We’re finally used to being back home from vacation in Maine. We were only gone a few days, but we really fell in love with Maine in general and Kennebunkport in particular! But now we’re back in the country, replacing sights of the Atlantic with sights of farmers.

We had some people over the other night, and I was going to fix flank steak, but I saw this flat iron steak at the market. They were giving out samples, and it was pretty good, so i thought I’d try it.

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No excuses other than just being busy. I haven’t posted in about 3 weeks, so here is a bit of this and that.

First, I’ll be off to Kennebunkport, ME, later this month with my wife to celebrate our 5th anniversary. I’ll be eating lots o’ lobstah and reporting back on food from a new-to-me area.

I just haven’t been cooking much, but my wife did make some snickerdoodles a while ago; I’ll be getting the recipe and posting it in the next few days. They are fantastic, as anyone that likes cinnamon cookies can attest. Here’s a sample shot of the cookies…

I also made more chocolate chip cookies! I had a bit more fun with the camera this time, and even took some chocolate chip macro shots…

And last for now, I’m currently working about 15 minutes from my favorite hamburger joint in the world, Crabill’s Hamburgers in Urbana, Ohio. We drove up for lunch my first week in the area, and I got four doubles with mustard and onion. They opened in 1927, and only had mustard, onion and relish until 1992 or something like that, when they bowed to pressure to add ketchup. I have never had and never will have ketchup on a Greasy Burger (as we have always called them)! I had to have a bag of Mumford’s potato chips to go along with my burgers, of course (also made in Urbana)

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.

I was going to come up with some great meal to fix for Valentine’s Day this year and show how I made it, what ingredients I used, why it’s so great, etc., but I decided against it. For ideas on what to fix, though, here are some past posts:

Cedar Planked Salmon

Foie Gras

Shish Kabob

And maybe end with chocolate pot with burnt caramel and sea salt sauce

And let her pick the wine; if she prefers a white to a big red, but you like red, have a white instead, and don’t complain about it.

Instead of something new to cook, I’m going to talk about what means more than cooking a great, romantic meal one day a year… Getting to know your significant other.
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Okay, first things first. I do happen to know the Superbowl is over. And I apologize for not posting any foods prior to the Superbowl, for those looking for ideas.

But I did fix some stuff, and I had some thoughts on Superbowl foods. Here are my thoughts:

Food should never be fixed for the Superbowl if someome could categorize it as ‘gourmet’. That’s it. Everything else is fair game.

‘Gourmet’ foods don’t mix with the NFL. Fatties and pulled pork and wings and ribs fit pretty well. I can’t imagine a bunch of people sitting around watching the game while eating foie gras with blackberry balsamic glaze, or fish eggs on toast (sorry, caviar on toast points, forgive me!). Football food is meant to be stuff that you can chomp on and enjoy without having to pay too much attention to etiquette. Fancy foods have their time and place; half time at the Superbowl isn’t one of them!

So I kept it simple… Smofried wings and ABTs.

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I’m like just about anyone else… Grey winter days make me crave comfort foods. Yesterday could have been colder (I think it hit well over 60 for the day), but it was drizzly and grey all day long, so it seems like a comfort food would fit just right for the day.

January in Ohio can be almost depressing. I almost wish we got the snow they get in the Cleveland area; having just grey, miserable days can really get to a person. Comfort foods are a great way to fight that grey-day-feeling, though. I think comfort foods lift our spirits on their own, bringing back memories of our moms taking care of us on those days when we have to stay inside, or reminding us of the smell of Grandma’s kitchen when she was making our favorite dinner.

One of those comfort foods for me is post roast. Reading the title of this entry was a pretty good give-away, huh? Being who I am, though, I have to try to change it up just a bit from what I’d consider ordinary.
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Christmas brings a lot of opportunities to socialize and throw parties. Whether throwing a party of just going to one, I like to have a few things that I can cook pretty easily in case I need to host people or just take something along with me to a party.

(obligatory Christmas/Rudolph photo)

I made something the other day that’s nothing new, but I hadn’t made it in a while. It’s not a good item for the Hanukkah events that friends may be throwing, but it’s good for just about any Christmas party. I have tasted pork heaven, and its name is Pig Candy. So what is Pig Candy? It’s actually one of the easiest things to make, but oh-so-addictive and tasty. The ingredients are simple:

• Bacon. Not thick sliced or peppered
• Dark brown sugar. If only light is available, adding a bit of molasses helps
• Ground chiles. I like cayenne, chipotle and/or ancho. Ancho isn’t as hot, but is helped with a touch of cayenne.

For amounts, I start with about 2 cups of brown sugar for a pound of bacon. I mix in the chiles with the brown sugar; if I use cayenne, I use maybe 1/8 teaspoon. If I use ancho, I go with more like 1/2 of a tablespoon to a tablespoon. This is one of those things that you have to play with to see how much or little you prefer.

The oven doesn’t get preheated, so don’t worry about that. Start with a cooling rack that fits inside a cookie sheet/half sheet pan, and lay on the bacon in a single layer as tightly as you can. It will shrink up a lot, so just make sure it’s not overlapped. Then place the pan in the oven and turn it to 400 degrees F. I can’t remember why this is done in a non-preheated oven, but Alton Brown told me to do it that way, so I do!

