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The trick is to smoke the meat and not make the meat smoke
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2013 Blog Archive

Here is the ARCHIVE OF BLOGS for this year with links to all of the entries listed chronologically.
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EGGtoberfest XVI - 0.15 Seconds of Fame

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In the 1960’s pop artist Andy Warhol opined that in the future everyone would be world famous for 15 minutes. This statement is often paraphrased as: “That is his/her 15 minutes of fame”. It is used to describe a situation where someone who otherwise is not really deserving of fame, suddenly is splashed all over the various media outlets. In my case it is more like 0.15 seconds of fame and was a total surprise to me. Read More...
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EGGtoberfest XVI - Part 2

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PART 1 of this two part blog entry covered the trip down to EGGtoberfest XVI including the trip, the venue, the hotel and the Meet and Greet on the first night. I went into some of this background information, because I am guessing EGGtoberfest will return to this same venue next year. This blog entry will cover the main event EGGtoberfest XVI on Saturday October 12, 2013. Like PART 1, I have divided this entry into categories so that you can jump around to particular area of interest to you. I have also tried to include some background information to help out any of you who plan to attend next year for the first time. I am hardly an expert yet myself, but I did learn some things worth sharing.
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EGGtoberfest XVI - Part 1

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This year I attended the biggest BBQ festival I’ve ever been to, which drew folks from all over the US, North America and even the World. It is called EGGtoberfest and is a gathering of fans of the Big Green Egg (Eggheads) to celebrate their love for the grill and share great food and great times. This is the 16th annual version of the EGGtoberfest and is held in the Atlanta, Georgia area, which is location of the corporate headquarters of the Big Green Egg Company. The event started out as a one day event for less than 100 people and is now a two day affair catering to nearly 4.000 people. This was my first time attending this event and it won’t be my last. Read More...
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Wicked Good Lecture!!

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On Saturday September 14 of this year I attended a 2 1/2 hour class that turned out to be the best cooking lecture/cooking demo class I have been to. It was called Wicked Good Burgers and was given by Chefs Chris Hart and Andy Husbands, two of the three authors of the book of the same name. Last year these two also authored Wicked Good Barbecue where they shared the recipes and secrets that helped their iQUE BBQ team, made up of a bunch of Northern Yankees, take the 2009 Jack Daniels BBQ Championship. I started making recipes from these two books this year and 8 of the recipes from these two books placed in the 15 slots in my three Top 5 lists for this year. By the time this lecture had rolled around, I’d already made some of the items on the menu that day. I wondered if I would learn much more than what I’d already picked up from making the recipe for myself. I needn’t have worried, I learned a lot, had some great food, and enjoyed the experience immensely. Read More...
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Looking Back, Looking Ahead - 2013

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THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Ever since I started this blog in 2006, I have written a year end wrap up summing up my past year pursuing this hobby. I stole the idea from what happens in the media where everybody does some sort of Top !0 list. In my case I have reduced it to several Top 5 lists. These lists force me to think about where I have been during the last year and I also use it to chart my course for the next year. By looking at my previous years blog I can see just how I did in reaching my goals. Many times I may not do everything I wanted to, but by reviewing the list from last year it is easy to see what I missed doing and add those items to this years list. Plus it is sometimes fun for me to reread the lists for each year to see my progression pursuing this hobby. Read More...
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Que Calendar 2014 Posted

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For the last 8 years I have been taking pictures from my previous years Grilling and Smoking activities and use them to create a calendar with Apple’s iPhoto software. The first year it was an experiment and I really didn’t expect it to be of interest to anyone but me. To my surprise other people took and interest and I started getting request for calendars for them. At first it was friends and family, but I even got some from co-workers over the years. This year I will be printing up a total of 14. I have found they make nice stocking stuffers (yes BIG stockings) and they are professionally printed so they compare favorably with store bought calendars, several people familiar with both the calendars and this website suggested I post them here too. So I did just that several years ago, I usually post a quicke blog entry like this letting folks that a new calendar has been posted.

Below please find the direct link to the 2014 Cue Calendar picture pages and a link to a previous year’s blog entry on making calendars in iPhoto.

