Mary Anne Carter
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Category Archives: Cooking
Dec 1 2011

Local wineries

by Mary Anne

One of the things that surprised me quite a bit when I moved here was the abundance of local wineries!  It seems that almost every major road that I drive down has signs advertising local wineries.  I had always been given the impression that the Napa Valley in California was “the place” to get good American wine.

Au contraire!  The Gray Ghost winery in Amissville VA has wonderful wine!  I had the opportunity to taste their 2006 Adieu wine at a wine tasting party that a friend held, and I fell in love with it.  I had to go to the winery myself and buy a couple of bottles of it to have for special occasions.

After I learned about The Gray Ghost winery, I went on the Internet to find their location, and found their website.  I was impressed to learn that they have won numerous awards for the wines.  I think that the Gray Ghost is giving the Napa Valley some competition!

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Oct 28 2011

I love my microwave oven!

by Mary Anne

I love it so much that I have two of them!  When I don’t have the time to cook dinner in the crock pot, or in the “real” oven, I put my microwave ovens to work to whip up dinner in practically no time at all!

There are so many convenience foods and “helpers” and “kits” in the grocery stores now that it is easy to fix a good meal with most of the cooking being done in the microwave.  Most every box has instructions on it for preparing the meal in the microwave.  And there are a lot of cookbooks available that are written especially for the microwave.

What I especially like about using the microwave is that I can cook, serve, and store in the same dish most of the time. 

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Oct 8 2011

Wine country

by Mary Anne

I never used to think of this area as wine country, but lately there have been a lot of vineyards popping up all over the place. I have not gone to all of the vineyards to sample their wine, but I have been to a few of them and taken advantage of their sampling bargains.

Seems as if now, more than ever, the friends and neighbors are giving each other the gift of wine for a gift giving occassion. More of my friends are keeping their wines in vino temp beverage coolers to keep them at their best flavor. To be honest, I’ve never paid too much attention to which wine should be served at what temperature, but as I become more knowledgable about the different types of wines, I’ve started to becom interested in looking at the different vino temp wine coolers to see if there is a vino temp cooler that is nice looking and within my budget.

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Oct 2 2011

Ask for a sample

by Mary Anne

Last weekend when I went grocery shopping the store had a special on navel oranges, so I bought six of them.  My hubby loves oranges, and I knew that he would be thrilled to pieces to get them. When I got home with them, he immediately peeled one and took a bite.  He made a horrible face and spit it out.  He said that was the nastiest orange he had ever had in his life!  I asked him if it was bitter, or what.

He just made a face and said it was nasty and threw the whole thing in the trash. Later that night my son tried one, and he said it was nasty too. So now I am wishing that I had asked for a sample taste at the store before buying all of those.  If this happened to you, would you complain to the store? What would you do?

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Sep 14 2011

Frozen chicken

by Mary Anne

Generally speaking I am not a big fan of frozen chicken products unless it’s in some kind of gravy are sauce. Once chicken has been frozen it tends to be very dry and I like moist chicken. Last week I needed to pick up some food for dinner and only had time to stop at one of the Wal-Marts that does not have the full selection of groceries. Looking through their refrigerator and freezer sections I was not very impressed with the options before me. I decided to buy a bag of frozen Tyson’s chicken strips which were breaded strips of chicken breast. It has been years since I have bought Tyson’s brand of chicken because we are trying to buy store brand as much as possible to save money.

While we all ate that chicken that night and we were all very impressed with how moist and delicious it was. I will buy that again! So now I have to keep my eyes open for coupons for Tyson’s chicken products!

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