Southern food – Oh, the Places We See . . .

Get Your Cajun On: 2013 Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival

Turn up that zydeco and get your cajun on! There’s nothing like a Louisiana festival for food, fun, and fantastic movement — and this is one of the best: Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival in early May when mudbugs are runnin’ and Cajun thoughts turn to etouffee and fais dodo! Might as well dress the part […]

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Culture’s country at Nashville’s BNA — and we lak it lak that!

Since we live in Knoxville but sometimes want to fly Southwest, we head to Nashville International Airport (BNA) and board a plane to wherever that economy airline will take us. And if you’ve visited the Southwest terminal lately, you may have noticed a little bit of country right there in the airport! It was this […]

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Books and Buttercream at The Great Cake Bake

If there’s anything near and dear to the heart of a former English teacher (that would be me), it’s a celebration of books and the joy of reading. So when I heard that Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library would send a book a month — FREE, you see — I signed up my granddaughter as soon […]

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Mixing friendship and Wall Street: A Valentine’s Celebration

Since the late ’90s, I’ve bought and sold stocks with the ladies of WEB Investment Club. When we started the started the club, most of us had no idea how to access stock market info online or place a trade. Now we talk the talk of PE ratios, exchange funds, and the like, even though […]

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It’s Family: Knoxville’s Market Square Farmers’ Market

I was long overdue for a visit to one of the area’s best farmers’ markets — or so I’ve heard it’s the best — right downtown in Knoxville’s Market Square. I marked off this Saturday for my inaugural visit just to see what all the talk was about and to bring home some veggies from the […]

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Cooper’s: Old-time Country Store on the Way to the Beach!

For the past oh maybe 30 years or so, we’ve taken our family to the beach. Each summer. To Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. And for the past 10 or so years (it would have been more if we had discovered it!), we’ve stopped at Cooper’s Country Store. In fact, we can’t make a beach trip […]

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Great Day for Berry Pickin’ : The Fruit and Berry Patch

Sometimes the serendipitous adventures are best — well, at least it was last Sunday as my husband Bert and I took a leisurely ride through Halls (North Knoxville) just looking at all the new developments and changes out that way. Have you ever been to The Fruit and Berry Patch? I asked. Can’t say that I have, […]

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Asheville’s Black Walnut Inn — Elegant Relaxation

Asheville, North Carolina is blessed with gracious Southern accommodations — the Inn on Biltmore Estate, the Grove Park Inn, and, if moved side by side, enough Bed and Breakfasts to line a street worthy of Hollywood. But when we began searching in earnest for a unique, elegant place to stay for a weekend away, we turned to an […]

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Tupelo’s a Honey!

We had seen the Tupelo Honey Cafe booth at both the Dogwood Arts Festival and the International Biscuit Festival. And we’d seen workmen gutting the old Soup Kitchen right around the corner from The Oliver Hotel in downtown Knoxville, getting ready for Tupelo to arrive. But we still didn’t know what all the hoopla was about. The pimento […]

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Biscuit Fest: 2012

We’re at the International Biscuit Festival — one of the tastiest, best-laid-out, exciting new festivals in the South (and a little bit zany, too — judging from this Miss Biscuit contestant — Erin)! But we only had about an hour and a half on this Saturday morning, May 19th, to taste and tour! You hafta get […]