RELATED PICTURE ENTRIES::
  CUE CAL 2014 -2014 Cue Cal Picture Entry
  CALENDARS - Picture Entries from Previous Year’s Calendars

RELATED BLOG ENTRIES::
  CALENDARS WITH IPHOTO 2008 Blog Entry

  BACK TO BBQ BLOG 2013
  ARCHIVE OF BLOGS: 2013
  INDEX OF BLOGS: ALL YEARS
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Improving Your Flash Photography

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I recently picked up a flash accessory that has helped solve a food photography problem that had cropped up in the last year or so. I used it for the first time this Thanksgiving and found it works well and also will help solve some other tricky lighting issues I’ve had. The item in question is the Lumiquest FX LQ-111 Colored Gel System, which sells in the low $30.00 range and is available both online and in larger camera stores. Towards the end of the blog I will provide a gallery where you can view comparable images side by side to judge for yourself the improvements to the images. Read More...
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Site Improvements - Part 4 - Image Warehousing

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The last improvement I made to the site in the recent major overhaul was not in the playbook originally. It is called Image Warehousing and I will explain the details shortly. Originally I looked at it as an under-the-hood improvement that would affect me, but have little impact on the end user. It was something I would have liked to have done originally when I set up the site. At this point in time image warehousing would be a huge undertaking. The change I was making for responsive design affected every page on the site, so if I was ever going to do it now would be the time. As it turns out there are several benefits to the end user of the site, some of which only occurred to me once I had image warehousing in place. If you are only interested in how it affects you skip down past the next two paragraphs which explain image warehousing and sub-domains. Read More...
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Site Improvements - Part 3 - Infinite Blog Scrolling

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Part 3 of this blog series will cover a coincidental improvement I was able to make to the blogs on this site while the site was undergoing it’s recent renovation. It was a very simple to implement, but actually makes for a big ease of use improvement to the blogs. This improvement was a Java script added to the blog section that allows the blog to keep expanding and adding more entries automatically as you scroll down the page. Read More...
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Site Improvements - Part 2 - Gear Listings

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My recent major overhaul of the site consisted of both visible changes and under the hood changes. Part 2 of the blog entry will cover one of the more visible changes: the addition of a Gear section to the sidebar. This will show the gear used to make a given recipe in addition to the grill(s). This relatively simple change was in response to various requests I’ve gotten over the years to identify a piece of grilling gear I used to make a particular recipe. Read More...
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Site Improvements - Part 1 - Responsive Design

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I haven’t been posting new picture or blog entires to this site since the end of July. Several reasons for that. The first was some crazy work related deadlines and the second was one of the biggest revisions to this site ever. About half of the changes were under the hood changes invisible to the end user. The other changes were to the look of the site, particularly when viewed on Post PC devices: Tablets & Cell Phones. I will split this blog about the changes to the site. The first (Site Improvements - Part 1 - Responsive Design) will cover the changes in appearance. Read More...
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Eggtoberfest Bound

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The last 12 months have been the best year ever since I started grilling and things are going to get even better in October when I travel down to Stone Mountain, GA for the 16th annual Eggtoberfest. My wife will be going with me and where it is the Columbus Day Weekend, which is a state holiday here in Massachusetts, we will be making a 4 day mini-vacation out of it. Needless to say as a newly died in the wool Egghead I am very eggcited (sorry I promise no more bad puns). Read More...
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Selecting a BGE Dealer

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Now that I am a Big Green Egg myself, I visit more places both in the real world and online where I hear discussions about the Big Green Egg. Often it is by people who are thinking about a Big Green Egg and are put off by the price. They are often asking a question along the lines of: What dealer has the best price? This blog is going to describe why I think the first question you should ask after deciding to get a Big Green Egg isn’t what size Egg do I need. Nor is is what dealer has the lowest price, or what Eggcessories will I need? The first thing you should do is find the BEST DEALER in your area. So ask: “Who is the BEST dealer in my area?”, NOT “Who is the cheapest dealer in my area?” Read More...
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NewEGGlandfest VI - 2013

