One Of Those Weekends

The Chili Cookoff we had planned this weekend canceled. I wasn't too disappointed through. We have been cooking a lot this past month and needed the break anyway.
So I spent all weekend cooking at the house.

It was cold, wet and windy all weekend. I did spend a little time in the shop, but changed my mind after a few short minutes. With the cold, I just couldn't get motivated enough to do anything constructive.

I like cooking almost as much as I like eating. When I cook I like to try things I have not done and taste things I have never tasted.
Don't get me wrong, I would be happy living on brisket and potato salad for the rest of my life, but sometimes I want to try things outside the box.

Take Pasta Primavera for instance. I would have never though I would love this dish. All those flavors were amazing. For the meat I made a Peppercorn Crusted Beef Tenderloin to go with the pasta and a Olive Cheese Bread for a side. Some family and friends came over Saturday night to help eat all the food and afterwards play some cards.

I don't like blue cheese all that much, but Sunday night I took a blue cheese and onion cream and spooned it over Grilled Sirloin Steaks, it was out of this world. Add in Twice Baked Potatoes and Butter Garlic Bread, you have yourself a meal suited for a king. For desert I made Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes served with Vanilla Ice scream, (nothing but sin right there)

And if you were wondering, yes I did my own dishes and cleaned up. I didn't just leave it for the ol lady to take of.

We won't be cooking chili again for a couple of weeks. If the weather would straighten up I might get some things done around the house.

See ya next time,
Jerry

Under A Hundred

I have a book that is full of projects. Some are finished in the design stages and ready for construction and others are just a simple idea wrote down waiting to be worked through.
This book is filled with some costly projects, some cheap ones, some that will take months to complete and others that will only take a few hours. I often go to this book when I am bored and want to dream a little.

Saturday morning was just one of those days. I was in my shop tinkering around and got bored. I picked up my project book and flipped through the pages until I found one interesting enough to hold my attention. The outdoor kitchen was what I stopped at. I studied the elaborate plans I drew up many months ago and looked at the cost column and mumbled to myself, "there was no way."
I asked myself why I needed something so costly and over built just to cook on so I started scribbling on the page again. I don't need the sink right now, I don't need the built in fish fryers at the moment either. I also did not need to sink my grill in the counter top and I really didn't need to cover the whole thing with stone and tile. I also didn't need to have it wrap all the way abound the patio at the moment either. So what I ended up with was a project under $100.00 instead of one that cost $1500.00
On top of all that, this is a lot more piratical for what I need at the moment.

A friend gave me the counter top cook stove a year or so ago. All I had to do was buy a Propane regulator for it and adjust the needle valves to change it from natural gas to LP. I already had the granite for the counter tops and most of the wood. I did have to buy the plywood and a couple of boards. Total cost was $40.00.
All the wood is sealed from the weather and sure, it would look better with doors and stone wrapped around it but why? It will serve it's purpose just the way it is.
Instead of doing the whole project at once, I have broke it into sections. This one being the first and the next one being a drop down corner section that my little upright smoker will sit on. Then on to the other sections after that.

I built it yesterday and last night we had some friends over and gave it a test run, everything worked great. We had grilled chicken and pasta with home made aristocrat sauce, unbelievable on how good this food was.  
 I am so happy to have a gas stove again making where I am not so dependent on the electric one in the house or having to start a fire to use coals to cook off of.

I already have my Cajun Microwave so next on the list is the dutch oven cooking area, then the pizza oven and then maybe a rocket stove. Maybe the rocket stove first.

Thanks for reading, talk to ya later,
Jerry       
   
 

Sunday At The Stove

I told you at the beginning of the week I wanted to break down the events of last weekend so I would have something to write about.
 Being I work till dark everyday and can't get much done in the evenings besides shower, shave and eat, I have been lacking on posts. I think I made up for it this week though.

After all the little things I did on Saturday like the Bio Sand Filter and the Sawdust Log Press plus some other odds and ends, I found myself without much to do on Sunday.
The first thing I did was install a men's urinal in my shop.
Yes, that is a funnel going out the wall held on by bailing wire. 


Next, my mom calls me and tells me the local grocery has potatoes on sell for 19 cents a pound. Being I did not have that great of a potato harvest this year I jumped on the chance to put some up. So I ran up to the store and got 55 pounds of taters.

    
I began by pealing every one of them by hand. Great for the compost bins, hard on the hands.

 Okay, I picked up this 1960s slicer at a garage sell for a buck. Now, I am around heavy equipment all day that can kill you and in my shop I operate all kinds of saws that can dismember and hurt you. This little thing right here is the most dangerous thing I have ever operated. All I could think of is my fingers being taken off a quarter inch at a time.




Enough of all that so I went and grabbed my meat slicer and went to town on those potatoes.

After blanching the slices and soaking them in lemon water for a few minutes I put them on the dehydrator. 

The finished product is several jars nicely filled with a serving of potatoes I can use in all kinds of dishes. 
I think the shelf life for these is four years.








I also shredded some and vacuum sealed them up for hash browns.



No, that wasn't all the taters, I dehydrated twenty pounds, kept ten pounds to eat, made ten pounds of potato salad, and shredded fifteen pounds for hash browns.
I can tell you this, my feet were tired when it was all done.

That's all I got done on Sunday and it's all I got for now.  

Just A Phase I Guess

"When y'all get out of this phase in life, I want some of these decorations" My oldest (BEB) told me over the weekend.
Am I really that predictable? 

This weekend was our first at home chili cook off and I can say with out a doubt it was a success. It was out of the normal and completely out of the box. One of my friends that joined us told me he thought it was so cool that we do stuff like this because his family never does.

