has a great weekend! Thanks for letting us be a part of your community!
Tom Butler