I usually take a few minutes at lunch to catch up with several blogs, not all of which are food blogs.  I do read some stuff that might not be typical for food bloggers… Ok, there are plenty of football fans, but how about gun blogs?  I also read some Christian blogs, many of which are unfortunately pure garbage.

So at lunch today, I pulled up my Google Reader, and I noticed that my food blogs may be themed a bit narrowly (nothing against any of them, of course).  I read several food blogs for a few reasons:

• The person that writes it has a good style in their blog
• The photos are really great, and I hope to learn something from them
• I’ve corresponded with the person and found them to be very nice, which tends to show in their blogs, too.

So what’s the problem today?  There’s a blog site called “The Daring Bakers Blogroll“, and 4 of my usual 20 or so regular reads are apparently participating.

Without too much research, it appears that the site puts out a theme now and then, and the bloggers on the blogroll make their version of the item and post about it.  Pretty straight forward, and you’d think things would be pretty much the same, but there are some really divergent takes on the same dish, it seems.

The blogs I read today had versions of Lemon Meringue:

• Dessert First
• i shot the chef
• Use Real Butter
• Wild Yeast

All have great photos, and, though I’m not a fan of lemon thanks to the dentist I had when I was a child (who used lemon fluoride… not a nice thing at all), I still think these look worth trying.

My wife and I are having our annual wine party in just less than 2 weeks, on October 27th. I always pick a theme for the wines, and each couple brings one red wine and one white wine that fits the theme. So far, we’ve done “Anything Goes” for the first 2 years, then “US Wines Not From California”, and “Southern Hemisphere Wines Not From Australia”. This year, I decided to go mainstream, and we’re doing “French Wines”.

We do the party a bit differently than I’m told I should do wine parties. Most of our friends aren’t that into wines, so we don’t do any formal scoring. I do hand out paper for note taking, and we discuss our impression of the wines’ color, bouquet, and taste. But there are too many people to do a standard tasting, which is fine with us. I think we’re expecting 20 this year, and most advice is to limit a wine tasting party to 8. This is about fun, not being perfect. What happens is that we all get to taste a lot of different wines, and different people like different ones. We get enough to want to go try one or two wines again later. One year, someone brought this awful wine that tasted like cherry cough syrup… At least to me, and a couple of others it did. Some of our friends, and I still call them friends even after this incident, actually LIKED it! Sometimes we have to give our friends leeway to have bad taste, even if it’s really bad!

One of the things I like about this party is that all the food is made by me! People try to bring things, and I refuse any help. Any other party, that’s fine, but this one time each year, I get to decide on all the food. I try to do 2-3 meats, a couple of side dishes/appetizers and have several cheeses and bread. This year, I’ve decided to make pan seared foie gras.

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First of all, welcome to the new look of Bucky’s Barbecue & Bread!

Please let me know what you think of it… There may be some ‘not found’ type errors, but I’m working on that as I type (I’m on the phone with GoDaddy).

I think the look is a bit better, but any comments are appreciated.  Don’t worry about reporting errors as I get those automatically as I try to fix them.

I’ve already asked some friends, fellow barbecuers and fellow bloggers to help me out with an experiment I have in mind, but I decided to open this up more.

The experiment is simple to do and won’t lead to any immoral or illegal acts in and of itself. The rules are simply to photograph every meal, and, yes, I mean every meal, for one week, starting October 1 and going through October 7, 2007. That’s about it (but not quite).

(photo by Don Andre, used here in accordance with Creative Commons licensing)

I know some people don’t have anything more than a cup of coffee or a Mountain Dew for breakfast; if that’s the case, take a picture of it. I’m not going to plan my own meals around this, so you may see me showing a meal of which I’m less than proud to have eaten!

Also, I don’t care if the photos are great. Some people are traveling; a phone with a camera will work fine. I don’t care if the meal is an Egg McMuffin or a six-course tasting menu… This is meant for fun, not “I eat better than you”!

After the week is over, my wife will select a day (Oct 1-7) and a meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner). I’ll post on here what the results are, and that’s when the fun begins:

• Send in the photo of that meal and only that meal. I may or may not retouch the photos if I think it will help show the meal better, though if you don’t want me to retouch it, just say so.
• If you aren’t shy, send in a photo of yourself. It can be goofy or serious, just not lewd or it will be ignored.
• Give me a description of the meal. This can be as simple as what you ate or as detailed as the circumstances around the meal. Whatever you want to share about that meal is just fine. The idea isn’t to show off what you eat, just to show wh

The email to which to send is cmcadams (at) buckymcoinkumsbbq (dot) com (I am being cryptic to avoid the aliens trying to strip out my email address to send me home refinancing offers).

Depending on how many participate, I’ll either show everything at once or split it up into several entries.

Today is Blog Day 2007.  In the spirit of Blog Day, I’m listing 5 non-food blogs that I like.  I’ve edited this to be a bit more descriptive.

The first, inspired by yesterday’s Scotch whisky entry, is The Scotch Blog, written by Kevin, a scotch enthusiast that lives in Virginia.  There’s just something about Scotch that other drinks can’t match. 

The next is a great photo blog of Labrador Retrievers… Labster.  Some funny photos of my favorite dogs can be found here!  Right now, it’s as close to having a lab as I want, but, after losing my dog last year, it’s fun to see goofy photos of other people’s labs.  I may send in a photo or two of Woody to see if he gets on there, too!

And one of my favorite non-food things… Buckeye Football!!!  The Buckeye Blog is a great place for Buckeye football info.  The season starts tomorrow, so it’s very timely!  Just another year for another win against that team up north!

My wife and I are fans of the show "Scrubs" on NBC, going into its final (sadly) season.  Zach Braff plays JD on the show, and has a fun blog.  I have to admit that I haven’t liked all of his movies, but I enjoy his wit, and he does a pretty nice job on his blog.

And my last blog link for Blog Day is for a hobby that I’m hoping to develop a bit… PhotographyBLOG.  I’m trying to save up for a new camera and improve my skills at photography (yesterday’s Scotch post has a bunch of photos that I took playing around at 5:00 AM after my toothache woke me up… I can’t believe I’m actually hoping to get a root canal so this will stop!).

Take some time and visit the links… There’s good stuff out there!  And if you’re a lurker, talk yourself into leaving a comment on a blog entry that says something to you, whether it makes you think, gives you tips on how to do something or just makes you laugh, cry, get angry, etc.