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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Fall is in the air! Actually, it’s not in the air; in SW Ohio, we reached almost 90 degrees F today. I’m ready for 65 degree days, a touch of fog first thing in the morning, and temps that make you want to cook a pot of veggie soup all day long!

This is a tough month/year right now. Last September, I lost the Best Dog in World (a phrase I am now using when talking about Woody, thanks to Barbara at A Writer Afoot) . This year, we lost Patterson, the Best Cat in the World. One thing I have come to believe is that the first animal we adopted as adults is likely to carry the most meaning with it, the most emotion, the strongest bond. Why is this? I think it’s because it’s likely the first time we, as adults, accepted the responsibility to care for another living being. It’s something of a rite of passage into adulthood. So Woody was my dog; he was the dog God meant for me to have, the dog I would need when I was alone in other ways, the dog that would mean that I still wouldn’t be lonely. I think Patterson was that for my wife (but the cat, not the dog, that did all that for her).

Patterson was supposedly a Himalayan, but I’m not sure; he was pure Bacon Cat. Yeah, not a breed, but all I had to do was open a bacon package, and he was there telling me, very vocally, that he was glad I was fixing bacon for him, could I have it NOW(?). He loved bacon.

We miss him, a lot.

As a bit of a distraction from that, my wife and I are going to go out of town this coming weekend. We’re taking another trip to one of my favorite cities, Pittsburgh. This time, however, we’re staying out in Cranberry Township, but we’ll be heading into the Strip District, going to Vincent’s and the Dirty O, and maybe Primanti Brothers this time. I’ll try to get some shots of the Strip District to share; it’s a great place to go for foodies… You’ll see… No strippers at all, just shops and food!

Two things, among others, that I always look forward to in Ohio in October are apples and fall colors. We’re getting neither this year, though. A drought has been going on, and the fall color isn’t expected to be anything much at all, and an April freeze has taken out almost half of Ohio’s apple crop this year. The orchard I where I like to get my apples has zero, yeah, I said nada, apples this year. They’re bringing in foreign apples from Indiana and Michigan. (The photo of the tree was actually taken in their drive on the way out a couple of years ago).

The weekend of the 13th and 14th, however, is the Ohio Sauerkraut Festival, the largest festival in Ohio. Our town of less than 2500 people (Waynesville, OH) will host well over 300,000 guests for the weekend. Last year, an estimated 342,000 people attended. We sold pulled pork sandwiches last year, but, with everything else going on right now, we’re not going to do that this year. Instead, we’ll just enjoy the weekend and the festival.

The morning of the festival, I’ll be out with some friends shooting sporting clays. Not food related, no, but a lot of fun! A friend of mine has some new Citori shotguns that need to be broken in… What a friend I am to help out, huh?

The weekend of October 19-20, the Ohio Smoked Meat Festival will take place. We’re not competing this year, but my wife and I are going to see if judges are needed. This will be in Nelsonville, OH, which is a really pretty area, so it will be nice to get away and not have the stress of competing so we can just enjoy being out talking with teams and eating good barbecue!

Then the month will close with the annual McAdams Wine Party. We have to be careful as this thing is getting out of hand, with up to 22 people coming. I’m going to fix all the food, and our theme is French wines. Each couple coming will be two bottles of French wine, one red, one white. For food, I’m going to do some steak au poivre, loaves of bread, French cheeses, something vegetarian (and French), and… pan-seared, fresh foie gras on grilled brioche! I’ll be talking more about this, of course.

I’m also going to be doing a bit of research on foie gras. For any that don’t know, foie gras is goose or duck liver (I’ll be getting duck) from birds that have enlarged livers. Animal rights terrorists people have been going after foie gras production and serving, stating that the farming practices are inhumane. Before serving my guests, I’m going to do some research and get some viewpoints from a producer.

One of my favorite non-barbecue food blogs has been Pinch My Salt.  Nicole writes this blog, usually from her home in Sicily, but recently from a visit to California.  She’s got a great entry about being yourself (not food related).  I encourage you to go over and read Find Your Inner Bumblebee.

I’ve been thinking of the whole blogging thing.  I’m mostly catching up now that I have a new computer, though I still need to get some stuff on WellFed.net!  I’ve also been going through a lot of old photos that were on my ex-Dell, moving them to the new MacBook Pro laptop we have.

A couple of things came to mind as I’ve been scanning through the photos.  The first was that I’ve taken some lousy photos, but I’m getting better!  Another thing, though, was that I’m coming to realize that food isn’t great just on its own, at least not most of the time.

Sure, bacon tastes really good just by being bacon, and Carnegie Deli cheesecake would taste as good hiding in a closet as it would sharing it with my wife.  But there’s more to food than just the taste.  It’s the experiences associated with food, too.  Not that experience changes the taste of food; coconut is bad no matter where or with whom I try it… I won’t even swallow it if I can help it!  The experience around the food, though, can make the food even better, and it can certainly make it more memorable.

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A while ago, I was contacted, along with several other bloggers, to review some American lamb, thanks to the American Lamb Board (http://www.americanlambboard.org).  They are the premier nonprofit promoter of American-raised lamb.

I promised to review the lamb, and I am finally getting to it!  I know several others have already reviewed it, and I’ll have trackbacks listed to some of them, too.  But on with the review!

The kit arrived well packaged and still good and cold.  The kit included basically a 6-8 lb. boneless leg of lamb, a probe thermometer and dried herbs from a great company, Penzey’s (one of my personally preferred spice sources).  It was nicely packaged, and it also included a great write up on American lamb, along with a variety of serving ideas.

