In 3 weeks exactly, my barbecue competition teammate, Mark, and I will be holding our first cooking class!  (Details can be found here.)  With that in mind, later this week, we’ll be reviewing the class and deciding what we’re going to be doing.  The theme is tailgating, and, weather permitting, we’ll set up a pseudo-competition site to show the people in the class how a comp might be run.  We’ll also be cooking all the food we’ll be going over with the class.  My thoughts are to include more than recipes, though; I want to talk about the different types of outdoor cooking and how/when to use different types of outdoor cooking (direct, indirect, smoking).  I hope to have a really good packet of info for everyone, with the 2 part goal of getting more people interested in barbecue/outdoor cooking and to be asked to do a class again.

Also this week, I’m going to go over flank steak and how I like to prepare it.  It’s a great, healthy hunk o’ beef.  The only real downside is the toughness, which is negated if cut correctly against the grain.  I’m partial to coffee based rubs for flank steak, and I may try grilling it directly on the coals this time…

I am planning on doing a little bit about over-smoking.  Over-smoking can leave bitter tastes, and can really turn someone off of smoked foods.  There are easy ways to recognize over-smoking, though, and some pretty simple ways to avoid it (hint: don’t use so much wet wood!).

Next Monday is the deadline for the next Carnival of the Grill, which I’ll be hosting.  Click here to submit entries, and the Carnival of the Grill will be posted on September 5.

And the next week, on September 11, I’ll be posting the first of the Carnival of the Food Photography entries, with the topic of "Grill Marks".  Submit any blog entries you have that show great grill marks!  If you have any suggestions for food photos you’d like to see, let me know!

It’s week 3.  How did I do?  To be honest, I didn’t weigh in this morning.  However, I do notice some small changes since last week in how clothing fits, so I’m still progressing.

I was a bit worried this week; last week, my wife and I judged our first barbecue competition.  Even though I was careful, I still probably ate the equivalent of 4-5 servings of meat… I’d guess well over a pound of barbecue in one sitting went down the ol’ gullet!  To help out, though, I made sure to eat all of my dessert (4 desserts, 2 of which were cheesecake!).  I didn’t eat any more that day, but that was more than enough!

So I’m progressing, but I’m having some issues.  I’m really stressed.  My dog is doing better, but his sleep pattern is affecting mine, and I only slept about 2 hours last night, as well as losing sleep the nights prior.  I may have discovered what to do, though.  He wakes up around 4 or earlier.  I need to go ahead and get up, get him outside quickly, feed him, get him outside one more time, then go back to bed.  After that second time of going out, he zonks for a couple of hours.  I can use that extra 2 hours to get more sleep!  Good thing I don’t have kids… I would have sold them to gypsies by now if they kept me from sleeping! (No, I wouldn’t have, of course, just in case the blog police are scanning this!)  The good thing about the dog situation is that, several times a day, I carry a 70 lbs. dog up and down flights of steps. 

Before signing off, I have a pet peeve about online barbecue posts that I read now and then:

Since when do grown men call sandwiches "sammies" or "sammiches"?  How much harder is sandwich to type than sammich?  And, don’t you think a grown man using the word "sammich" sounds a bit off?  I’ve never felt the need to have a nickname for a sandwich.  "Vegetable" to "veggie" makes some sense… that’s an ugly word.  Even ‘taters’ as a word isn’t horrible; it’s at least a well known colloquialism.  But "sammich"?  If I heard someone use that in actual talk, I’d have to give them pink belly, I think!!! (again, or course not… at least not physically, just mentally!)

I’m now going to do what half the food bloggers in the US are also doing this weekend: reviewing Alton Brown’s latest short-series endeavor, "Feasting on Asphalt".  The reason everyone’s doing this is simple - The final episode aired over the weekend.  I just had the chance to watch it on Tivo the other day, and I wanted to get my judging thoughts out before I had no more thoughts of any sort.

Some of the other reviews around can be found at:

• Men in Aprons
• The Thinking Mother

I’ve read some reviews that didn’t like the show… I’ll try to hunt some down again later.  It’s only fair - not everyone will like everything.

