Ed Icionsub

Part of the adventure of growing up has to do with learning your limits and boundaries. Hopefully this will be accomplished in a controlled environment, surrounded by responsible people who care about you and your welfare. My parents taught me to drink alcohol while I was in my teens. We began by having a glass of wine with dinner every once in a while – special occasions like my parent’s anniversary, and certain holidays, like Thanksgiving. Then, we I turned 18, we would have a cold beer at baseball games or other sporting events.

I learned that I could handle one or two drinks without getting stupid drunk, and I learned from their example to never drive if I am drinking. In fact, I rarely drink alcohol in public, and any drinking that I do is always in moderation and never before driving. I feel blessed that my parents took this important life lessons so seriously and didn’t leave me to learn at the hands of my peers.

Valentine’s Day sometimes sneaks up on me. If I am not in the stores buying groceries or household supplies, I don’t notice the aisles and aisles of displays of chocolates and large red cardboard hearts. I always try to buy a nice box of Godiva chocolates for my wife. She is not a big fan of chocolates, and especially forgoes cheap chocolates. But once a year I know she does appreciate a gold ballatin with a red ribbon from the Godiva store. And, of course, a Hallmark card that poetically says I love her.

One of the benefits of living in Northern California was the close proximity to dozens of highly rated California vineyards. So I made the most of the six months out there by visiting a different vineyard every month. Every time I went to a vineyard I bought at least 3 or 4 bottles of their wines, and brought back a nice collection of wines when I came back to Tennessee.

Of course, I did not have any wine glass racks here, nor any storage system for the bottles of wine. So I had to research the different types of glass racks and figure out what would be the best solution for this house.

I looked at under cabinet mounts, wall mounts, ceiling mounts, and even free standing furniture. I decided on a wooden stemware rackthat mounts under a cabinet, and I modified the shelving in the kitchen pantry to store the wine bottles.

Where I grew up  there was no such think as a Jack in the Box restaurant. I found my very first Jack in the Box on a vacation trip to Texas, back in the early 1990’s. I think it was in either Houston or in San Antonio, and it was impressive. Their menu had such a diverse selection of foods, and you could buy breakfast any time of day, not just in the morning.

So now, 18 years later, I have three Jack in the Box restaurants within a 5 minute drive of my house. I can buy breakfast for any of the three for just a couple of dollars and even have a breakfast burrito at midnight, if I want one.

At the grocery store I was looking at the condiments aisle. There are three products that have an amazing variety of flavors and brands – barbecue sauce, marinades and mustards.

We eat for a lot of reasons. But one of the least important reasons until recently was to eat for health. To be honest, I eat for social reasons, I eat for companionship with my family, co-workers and clients, and I eat because something smells good. Rarely do I eat because I am truly hungry and because my body needs more fuel to function properly.

My New Year’s resolution has been to change my eating habits. I want to learn more about what my body actually needs to function well and I hope to incorporate more healthy choices into an improved diet and hopefully some weight loss.

Now that my awareness is higher on healthy choices, I have been reading articles and posts on health supplements. a good source of information on fish oil is a web site that I found called omega3.org.

If you are not familiar with omega3 supplements, the omega3.org site is a good web site to learn the basics. The articles are written in plain English and are very easy for an average reader to understand.

A good start to learning about food and natural supplements is fish oil and the information on omega3.org.

A little known fact of the Nashville area is how many non-country singers and performers live in the area or have ties to the area.

Jimmy Buffet is seen about town at the mall and in restaurants because his wife was born and raised here. They come back to visit her parents.

This morning I was very happy to hear a new rumor. They will be renovating a downtown building and opening a Margaritaville Restaurant here within the next 12 months. That will be very cool – downtown could use some fresh faces.

We hardly ever leave the house on a Sunday morning before noon. But we had to watch the grandson and the Titans play at noon, so we left at 8:30 and went to Sam’s Club to take care of our urgent shopping.

For being the last weekend before Christmas, I was amazed at how few cars were in the parking lot. There were no crowds at all and we were through the store, check out and headed home by 10:00 am. That has to be a world record for my household.

When I first moved to Nashville, there were three Dunkin Donuts shops scattered around the area. That was the only donut chain that was familiar to me, coming here from the DC area in the early 1990’s. But shortly after I moved here the owners of Dunkin Donuts shut down their stores and I was left to fend for myself, trying some of the local bakeries. Strangely, there were very few bakeries here and none of them were of the caliber of the ethnic bakeries in the DC area.

So you can imagine my delight to see that Dunkin Donuts has made a big push these past couple of years to open a half dozen stores in Nashville. There is now a 24 Dunkin Donuts about 10 minutes from my house, and there are two more in different directions within a short drive.

I try to buy a dozen donuts or a couple of muffins at least once a month to support the stores. I love their donuts, but my ever expanding waistline does not. So I have to be careful of not over-doing it. A jelly filled donut sounds really good right about now.

We had a real feast yesterday – all my favorite foods for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was about 26 pounds – really big. We put it into one of those big Reynolds Roasting Bags with a chopped up onion and some butter and let it cook for a couple hours. No basting, no overcooking and dried out white meat. No mess. Lots of juice for the gravy. It turned out magnificent.

Side dishes included mashed white potatoes with turkey gravy, sweet potatoes with lots of mini-marshmallows on top, corn pudding, fresh green beans with ham, flaky dinner rolls and two pies with a choice of sugar free cool whip or no sugar added ice cream.

The only thing we forgot was the stuffing and the cranberry sauce. So we are fixing those today and heating up some of the leftovers with the new items to make the meal seem fresh.

Tomorrow, if there is any turkey left, I hope the wife makes her famous creamed turkey over rice. I think you call it Turkey A La King, but I’m not sure if her version has an actual recipe name. I just know she does it right with a white gravy, green peas and a few secret ingredients. That is sooooooo good on a cold day!