The one change I make to AB’s method is that I turn down the oven once it reaches 400 degrees. I take the pan out of the oven, turn it down to 350 degrees F, and somewhat carefully layer the sugar/chile onto the bacon.

Once it’s on the bacon, I just smooth it out a bit. I like to put a good amount on each slice of bacon as it will melt off quite a bit, and I want to be sure to have plenty left on the bacon. Once the sugar is on the bacon, I put it back in the oven, turned 180 degrees from how it started. I then start my timing; every 4 minutes, I turn the bacon again, checking doneness. I like my bacon crisp, but even if you prefer yours less crisp, it needs to be crispy for this. I also turn on my overhead vent, as things start to smoke after a while.

I cooked this in the oven, but it can also be done on a grill or hot smoker. Once the bacon is crispy, I remove the pan from the oven and turn off the oven. Even if I’m doing another pan, I turn it off to let it cool somewhat before the next batch.

I immediately remove the bacon from the cooling rack onto paper towels so that it doesn’t stick to the cooling rack. If I’m doing more, I wipe off all the grease and melted sugar and start all over.

The end result is just ridiculous . I’ve had people at my office offer to buy more, and one person suggested I sell it as a gourmet item locally. Little do they know that it was a bunch of barbecuers that told me how to do this stuff!

Total time for this is approximately 25 minutes, though your oven could cause things to cook a bit faster or slower. The 350 degree setting is used so that the sugar doesn’t burn.

How does this become an appetizer? Pig Candy is great all on its own, but put it on a festive platter with sliced pears and brie, or figs and cheddar, or all of the above, and you’ll have a high-class appetizer that’s a bit different than anything other people may be bringing to the party.

So any of you out there trying this, if you do a variation of any sort, let me know what it was, and how it turned out.

I’ve done maybe 1 or 2 web/blog ‘tag you’re it’ type things in the past, but I’ve kind of stopped doing a lot of that stuff. No one cares that my favorite movie is Bed Time for Bonzo (it’s not… Really, it’s not). There’s a new push going around that I thought was kind of cool, though, called Pay It Forward. I first saw this on Nicole’s site, Pinch My Salt, but I was too late, only to see that my friend Nika was also paying it forward on her site, Nika’s Culinaria.

PIF is simple:

• To be involved, you have to be a current blogger, though it doesn’t have to be a food blog.
• The idea is that each of the three people will receive something homemade by me.
• Those three people have to do the same thing on their blog… Post about PIF, allow commenters to comment, and send the first three something homemade.
• The time frame for when I have to have sent out my homemade whatever is 1 year from today. I don’t plan on taking that long.

That’s about it. And, what, you might ask, is the item that I’ll be sending out? A one pint jar of Bucky McOinkum’s own Javacue Sauce, an espresso based barbecue sauce that I’ve used (and won with) in competition.

So let the paying it forward, from here at least, begin!

(logo used with permission by Nika Boyce)

I hope I’m not disappointing anyone by not having a lot of Thanksgiving food this year. I’m doing the same as last year, pretty much, so if you search on ‘Thanksgiving’, you’ll get lots of stuff from 2006.

Instead, I’m relaxing a bit this week, if you call fixing a huge turkey and a regular turkey, cookies earlier this week and turkeys last week relaxing. Family is coming into town, which should be good.

I know I’m getting older. The holiday confirms it. It used to be that not only would I go to some relative’s house for holidays, but I might even sit at the kid’s table. Now, holidays are at my house. We don’t have a kid’s table, but you never know when that might change (not for us, but for others).

There’s good enough reason to have things at our house. My mom and sister have less than an hour drive, so they come down. My dad and stepmother are coming up from Atlanta, and my mom and dad can get along even though they’re divorced; that happened 35 years ago. My sister’s kids are coming in from wherever they are. My other sister is flying in from NYC, and my wife’s mom will drive down for the day. There’s no place else where all those different families would get together in one room.

I’m not going to get all sappy about what things for which I’m thankful, though my God and my wife top that list. One new thing for which I’m thankful, though, is our upcoming addition to the family, Bucky.

As I’m typing this, I realize that there actually will be a Bucky now, of Bucky McOinkum’s Barbecue and Bucky’s Barbecue and Bread. However, it won’t be a pig. Bucky is a blue tabby Maine Coon cat, and I just got photos of him today, at just about 4 1/2 weeks old. So, without further ado, have a great Thanksgiving (comment on any great stuff you had this year), and enjoy the debut photos of Bucky McKatt!

I can hardly believe that my trip to Pittsburgh was only 2 1/2 weeks ago; our October has been really full! When I was there, I got a great candy bar that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, from Chocopologie, that was dark chocolate with burnt caramel and sea salt. Great stuff!

If this is the only entry you’re reading here, you haven’t yet heard about the wine party we had last weekend, but it was not only a great party, it also has provided me with all kinds of stuff to write about. I made a dessert for the party to mimic the candy bar I got in Pittsburgh.

The dessert started with something I saw as I flipped through the channels a while back. I found a recipe for chocolate creme fraiche pot; I don’t really care much for the show it came from, but then Alton Brown is about the only food show host I really like, but the dish looked interested because it 1) sounds good, and 2) is really easy to make. So for a big party or just when you don’t have time, this is pretty cool to try, especially with my additions.

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