Name: Curt McAdams email here
I live on 5 wooded acres in SW Ohio with my wonderful wife. I am an avid outdoor cook and compete in KCBS barbecue competitions. I also try my hand at artisanal breads and teaching cooking classes.
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.
This week is really hectic for Bucky McOinkum’s Barbecue. We started off the week with a barbecue class at Cooks’ Wares in Springboro, OH. The class was a big success; it was full in less than a week after registration opened up for it. We had a full house, with some on a waiting list, too. Props to my peeps (Maria and the staff) at Cooks’ Wares for all their help (like my ‘urban’ talk there… I’m so with it… Not!) We did a full competition menu of chicken, ribs, pork and brisket, with cole slaw, tomato pie and doughnut bread pudding added. The sauce for the bread pudding included some Maker’s Mark whisky… Man oh man, was it good stuff!
Keep in mind, if you’re local, that classes will only be advertised online from now on at Cooks’ Wares.
Before I forget about it, I’ll be posting a Carnival of Food Photography tomorrow (a day late, but I needed to get word out about the competition (see below)).
The photos today are from prepping for the kick off of the Dayton Vineyard’s Wild At Heart men’s ministry for autumn.
This is going to be a bit of an odd post for me. I’m really blue today, and, since this is my blog, I’m going to type what I want to type… I’ll start with ribs, though, for those readers that want a bit of cooking today.
On Labor Day, I tried some babyback ribs. I have to say that I still prefer spares, but these were worth a try. They looked good, but one rack was a bit tough… Sometimes, you just don’t have good meat to start with, I think. The flavor was still there, though.
The typical barbecue drink seems to be beer. I have nothing against beer. I like beer, in fact. I’m probably most partial to nut brown ales, especially English nut brown ales. I like microbrews, too, and I think it’s great how good beers are easier to find today than they used to be (however, I think the day of the local microbrewery restaurant has mostly passed… It’s too expensive for most places to stay open if they don’t bottle and sell outside of a restaurant).
The Accidental Hedonist recently asked about good Scotch whisky, which made me realize I don’t think I’ve mentioned how well Scotch can go with barbecue. Scotch is a different level of drink. It’s not something you drink as a beverage, to help wash down some brisket. Shiner Bock does that really well. Scotch is more something to have after barbecue. Sound odd to put scotch and barbecue together? I don’t think it’s odd at all.
I’ve seen several threads on message boards about whether barbecue competitors cook at home just like they do for competition. The answer is often ‘Yes’. I sometimes wonder, though, if this is due to wanting to practice or because of preferring competition barbecue all the time.
Here’s how I see competition cooking being different from cooking at home:
It’s simply that, when I cook at a competition, I concentrate on making 6 servings/slices/pieces/ribs as good as I can make them.
That sounds simple, but there’s a bit more to it than just cooking 6 servings of everything.
Pretty much wherever in the US you happen to be, it’s pretty obvious that summer is here in full swing. I think we’ve had 15 straight days at 90 or above in SW Ohio; I’m ready for a break. However, humidity isn’t the only thing that goes on in summer… Foods are fresher than any other time, right off the farms and into the kitchen!
In Ohio, where I live, this time of year brings out farmers’ stands with fresh corn, beans, and anything else they’ve got in their fields. Summer fruits, though mostly from south of here, are usually readily available, too.
There’s something almost fundamental to my make-up that needs to be around farms. I don’t care how high tech some of the equipment gets, it’s still planting seeds in the soil and getting plants to grow. It’s one of the first jobs Adam had to do on the planet, and it’s fundamentally unchanged today. I can watch the stock market or any number of economic indicators to see how the economy is doing at a given time, but there’s more meaning in some ways in driving by fields, seeing how the crops are doing. One of them is a mental exercise, the other is natural to me.
In 1999, I moved to Atlanta for a while, away from the country. The area I lived in was really nice, but, on a trip home in October, I realized I was missing the feel of how the crops were doing. I’d felt that I’d lost touch with an aspect of life that meant something to me.
Now that I’m back in Ohio, living near a small town, I get to see this all spring and summer long. Seeing the corn grow and get tassles, seeing the hay and straw reaped and bundled, noticing the soybeans haven’t dried out yet… It’s all an important part of summer to me. Funny thing is, I’ve never worked on a farm, other than a week in 1978 when friends and I helped a farmer bale hay.
But I know that all this farm stuff means fresh veggies! My favorite food to get fresh in August, though, has to be tomatoes. My wife grew a couple of plants this year, and we’re just now starting to see the tomatoes ripen. This, in turn, means Bacon Tomato Sandwiches!!! Yeah, there’s supposed to be Lettuce in there, too, but I really prefer these with no lettuce for some reason.
I like to slice the tomatoes fairly thick, and use a good pepper bacon. There’s no skill in making a BT sandwich… Make your bacon, slice your tomatoes, toast your bread. Spread on as much or little mayo as you like, add the B, add the T, and eat!
Everyone seems to have their lists of advice, so I figured, now that we’re well into the peak of grilling season, to add mine!
So, with no further adieu, here is Bucky McOinkum’s 9 Tips For Cooking Outdoors:
1. Have a fire extinguisher handy.
Ok, first one is boring, but, really, have a fire extinguisher on hand. You never know when you need it, and even seasoned cooks have issues. When you’re cooking outside, you’re likely working with flame of some sort, and things do happen! 2. Take the time to determine what tools you like to use.
This is somewhat different than I hear most people say; most want to tell you what tools to use. However, I think people do things differently. I’ll give advice now and then on something I happen to like, but if you choose something differently, that’s fine with me, too.
I’ve not been keeping up on my blogging lately. The main reason has been my computer. We had a Dell laptop that was over 4 years old that has finally decided to not work for us.
However, we got a new laptop… A shiny new MacBook Pro!!!
So, with the new computer, I will be catching up on my blogging, and hopefully getting some new stuff going.
I’m thinking of podcasting… And I’d love some feedback. Would you rather see audio or video podcasts? I’ll be adding some to the blog as well as, maybe, posting to iTunes, too.
For my readers that I’ve lost, the last month has been hectic! I’ve had a bunch of computer issues, mostly with harddrive issues.
For a quick update, the Jim Dandy BBQ competition that was going to happen in June is NOT going to be in June. It’s going to be in September instead, probably the first or second weekend. More info will be forthcoming!
Other than that, our near future calendar includes:
Dr BBQ’s Competition Cooking Class in Detroit Michigan on April 22-23.
Grilling Class at Cooks’ Wares, Springboro, OH, May 14
Private Class at Cooks’ Wares, Mason, OH, May 19
Q for the Kids in Fairbanks, IN, June 1-2
Potentially Taste of Grand Rapids, July 13-14
Madison Ribberfest, August 17-18
Jim Dandy’s BBQ Competition, September (TBD)
Ohio Smoked Meats Festival, October 19-20(?)
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