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I came across a site called Table Fuel the other day.  Mariel runs the site, and the focus is to help with research for her Masters in Design Studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.  I started out as an architecture student, and I like anything to do with design of this sort, so I wanted to try to help her a bit by getting people to visit her site.

The topics are pretty interesting, from how you use your kitchen to what kind of training/instruction has helped you in the kitchen.  I think it’s going to be fun to see what kind of stuff she’s doing.

When you get a chance, go on over and help her out by responding to some of her entries.

Welcome to the June 12, 2007 edition of Carnival of Food Photography!  Remember, the focus is on the photo!

 I got a lot more entries this time… Thanks to all that submitted.  I think I’ve got all of the entries represented except one, which was in a forum, not a blog… I apologize, but the Carnival is for blogs!

The first entry is an great looking cookie photo from MC, on Shibooya… Apricot Cream Cheese Butter Cookies… What can be bad there?  You’ve got fruit (healthy), cream cheese (yum), butter (even more yum) all mixed up into a cookie!

Along the theme of fruit, Robert submitted an entry on Lauren’s Vegan Journal for Strawberry Soup (Do you think Lauren will be offended being included on a barbecue-related blog???  I hope not!   Lauren, if you are, just let me know… I’ll take care of it, but your soup sounds great!).

Suzanne submitted Uber No Knead Bread (a recipe I’m going to have to try) from Adventures in Daily Living.  I love good, homemade bread, as anyone that regularly reads this knows by now.

Next, we have the eggs to go with the bread, Shinie’s Mutant Egg on Well I Guess This Is Growing Up!  You’ll need two slices of Suzanne’s bread to mop up all that yolk!

Martin Westwood, in Great Britain, submitted some ribs then reorged, but I found this photo of his on BBQ Brit... Chris Lilly Ribs! (not actually Chris’s ribs, but his recipe :)  I’m glad to see that some Brits are making good barbecue.

And moving into some tasty looking pasta, Vishal K Bharadwaj has a great looking Lemon Pepper lingquine at AllVishal.com.  There’s a great photo of the finished product, but I thought this photo of the pepper was pretty cool.

Thanks to everyone that submitted blogs for this edition of Carnival of Food Photography!  Nicole, I know you’re going to be reading this… You better send me something next time!!!!!

I was recently contacted about accepting a site sponsor, and I agreed…  Our first official sponsor is…  Bizrate.com!  On the left sidebar, there are links to barbecue and grilling specific links on the Bizrate.com site.

Please help me in welcoming Bizrate.com as a sponsor by clicking on their links!  It’s a great place to find ratings and great prices on grilling and barbecue equipment!

This coming April (2007), my wife and I are celebrating our 4th anniversary.  We decided, on our first anniversary, to not get each other anniversary gifts.  Instead, we go somewhere for a long weekend together. 

So far, we’ve gone to Cincinnati (close by, but still fun to stay in a nice hotel and enjoy the city), Chicago and, believe it or not, Pigeon Forge.  Pigeon Forge is not my favorite place, but we had a really nice cabin with incredible views, so that part of Pigeon Forge was actually very nice.

This year, we’ve chosen New York City.  My sister lives there, and we’re going to visit some with her, do some shopping on 5th Avenue, and enjoy a long weekend in the Big Apple.  Yes, I’ll likely try R.U.B. or Daisy May’s, or both, but we’ll also hit Carnegie Deli and a couple other spots.

I’d really like some help, though.  For one meal, I want a really great restaurant.  There will be 3 of us going, and what I’d most like is a restaurant where we can sit at the chef’s table.  I’m asking for help from any of you that either are in a restaurant where this is available or can get me some connection to get to sit at the chef’s table.  The dates are April 26, 27 and 28, 2007.

If you can help, email me or leave a comment.  If you even just know of a place, let me know.  I’d love to review it, especially if you’re a chef wanting to get word out on the food blogs.  I wouldn’t even turn down a comped meal, but I’m not trying to be greedy.

I just noticed that today is the 1 year anniversary of me blogging!  I remember starting out thinking I’d do an entry each day.  It didn’t take long to determine that there was NO WAY I was going to keep up with that pace.  I also thought I was going to talk about nothing but barbecue, but soon found out I wanted to talk about more than that.

What I did NOT realize a year ago is how many people out there are blogging about food!  I’ve "met" some really nice people and gotten involved more than I thought I would.  I found that taking a moment to leave a comment on another blog or to answer one left here can go a long way.  I’ve tried to respond to about every comment, and, if I missed any that a reader left, I apologize. 

The next year should bring more focused entries (though I’m not going to promise more focus!).  I’m playing with new looks, too, and I’m going to push myself to do more bread baking, in a semi-collaboration with Adam (Men In Aprons) and Dave (Fumbling Foodie) called Breaducation.  With barbecue, I’m going to work on some fundamentals and relay those here, as well as to keep chronicling our competitions.  We’ve been asked to do more cooking classes, and I’ll post info about that, too.  The next will be sometime in May, and the topic will be more grilling oriented than smoking.  I also hope to do more product reviews, so, if you’re a vendor that has a kitchen/barbecue/grilling related product, send ‘em my way!

Thanks to all of my readers for sticking around.  It’s always good to hear from you in comments or emails.  I’m always open to suggestions, so if you’re looking into something, let me know, and, if I can help, I will.  This year should be good; we have a lot going on, and I’ll be sure to talk about it along the way.

It appears that Nicole at Pinch My Salt has won Best New Food Blog from the Food Blog Awards!  I don’t know if it’s official or not, but I’m going on record with my congratulations!  If you haven’t been to Pinch My Salt, you should spend some time.  The photos are great, and Nicole writes very well.  Not only that, she links to me here, and has commented several times… It’s my 1 degree of separation from a blog award!