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My wife and I have now used our judging certifications for the first time!  We judged the Madison Ribberfest KCBS sanctioned barbecue competition in Indiana.  The good news was that all the judges were certified judges, which, from what I hear, isn’t very common.  The bad news (not really that bad) was that some judges didn’t show (or call even), so we had to do an extra entry per category. 

Last week, I posted some of my preconceptions, so I thought I’d just reflect on those to see how right or wrong I was, and I’ll add some more observations afterward.

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This week, I’ll be reviewing my preconceptions on judging from last week, now that I have one competition behind me as a CBJ (Certified Barbecue Judge).

I’ll also be talking about something new I tried with ABT’s that I really liked, as well as reviewing Alton Brown’s latest short series, Feasting on Asphalt.

By week’s end, I’ll do another update on my improvement, or lack of improvement after judging a barbecue competition!

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I have to admit I’m having fun with this blog community stuff.  There’s a huge range of approaches to food, and people are writing about it all over the world.

I’ve recently been included in 2 ‘carnivals’, which are groupings of blog entries that pertain to a topic.  One is the Carnival of the Recipes: BBQ Edition, and the other is Carnival of the Grill.  In fact, I’ll be hosting the next Carnival of the Grill.  Submissions have to be in by September 5, 2006 (the day after Labor Day in the US).  Please send stuff in to give me lots to choose from!

I also decided to start up a Carnival of my own: The Carnival of Food Photography!  Instead of concentrating on a type of cooking like grilling or barbecuing, I want to focus on great pictures of food, with varying topics.  (get the pun… focus… photos…).

The first Carnival of Food Photography will have a submission deadline of September 10th… and the topic is:

(drumroll)

Grill Marks!

So, while there’s no stipulation as to the type of cooking or what’s being cooked, I want to see some GREAT grill mark photos.  These can be from indoor cooking as well as outdoor, but, when we have grilled items, those grill marks really get a lot of oohs and aahs!  So let’s see your best!

Click here to submit an entry!

If you have any topics for the carnival you’d like to see, let me know.  I already have some in mind, but I’m open to suggestions!

(The reason for the photo of Woody will be evident as you read down)

I’m calling what I’m doing a lifestyle change, not a diet.  I won’t stick to a diet most likely, and just the term ‘diet’ makes me think of a temporary thing that, once I’m where I want to be, I can go back to eating whatever I want. 

Won’t work.  I already know that.  So why use semantics to get around this?  Partly because semantics actually do mean something.  Semantics can give positive or negative connotations to things.  Understood definitions of terms can imply things.  "Lifestyle change" allows me to keep telling myself this isn’t temporary and that I won’t be doing what I did before.  "Diet" says, "Lose weight you fat pig, then you can eat again!"

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This weekend, I’m, most likely, going to be judging my first KCBS competition.  My wife and I got our certifications in January, and we’ll be using them finally!  I thought I’d kind of document what my thoughts are going into the experience, then compare them next week after having done the judging for real.

Just like any new experience, it will be interesting to see how right or wrong my preconceptions are after this weekend!

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I’ve started trying to be more a part of the blogging community lately, and I found these blog carnivals.  Just about any topic you can think of is included, but I, or course, focused on recipes (my post from a couple of days ago), and now the Carnival of the Grill!

I’m actually going to host the next Carnival of the Grill, after September 4th, so keep an eye out!  The current Carnival of the Grill is hosted by Adam at Men In Aprons, and lists some really great grilled stuff!  Take a minute and check it out; you may be insp

What is it about salmon?  I can hate it or love it.  I’ve found that the quality varies greatly, and that, to be good, I need to get better salmon.  To me, this means to look for 2 things:

1. Wild-caught salmon
2. Scottish salmon

First, Atlantic farmed salmon is listed by the Audobon Society to be avoided, while wild-caught is ‘green’, meaning safe to eat.  Second, the flavor is so much better.  Scottish salmon has taken some quality hits, mainly in smoked salmon, but the fresh, good quality Scottish salmon is organically raised and very high quality, on par in flavor with the wild-caught salmon.

I also think that salmon takes well to outdoor cooking better than about any other fish.

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