This week Taste of the Town goes slightly beyond Murfreesboro city limits to Readyville, Tennessee where we visit The Blue Porch and taste some of the food they offer at this "off the beaten path" bed and breakfast which also caters in-house, offers cooking classes, date nights, and delivers home cooked casseroles.

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Transcript

TIM:  Tim Dutton here with another edition of Taste of the Town.  Folks, today, I’m with Wanda Thompson who’s the owner of The Blue Porch Bed and Breakfast in Readyville.  Wanda, thank you for having us.

WANDA:  Hi, Tim.  Welcome to The Blue Porch.  I’m glad you’re here.

TIM:  Well, I’ll tell you it’s a beautiful place you’ve got here.

WANDA:  Thank you very much.  We’ve worked hard on it.

TIM:  Not to even mention the food that you’ve prepared for an example today.

WANDA:  I hope you like it.

TIM:  Wanda, tell folks a little bit about what you guys do because you’re a bed and breakfast, but you also cater.

WANDA:  We do.  We are a bed and breakfast.  This is our home.  Upstairs is the bed and breakfast part, but we do custom catering for people.  We do onsite and offsite catering.  You can call us up and have us fix you a party and bring it to your house or you come out here and have a party at our house.  We do family get-togethers and bridal showers and cooking classes.  We are a full-service catering outfit.

TIM:  You had mentioned the cooking classes.  Now those things, how do they work with you guys?

WANDA:  They are a 4-week series.  We start out with basic knife skills.  We take you through learning how to use a knife, learning how to buy a knife, chopping up simple vegetables, and we make a meal, a light meal every class until you build the whole entire menu.  And we start with appetizers, side dishes, entrees, and desserts.  And it’s once a week for four weeks.

TIM:  If somebody wanted to sign up for the cooking classes or they wanted to make reservations, do you guys have a website?

WANDA:  We do.  It’s theblueporch.com.  It’s a new website.  We’re working on it all the time.  We’re updating it regularly.  But they can contact us that way or give us a call.  And we like it when six friends come together.  That works better because we can only do cooking lessons for six people at a time.

TIM:  Right.

WANDA:  We teach you how to do things, and we like it when six friends come together that work well together.  So it’s really fun.  It’s a fun evening.  And they start at 6:30 and they go till nine.  And depending on what we cook, depending on the prices, the prices vary a little bit, but we get you in here.  And we have knives.  All you have to do is just show up.

TIM:  Okay.

WANDA:  It’s fun.

TIM:  Now what you’ve done today is kind of a southern thing.

WANDA:  Well, it’s just good comfort food today, I just wanted to do good comfort food, so that’s what we did today.

TIM:  But now Wanda, you guys will cook basically what anybody wants?

WANDA:  Anything.  We don’t have printed menu.  We actually customize a meal to you.  We talk about it ahead of time, find out what you like, and we do that.  We make a custom meal for you whether it’s at your house or whether it’s here.

TIM:  Okay.  And I’ll tell you, the environment is isolated.  The breeze is blowing.

WANDA:  It’s beautiful.  Yeah.

TIM:  You’ve got a big old front porch to sit on.

WANDA:  Yeah, we’re 900 feet from the nearest road, so when you come here, it’s a different lifestyle and a different pace.

TIM:  And I saw you’re also motorcycle friendly for any motorcycle groups that want to come out.

WANDA:  We are.  That’s right, yeah.  We can seat 30 here.  We do as few as two, but we can seat 30.  But we do date nights.  If you want to score points with your wife, bring her out here for a date night.  We do that.  That’s really fun.

TIM:  So you guys even cater to two people.

WANDA:  We do.  We do as few as two and as many as 30.  Yep.

TIM:  Good.  Wanda, tell me what you’ve got for me to—

WANDA:  Well, this afternoon, we made meatloaf and it’s just the meatloaf I like.  And macaroni and cheese.  And this has got country ham and caramelized onions.  And we have garlic-roasted green beans and cornbread.  And I’ve got blueberry bread pudding for dessert.  And I hope you came with an appetite because if not, we’re going to have leftovers tonight.

TIM:  I walk around with an appetite.

WANDA:  All right.  And that’s macaroni and cheese.  And these are the green beans.  And you can help yourself.  We serve buffet style normally, but we do do serving too.  If you want to have a group out here and serve, we’ll actually serve you too.

TIM:  I tell you.  Now what did you tell me was in the macaroni and cheese?

WANDA:  It’s got country ham and caramelized onions on top.  And it’s a different kind of macaroni and cheese.

TIM:  It is good.  My daughter,  Mary Claire, she’s a macaroni and cheese connoisseur.

WANDA:  Well, starting in two weeks, we’re going to do heat and eat casseroles that we bring into Murfreesboro, so you’ll be able to place an order, I’ll bring them into Murfreesboro twice a week, and you can come pick them up.  And this is one of the things we’re going to have on our menu.