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Last weekend I went to NewEGGlandfest VI which is a New England regional Eggfest sponsored by Tarantin Industries the New England Big Green Egg Distributor. This was my first Eggfest and I intended for it to serve as a bit of a warmup for what I might see at the big kahuna: Eggtoberfest in Atlanta, GA this coming October. This blog ebtry will describe my impressions of the event specifically, and my first Eggfest in general.
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A Little Recognition

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In the past couple months a couple of fun things have happened relating to pictures of meals I have posted on this site. Two of my picture posts were linked to by cooking personalities on their Facebook pages. Since the normal course of events is I look at and admire things these folks create, it was nice to see they enjoyed something I made. It may be that this is of interest to an audience of ONE - me, but then again this IS MY BLOG. So feel free to read on or move on. Read More...
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Back to the Grind

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For many years I had read that grinding your own meat was the way to go in terms of getting the best hamburgers possible. I was given a Kitchen Aid stand mixer about a year ago. One of the first things I did was to buy the Kitchen Aid “Breakfast Kit” which was a package of 4 different accessories including the a citrus juicer, food grinder, sausage tubes and a food tray for holding larger batches of food for the grinder. My first attempt at grinding my own ground beef was less than 100 percent successful on several fronts. But thanks to the recently reviewed WICKED GOOD BURGERS cookbook, I am back grinding my own ground beef and having good success, This blog shall cover both what went wrong initially and what is now going right when I grind my own meat. Read More...
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Wicked Good Cookbook

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This past April, while my Kitchen was being renovated, I picked up a cookbook by local chef/restauranteur Andy Husbands and BBQ cooking enthusiast Chris Hart together with food writer Andrea Pyenson called Wicked Good Burgers. Husbands and Hart are also members of the iQUE competition BBQ team which won the national championship in 2009. I smile every time I think of the shock that must have greeted a team of Yankees winning this BBQ competition. After I bought the book I spent the entire month of April drooling because I could only look, but not cook the recipes in this great looking cookbook. In fact I liked it before I even picked it up to look at it in the store. You see "wicked" is a slang term used here in New England as an adjective modifying another word to mean "incredibly". So the cookbook brought a smile to my face before I'd even picked it up. Plus I knew these guys shared some of the same traditions surrounding summer cookouts that I didi. This blog entry will be a review and first impressions of this wicked good cookbook. Read More...
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Kitchen Renovation-Nice Touches

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PART 1 of this two part blog entry covered some of the planning considerations and things you should do when contemplating a Kitchen renovation. Part 2 will cover some small items, that can make a big difference to the usability of your Kitchen. These items aren't just for use in new Kitchens. Most of them can be added relatively easily to your existing Kitchen. Several of these items were things I was going to leave out to get the budget in line. It took about 6 weeks to get the cabinets fabricated which gave me some time to work on getting these items back in the project. Fortunately in all cases I was able to scrape together some additional money to get these items back in the scope of work by the time the work actually began. Read More...
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Kitchen Renovation-Big Picture Planning

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Recently I had my Kitchen completely gutted and renovated. I am an architect so here was a case where I knew the needs of my client (me) very well. The work is through and there are many things that have proven to be a pleasant surprise. Part 1 of this 2 part blog entry will cover some of the big picture planning items that can make your new Kitchen a success. Even if you aren’t planning a new Kitchen, you might want to have a look at PART 2, which wiIt will cover some of the little things that can make a big difference in the usefulness of the Kitchen. If you are doing work on your Kitchen they are worth considering, but many of these items can be added to an existing Kitchen without doing a total renovation. Some are things you can't appreciate until you actually use them day to day. Several were things I almost left out to keep the project under budget. Instead I scraped up the money and added them back in to the scope of work. Lastly there are some organizational items I picked up which helped me get even more out of my Kitchen. Read More...
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Great "Eggcessory" by Weber!!??

