I’ve got to say that I think I officially have the February blahs this year. Unfortunately, there’s no shot for that, though I probably wouldn’t get it because I avoid needles every chance I get.

So instead of doing much cooking, I mostly don’t cook anything. It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, which included the loss of my mom’s lab, Wings. I brought Wings home when Woody, the Best Dog in the World, was about 2 1/2, and Wings was 2. The first day, she sniffed everywhere and wanted nothing to do with Woody, but the changed overnight when she greeted him coming downstairs from my apartment, tail wagging (hers, not mine). They got along great from then on, but, more importantly, she fell in love with my mom, who in turn fell in love with Wings. Wings would have been 16 in April, and it’s hard to say goodbye to her.

On the flip side of pet stuff, Bucky McKatt is growing like mad. He’s probably about 6 lbs now (he was 5 lbs 10 ounces 9 days ago, on his 4th birthday). He’s got Hobbit paws… big and lots of hair on them. I’m assuming he’ll stop growing at some point, but he’s expected to by over 4 times his current size when it’s all said and done.

One thing I have been doing is starting to plan for a barbecue event in May. Mark and I will be teaching our 4th barbecue class on May 19th, at Cooks’ Wares in Springboro, OH. If you’re interested, you can sign up online here.

The two days prior to that, my church, the Dayton Vineyard, will be host to several barbecue teams from the area and surrounding states. The event is called “A pretty good barbecue”, and the guidelines are simple… Teams show up, with meat and either a smoker or planned use of a smoker that’s already there, and they start cooking on Saturday. When the Sunday church service lets out, people will come by, and we’ll give them the food we cooked. That’s right, give it to them. No vending, no sales… we’re just giving it away to show people that God loves them, even in little things. If you’re interested in helping out, email me and let me know.

I’m going to be doing some more bread baking soon, along with more smoking of traditional and, hopefully, new things.

My wife and I were out over the weekend and decided to go to the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio. While there, I found an early example of how foodies captured food images before digital cameras:

I have to say, I’m thankful for my dslr! I already have enough trouble finding time to post. If I had to use this format, I’d get 2-3 posts up a year!

A fellow barbecuer, Eric, is starting a blog called the Home of BBQ.  To start off, he’s doing a sauce give away as he’s getting going.  He’s got some good barbecue info, and it’s worth a visit.

Check out the contest; you might get some new stuff to try out!

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.

January 11th came and went, and I got too busy to post anything about it. Ok, I mostly just forgot, but I’m not good with real birthdays, let alone blog birthdays! Bucky’s Barbecue and Bread, in whatever form, just turned 2!!!

I was going to write all kinds of stuff about the last year, but instead I’ll make it simple…

I just want to thank all of you that have become readers.  If no one was reading, I may or may not still do this, but it’s a lot more fun knowing people are coming by.  I appreciate all the comments, and I hope to hear more and more from people that are reading.  I don’t always get it right, so you can comment to correct me, or tell me I got something right, or suggest another way to do something I’ve shown.

I also want to thank Nika Boyce for all the work with Food Photo 101, and answering all my inane, amateurish photography questions.  Somehow, I think my photos are actually improving quite a bit!

So here’s to another year, with a lot more going on.  I won’t promise to post every day, or even every week, but I’ll try to be regularly putting something up.

Chez Pim is again heading up efforts for Menu For Hope.   Please consider bidding on items to help raise money for a very worthy cause.  If you’d like to see what the items are, www.chezpim.com has the list!

(From Chez Pim’s website):

What is Menu for Hope? 

Menu for Hope is an annual fundraising event in support of the UN World Food Programme.  Five years ago, the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia inspired me to find a way to help, and the very first Menu for Hope was born.  In 2006, Menu for Hope raised US$60,925.12 to help the UN World Food Programme feed the hungry.

Each year, food bloggers from all over the world join forces to host the Menu for Hope online raffle, offering an array of delectable culinary prizes.  For every US$10, the donor receive a virtual raffle ticket toward a prize of their choice.  This year, the prizes include once in a lifetime experiences such as touring the elBulli laboratory with Ferran Adrià, dining on a historic British meal prepared by Heston Blumenthal, or joining Harold McGee on a lunch date to satisfy a lifetime’s worth of cooking curiosity.  You can also tag along with your favorite blogger on a tour of their favorite markets, restaurants, or even receive a care package fashioned especially for you from your favorite bloggers themselves.  All you need is $10 and a bit of luck.