This ended up being almost a three day even with set up on Friday night, cooking and all that most of the day Saturday and then clean up Sunday.

First place went to our teammate Rhonda, I got second and my mom won third.
Even though it was windy and cold outside, we were tucked away in my dad's nice warm shop. Big thanks to him and mom for providing a spot to hold all those folks and to have a great time.

Next weekend is our first official cook off of the year. We will going up against some real tough competition and seasoned chili cooking veterans. I am looking to take home first place, but if I don't then I will use the excuse that it's about the fun and not the winning.

So anyway, the kids think this is just a new phase I am going through and it will come to an end just like all the rest. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, I don't know yet, but I am having fun with it so far and that's all that matters. Who knows how long it will last.  

Check back in a couple of days because I am right in the middle of a new solar build. I think you might like it.      

I Laugh At The Easy Way

Nothing I do is normal or in moderation. Some say I make it hard on myself by going to the extreme with everything I do. Well I say if your going to do it, then there ain't no reason to just get your feet wet, might as well jump on in and stay awhile.

Here's what I'm talking about,
This weekend marks the first of many chili cook offs this year. We decided to have the first one at the house and we called it our "First Annual at Home Chili Cook Off". Even though this event it is not sanctioned through CASI, it's still where a hand full of friends and family were to come over, have a little fun and test about ten different kinds of chilies our team makes. It is set up just like a real event and folks judge the best chili with the winner getting a pretty little trophy I made. If you have not seen them I have a picture in an earlier post.
However, the weather usually does not work out for the better in something like this so the weekend forcast will be cold, strong North winds and rain. By this time the hand full of people coming over has now grown into a huge mob and with no place to put all these nice people, panic almost set in.
I was almost to the point of cancellation sitting there with my head in my hands when my dad called last night and offered his facilities to hold the event. I can say he saved the chili day.

So now we have gone from about 10 judges with simple chili dogs for supper, held outside on a nice 70 degree day to around 40 folks, inside the barn with huge amount of BBQ Chicken, Ribs, Sausage, Brisket, Potato Salad, Baked Beans and a hand full of appetizers for supper.
There ain't nothing second class about this operation here now.
Along with managing my pots of chili being cooked, I will also be manning the smoker and grill.  
(I can almost bet ya I'm going to have a blast) 

If I wanted it easy, then there ain't no reason to even get out of bed.
   

It's That Time Of Year Again

October will kick off a new year in the Competition Chili Cook Offs and it should be a good one.

Last weekend our team judged at the Oklahoma State Chili Competition in Durant and had a great time. We got some good ideas on what we want our booth to look like this year and met some really nice folks with some even being past world champions themselves.

October 13th will be our first one of the year held in a little town just to our West then in November on to a town to the East.  I hope to get to cook for at least ten competitions this year to gain enough points to get invited to the big one. I know it's a long shot and I am really not planning on it, but it's worth a shot.

Our pots at the house have already been fired up to make sure our chili meets the standards. Every little change causes big differences in the taste and no pot is ever the exact same twice. Just changing the brand of chili powder can make a huge difference. It will take several more pots and the rest of this month to prefect the chili we intend to turn in. 

I personally do not like competition chili because it's only juice and meat. I like mine thick with some substance, but the judges don't so I make it their way.
The wife makes hers with a little more bite than mine and the other team mates go a little outside the box with theirs. I want mine to be simple, smooth and with a slight aftertaste.

The weekend before our first competition we will be having a chili tasting here at the house for all the friends and family to come by and give us some feedback. We will go through the whole set up with our booth and act like it's the real deal for the "at home advent", a trial run so to speak. That way we can see how our booth looks and make any adjustments if needed to the set up. We have four cooks in a 12x12 booth at the same time and things will need to be arranged so we do not step over one another and get in each others way. Plus the honesty of the tasters will help in deciding if we need to make any final adjustments to the recipe just in case it is too salty or anything else they come up with.  

This also gives us the chance to make sure our carts are stocked with everything we will need. It is easy to cook in the house with a well stocked kitchen, but there is nothing worse than finding out you forgot something when you are away from it. A fully equipped cart is the backbone to having a great time. 
        
It's going to be a good year and It's also going to be fun. I will post pictures when we have the booth all set up for you to judge how it looks. Plus I am sure I will share or trials and tribulations along the way.

Until next time,   

Potato Bin

Another crazy and busy weekend has come and gone.

Just a quick update on the bathhouse signs. I got them all finished but after glossing them, some turned out too dark to read so I am needing to redo three.

As far as today, the preacher was really wound up this morning and ran us over so I had a late start. Don't get me wrong, his message was great and it kinda hit me right in the forehead. I think he plans his sermons around my life, or at least it seams that way. 
We didn't get home till almost 1:00 and had to be gone again by 2:30. Luckily the wife had some people over buying books so that bought me about another hour to build on the potato bins.

   
I took 2x6 boards and cut them to make a three foot square. I then nailed in a 4x4 at opposite corners on the first rung up high enough to accommodate the 2x6 squares to be stacked five high.
The idea is the same as the tires. The plants grow and you add the next tier with compost and straw.
I should be able to plant 6 to 8 plants in each bin.
I am only starting off with two for the Feb 15th planting and if the are any good then I will make more for the fall planting.

At 3:00 we finally had to git. My buddy Dave and his wife were cooking liver and gizzards with mashed potatoes and gravy. They invited the whole family over and I was not going to miss out on this one. Being there was not anything healthy about that meal I was not about to go half way. I figured if I am going to do it then I am going to jump in with both feet and make it worth my while.
Man did I tear up some of that.  

Y'all have a great week and be safe.