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You read that right. Weber actually makes an accessory that is an excellent Eggcessory too. In fact I'll go that statement one better. The Big Green Egg Company actually makes their own version of this accessory and in my opinion, the Weber accessory is far more useful. In the past I have written some blog entries where I have had very positive things to say about the quality and usefulness of some of the BGE Eggcessories. Here is a case where I feel a Weber accessory made for the Weber kettle is far superior to the equivalent BGE Eggcessory. This blog entry will make my case and I'll let you decide for yourself which one fits your needs best. Read More...
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Let There Be Light-Part 2

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In PART 1 of this blog entry about getting lighting in my Grill Gazebo, I covered everything up to installing the lights: planning the runs, picking the wiring method, deciding to do the work myself and actually running the wiring. PART 2 will cover selecting and installing the light fixtures. Read More...
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Let There Be Light-Part 1

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When I had my grill gazebo built last September, the plan was I'd be able use it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. So lighting was always one of the items I planned on including, but the reality of the situation was the budget couldn't handle it at the time the gazebo was built. This year while my Kitchen was under renovation and my Big Green Eggs were not being used, I figured that would be a great time to add in the lighting. Part 1 of this blog entry will cover how I fed power to the lights and some of the materials used to do so. PART 2 will cover the selection and purchase of the exterior barn light style fixtures I ended up using. So if you are more interested in the lights, feel free to skip to PART 2. Read More...
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Ketchup - What's Up on the Site

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Please excuse the bad pun. The intent of this blog post was to get people caught up on what has been going on behind the scenes here and one of the items is the new Condiments section. The site has been stagnant for 2 months. Now thatI am posting again, there are some changes to the site I wanted to make people aware of. Some of the changes are the reasons why it took longer than expected for me to actively post new picture entries or blog entries. Many of the reasons are related to the size and internal structure of this website and how adding new sections or moving items between sections is a somewhat major effort. As you will discover, I’ve added two new sections and I can tell you I have moved a half dozen entries around. So although I have had new content for 2 weeks now, I wanted to make all of the internal changes before I updated the active version of the site. Read More...
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Cold Weather Cooking on the BGE - Summary

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Now that the days are getting longer and winter is turning to spring, I figured I would write a follow up to my earlier blog COLD WEATHER COOKING ON THE BIG GREEN EGG. I have now had a full winters worth of cooking on the Big Green Egg and I will admit to being rather surprised at how similar the experience is to using it in the summer. I shouldn’t be surprised though. People I trusted told me there was little difference, but after years using other gear this claim seemed to good to be true. I joked in the first blog that the only difference between cooking in the summer and cooking in the winter is the cook (you) has to dress more warmly in the winter. Basically with one exception I will discuss in a minute, I was able to cook whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I have written before about achieving some degree of weather independence. But the Big Green Egg has allowed me to pretty much totally achieve it. Read More...
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First Paella on the Egg - Technical Details

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This blog entry is about what I learned making my first paella on the Big Green Egg. This isn’t my first paella, I’ve probably made 50 or more paellas in the Kitchen and on the gas grill, but this was the first one on the Big Green Egg. There are some important differences both good and bad. While I plan to make all future paellas on the BGE going forward, lets just say my gas grill has probably earned a new lease on life. This blog entry will discuss the differences I’ve discovered. Read More...
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Chef Sleeve Dishwasher Safe iPad Stand-Review

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This is Part 2 of a two part blog entry on the Chef Sleeve Disposable iPad Sleeves and the Chef Sleeve Dishwasher Safe iPad Stand. In Part 1 I reviewed the Disposable iPad Sleeves, so Part 2 will cover the stands. The stand will also fir other Tablet devices as long as they are no bigger or thicker than any of the iPad models. The stand may be suitable for devices larger than the iPad too, but I can’t say that with certainty. At some point a bigger device would upset the balance and tip over. Now to be quite honest, I wasn’t in the market for another iPad stand - or at least I didn’t think I was. In the week or so it took me to get out to a Target store to buy the sleeves, I’d had a change of heart. Now I find I use the stand far more than I ever expected. Read More...
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Chef Sleeve Disposable iPad Sleeve-Review

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Sometimes you find things in unexpected places. A few weeks ago I was watching a video podcast from the recently completed MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.I never expected it would have any tie-in to my cooking activities. To my surprise two of the products featured on the podcast were manufactured by the same company, Chef Sleeve, and were of great interest. The products were clear plastic sleeves for using the iPad in the Kitchen and a dishwasher safe stand for the iPad. The sleeves which were of great interest to me were called the Chef Sleeve Disposable iPad Sleeves. The stand which initially looked interesting, but was not something I was going to buy is called the Chef Sleeve Dishwasher Safe iPad Stand. I will cover these products in two separate blog entries. This first entry will cover the sleeves and the second will discuss the stand which I did end up buying. Read More...
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New Kitchen!!