TIM:  Great idea!

WANDA:  Yeah, it’ll be a casserole.  It’ll serve four.  And you’ll be able to just take it and put it in the oven and have it for dinner that night.

TIM:  Terrific.

WANDA:  So we’re going to start that in two weeks.  And then when it gets a little bit colder, we’re going to do soups.

TIM:  Are you going to give me the recipe on your meatloaf, Wanda?

WANDA:  Yeah, I can.

TIM:  You’ll give it up?

WANDA:  Yeah, I can.  Yeah.  But the trick is, that’s our homemade salsa in that.  We make salsa, and that’s what I add to our meatloaf.

TIM:  Is that what it is?

WANDA:  Yeah.  It’s homemade salsa.

TIM:  I’m going to tell you, it’s good.  And what did you tell me you did to the green beans?

WANDA:  They’re flash fried with olive oil and garlic.

TIM:  Flash fried?

WANDA:  Mm-hm.  They’re not stewed all day.  They’re still kind of crunchy, but they’ve got a really good flavor.  They’re very flavorful and those are the skinny green beans that are kind of trendy right now.

TIM:  They are good.  Now flash fried just means you—

WANDA:  It’s hot, hot oil.  And you put them in there and cook them.  Yep.

TIM:  Okay.

WANDA:  And the cornmeal I made today, I actually got the flour from the Readyville Mill, so that’s a local…

TIM:  Right.

WANDA:  We support community-supported agriculture.  We’re a member of the CSA.  We try to get products and produce that are locally grown.  We support the agriculture business in our community.  We belong to a CSA out of Rockville, Rocky Glade Farms.

TIM:  Right.

WANDA:  So the beef that we serve is from them.  We have lamb that we serve from them.  So it’s all chemical free and free range and all that kind of stuff.

TIM:  Right.  Our produce.

WANDA:  And produce that we buy in season we get from them when it’s available.  And our eggs are all free range, so we really try to make a conscious effort to support our neighbors and community with our food.

TIM:  I’m going to tell you, anybody that would not be happy with this it would be their problem.

WANDA:  Well, this is a comfort food meal.  I mean, I like this.  I like this kind of food, and like I said, we can go much fancier.  But this is a good meal just to sit down and relax.  When you come out here to eat, we don’t have anybody else that day.  You have our time.  Or if we bring you food, we’re not making four deliveries.  We do it for you.

TIM:  Right.

WANDA:  So we’re not a big production operation here.

TIM:  And y’all hear this?  It’s quiet.

WANDA:  It’s quiet.  It is.  Yeah, it’s very quiet.

TIM:  It’s isolated and totally quiet.  Now you had said something about a dessert.

WANDA:  Yeah.  We have bread pudding today.  And this is a blueberry bread pudding, and I mean, it’s just out of the oven.  Now this right here is a fine thing.  Let me get you a little plate.  And it’s hot, Tim.  So you’ll have to be careful about this.  We normally make a whiskey sauce, but I decided not to do that today.  It’s awful early to do a whiskey sauce.

TIM:  You don’t want to get me started that early.

WANDA:  No, I wouldn’t think so.

TIM:  Well, Wanda, you may have this food sold here before it’s—

WANDA:  Oh, is that right?

TIM:  Yeah, yeah.

WANDA:  Now be careful.  This is really hot.  But all our desserts are homemade.  When you come out here for a meal, I always do two homemade desserts, so you get a whole meal and two homemade desserts.  All the bread is homemade.  We’re not trained chefs; we’re just good cooks.  Now be careful.  That’s really hot.  If you come out here at night, I’ll make you a whiskey sauce.

TIM:  Girl, that’s over the top.

WANDA:  And bread pudding is a really, really old dessert, but it is a great dessert.  Most people don’t want to fool with it because they think, “Oh, that’s something that my grandma used to do.”  But that’s a really good dessert.

TIM:  It is very good.

WANDA:  We do banana puddings and chocolate cake.  I mean, when you come out here to eat, you always have two desserts.  Always.

TIM:  Now Wanda, what is yall’s number in case somebody wants to order the casserole that’s in town?

WANDA:  It’s 615-890-8117.

TIM:  Wanda, do you have a special for folks that call you and say they saw it on Taste of the Town?

WANDA:  I do, Tim.  We’ve decided that if you come out here for an evening meal, we’ll give you one meal for every meal that you buy.  So we’ll buy one get one free or if you want to have any of our casseroles that we’re going to bring into Murfreesboro, we’ll give you 10% off the casserole.

TIM:  Well, folks, that’s about it for this edition of Taste of the Town.  And remember, if you’re thinking real estate, think Tim Dutton.