We may never eradicate hunger from the face of the earth, but why should that stop us from trying?

This year for the 4th annual Menu for Hope, we are again supporting the UN World Food Programme.  WFP is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good.

With a special permission from the WFP, the funds raised by Menu for Hope 4 will be earmarked for the school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa.  We chose to support the school lunch program because providing food for the children not only keeps them alive, but helps them stay in school so that they learn the skills to feed themselves in the future.

We chose to support the program in Lesotho because it is a model program in local procurement - buying food locally to support local farmers and the local economy.  Instead of shipping surplus corn across the ocean, the WFP is buying directly from local subsistent farmers who practice conservation farming methods in Lesotho to feed the children there.

We feed the kids, keep them in school, and support their parents and community farming.  This sustainable approach to aid is something we believe in and strongly support.

The nominations have begun for the 2007 Food Blog Awards, hosted by the Well Fed Network.  You can nominate your favorite food blog in one or more of 14 categories from now through December 5.

Once the nominations are closed, the top five blogs in each category will be announced on December 10.  Voting then begins from that point through December 14, and the winners will be announced on December 17.

If you want to nominate a blog, choose from one of the fourteen categories and post a comment with your entry.  Keep in mind that the number of entries that a blog has been nominated has no bearing, so if you see your nomination already there, adding it again doesn’t add to its chances.  And if anyone wants to nominate my blog, I won’t be offended!

I wanted to take a moment and thank all the new readers for coming by, looking around, and posting comments. It’s really a great feeling to see how many of you seem to like chocolate chip cookies! If only I had 365 chocolate cookie recipes to post for each day of the year, but then I’d be double the size I already am.

Feel free to email me (there’s a link under the “About Me” section on the left). I’m open to suggestions, topics, etc. I’m open to advertising, too! (though only if I approve of what’s being advertised)

I’ve got several things upcoming that might be fun:

Some online friends took photos of a week’s worth of meals, and I’ll be posting the results from several that sent me their photos. It’s not all pretty, trust me!

Nika Boyce is going to be teaching me more about taking photos, and we’re both going to share what we come up with simultaneously. It should be a great way to get some easy tips on taking photos, and we’ll do it a little at a time instead of the typical “here’s 3427 tips to better food photography”.

This coming weekend, we’re having our annual wine party. I’m doing enough with the menu that I’ll post each dish separately, but here’s the current menu (which may change, depending on my mood and how nuts I go between now and Saturday at 7 pm!):

• French cheeses
• Bread - I’m making brioche, boules, maybe baguettes, and crackers.
• Steak au poivre - I’m doing this with a twist… It’s being done on the grill, and the steaks won’t ever be in a skillet. How? You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out!
• Mushroom crepes with wine reduction
• Chocolate creme fraiche pot with burnt caramel and grey salt. Yep, I’m stuck on this caramel/salt thing!
• And pan-seared foie gras with truffle oil.

Some of you know about the loss of our cat, Patterson. We’re still not over that, but Petey, our other cat, seems a bit lonely, so we’re likely getting a new Maine Coon kitten, hopefully in mid-December. There’s a blue male that we might be able to add to our home. Trust me, there will be photos of the kitten.

So you can easily see my planned manipulation of the blogosphere: put up recipes with chocolate in them, and intersperse kitten photos in all my entries! And a photo of Woody, the Best Dog In the World, at six weeks of age, too (I only have so many photos of him, but you’ll still see them pop up now and then)!

For those of us that live and breathe barbecue, what could be better than a pig a day?

For 2008, it can happen! The “A Pig A Day Calendar - Icons of Barbecue” is now on sale!

The calendar features logos and signs from barbecuers of all types: competition teams, restaurants, caterers, etc. And Bucky McOinkum’s Barbecue was selected as one of the teams represented. Not only that, but we’re April 26/27 (a weekend), and April 26th is my anniversary, so it’s a great choice!

The calendars are only $12.99 and can purchased on the website or via Amazon.

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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