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I have been neglecting the site a little bit lately, and this will continue for a few months moving forward. Usually when I have to do this, it is because I am swamped with work or sometimes family health issues. This time it is for an exciting reason: we are getting our Kitchen remodeled. It is not just the Kitchen cabinets, it is also the floors, walls and ceiling. Because the indoor Kitchen will be out of commission for nearly two months it will curtail my use of the Egg. When I don’t update the site as regularly as usual, I will often get contacted via the contact form by folks asking if everything is alright. So for those of you who have noticed I am not posting pictures of new cooks or updating my blog, all is well. Anyone who wants to learn a little more, read on. Read More...
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Wok Talk - Wok Chuan - Essential Gear

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I’ve been woking for about 3 months now and loving it. I am constantly trying to find videos online for stir-fried recipes to both find new recipes and learn techniques. Many of these are posted by “regular” folks, some are folks with a food background and still others are professional chefs. Now many people in the first two categories use flat-bottomed woks on an an electric range. That is it’s own use case and you can use somewhat different tools because this style wok is more like a traditional western pan. But for the people in the “regular” folks and the folks with a food background categories, I am surprised how many of them use a wooden spoon, a wooden spatula or a metal spatula in a traditional bowl-shaped woks. This blog will discuss the Wok Chuan or Wok Spatula, a shovel shaped tool, and why I feel it is an essential tool that everyone using a bowl-shaped wok should use. Read More...
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Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun - Pt. 2

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In PART 1 of this blog I talked about why I changed my thought process from adding a Small Big Green Egg as my second Egg, to adding a second Large. In Part 2 I will discuss what I have learned in my first month of ownership, some things I expected and some pleasant surprises. BTW I am not singling out the Small BGE for criticism here, I am describing why for me having two Eggs of the same size has many advantages for how I want to use them. Read More...
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I Took the Weekend Off

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While I haven’t been posting here I have been using my Egg quite a bit to make stir fry’s. I’ve been playing with several of the recipes in an effort to perfect my techniques. But here is one day I decided to take off. The so-called “Blizzard of 2013” arrived on Friday and lasted into Saturday afternoon. It was an amazing and at times frightening storm. while the Big Green Egg might have been up for the conditions, I decided I certainly wasn’t and took the weekend off from grilling. I thought I’d share a few pictures about the conditions. Read More...
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Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun - Pt. 1

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Right after the first of the year I picked up my second Big Green Egg, which was also a second Large Big Green Egg. When I purchase my first Egg in August I thought I might someday get a Small BGE at some point in the future, probably measured in years. I never gave any thought about a second Large until a few months after buying my first Egg in August. This two-part blog will discuss what changed my thought process, my first impressions of having two Eggs and what I’ve discovered are some of the advantages of my new setup. Part 1 will discuss the lead up to getting the second Egg and having it be a second Large and not a Small. Part 2 will discuss what I’ve learned since the second Egg joined my grilling arsenal. Read More...
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Index by Grill - Site Improvement

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This past week I’ve added a new Navigation aid to make navigating the site easier fro some folks. When I started this site, I had no idea how big it would grow to. I am grilling year round day and night far more than I ever imagined. As a result there are more entries than I ever imagined. I’ve also found recently that folks are using the site in a different way than I imagined. As a result I’ve added a new type of index: a so-called INDEX OF GRILLS. Read More...
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Tundra Fire Extinguisher - Easy as 1, 2….

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This blog is about a very neat device I discovered while watching an episode of the Cooking Everything Outdoors podcast. It is the First Alert brand Tundra fire extinguishing spray. The show’s host, Gary House, was making a cedar planked pork loin roast and had both a spray water bottle & a small fire extinguisher that was the size of a large aerosol spray can. When you are cooking with wood planks, you are walking a fine line between a smoking plank & a fiery plank. I think just about anyone who has cooked on a cedar plank has also burned one up. I liked the small size of this unit because it seemed like you could easy bring it most anywhere, I had to email Gary House with a question about the recipe and I also asked about the fire extinguisher. In his reply he said it was the First Alert Tundra. I began to look into this unique fire extinguisher and the more I looked into it, the more things I found to like. Read More...
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BGE Cookbook - iBooks Version - Review

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I am so Eggcited because this morning I stumbled onto the fact that the Big Green Egg Cookbook is available in an iBooks version usable on Mac OSX or iOS devices. So what you say, it is available in a Kindle version too, for less money. This I know and I even wrote a blog entry about it: BIG GREEN EGG - PT. 13 - BIG GREEN EGG COOKBOOK. While I very much liked the $9.95 price and knew you must give up something when you pay $9.95 for a book that lists at $50.00 and can be found for about $30.00 online as a physical book. While I had other books in the Kindle format, this was my first cookbook in Kindle format. I never realized the sacrifices in navigation you made. The other eBooks I’ve bought are read from front to back, from start to finish. A cookbook is rarely used this way. Instead you jump around the book quite a bit. Today I found, quite by accident, that there was an iBooks version of it for $19.95. It basically eliminates all of my navigational complaints about the Kindle version, adds in some navigational features that make it easier than a physical book and has all of the great pictures and beautiful layout of the physical book. It is wonderful to have this kind of choice. I am not going to repeat my earlier blog’s review of this as a cookbook full of recipes. This review will talk about the differences between the iBook, Kindle & physical book version. If you are interested in buying the cookbook, I suggest you follow the link above to read the other entry. Read More...
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KA Juicer Attachment

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This blog entry is slightly off topic, in that it is not about grilling or smoking, but it is food related and it is my blog… My topic is making fresh squeezed orange juice using the Kitchen Aid Citrus Juicer Stand Mixer Attachment. Using this mixer attachment is quite quick and easy to make fresh squeezed orange juice. My first attempt produce some wonderful tasting fresh orange juice that was head and shoulders above what passes for orange juice in New England in the depth of winter. Read More...
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Two Egg Breakfast

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I wanted to start making use of my two Big Green Eggs, now that I’ve done a few cooks on the new Egg to make sure it was working correctly. I wanted to learn the logistics of getting them both started and cooking things on them simultaneously. Perhaps there were little things I hadn’t thought of and would only find out by doing it. I also wanted to check out my new cabinet arrangement and how it worked for doing prep and holding ingredients for both of my Eggs. I wanted to get some practice runs in before I needed to actually use both Eggs for a holiday or some special occasion. For my first meal I decided to make a breakfast bowl AKA a skillet breakfast. I decided to make what I called a Meatlovers Breakfast Bowl. Read More...
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Some Assembly Required - Execution

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In PART 1 of this blog, I described how I got to the day(s) where I picked up and assembled my second Large BGE. If you are just interested in the assembly process this is the entry for you. As I mentioned I posted a blog entry BGE PART 1-ASSEMBLY back in August, where I said you are probably better off having your dealer do the assembly, particularly if it is free. I still stand by that opinion, but now I can write about assembling your own Egg and you can decide what is right for you. Read More...
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Some Assembly Inquired - Background.

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This 2 part blog will be about purchasing and assembling my second Large Big Green Egg. Part 1 will be about the background behind why I purchased my second BGE and why it was a large. In PART 2 I will discuss assembling the Egg and some of the changes the company has made in the 5 months since I purchased my original Large back in August. I posted a blog entry BGE PART 1-ASSEMBLY back in August, where I said you are probably better off having your dealer do the assembly, particularly if it is free. I still stand by that opinion, but now I can write about assembling your own Egg and you can decide what is right for you. If you are just interested in the assembly process you should skip straight to PART 2. Read More...
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