BBQ Chicken Bacon Ranch Taco

In this weeks Taco Tuesday challenge, it was a battle of the BBQ chicken tacos. Although, it was not much of a contest against my girl's mad skillz. While I can admit defeat on this challenge, I will maintain that my Chicken Bacon Ranch Taco was indeed worthy of an honorable mention.

My smoked Chicken Bacon taco with topped with Ranch Salsa




Her Smoked Chicken Taco with cilantro Caesar ranchero cheese, salad and pinto beans with jalapeno's

So it has Begun

My free pre-release copy of the Full Plate Diet book arrived in the mail today. This diet was created by the Lifestyle Center of America (read the back story here), a non-profit organization "whose only mission is to improve the health and vitality of hum beings around the world". This is a well planned spiral bound book beginning with The Full Plate Concept as chapter one then walking you through the steps of changing your eating habits. The general concept being that you add fiber to your meals by way of fruits and vegetables. Easy and basic. Loaded with recipes as well as lessons and instruction, it looks like the Full Plate Diet will be easy to follow.

Taco Fail

The wonderful woman in my life and I have turned Tuesday nights in a semi-challenge with Taco Tuesdays. It all started innocently enough with a little chatter about not having to decide what to make for dinner on Taco Tuesdays. We both enjoy cooking and sharing our food adventures through pictures so it It didn't take long before this came as a challenge between us to make the better taco. She is an amazing cook with the unlimited creativity of an artist and the hands of a surgeon so the idea of one-upping her is not an easy task to take on. As we create our different tacos, I will post pictures and recipes as a series in the blog.

This week, I decided to stick with a traditional ground beef style taco and shift my focus to making my own puffy style fried taco shells using Maseca Corn Flour. I made the the tortillas as per the directions on the bag and rolled them into little balls. With a dutch oven full of hot oil, I began pressing these balls into gorgeous flat tortillas. Well at least I tried to make gorgeous flat tortillas. This is where some nice tools like a tortilla press or even a rolling pin would have come in handy. I could quickly tell that a lack of these simple tools was going to be a distinct disadvantage.

After using every thing I could get my hands on to smash these little balls into a semi-recognizable tortilla like shape, they were carefully folded into the hot frying oil. Unfortunately the Home Sick Texan made this look at lot easier than it really was. In the end, we had some pretty tasty nachos on a bed of homemade fried puffy crumbled tortillas that were not worthy of a picture.

Luckily, I had a huge advantage this week as my sweetie was unable to make it to the kitchen which allowed me to take this week by default. Next week, I wont be so lucky!

The Full Plate Diet

As I was reading the Monday Morning Memo this morning, Roy introduced us to a new book by the name of The Full Plate Diet. I am not big on the idea of chasing diet fads and looking for easy answers to all of life's problems. Everyone knows that the trick to losing weight is simple math, burn more calories than you take in. Even though it seems so simple I have the hardest time feeding myself and my family healthy foods and getting the exorcise we need. You can read all the diet books in the world and nothing will help you until you are ready to make a change to your own behavior and self control.

After I read the memo my interest and curiosity was peaked. Just like any hungry fish in the sea, I took the bait and ordered up my pre-release free copy. The only catch is that they want feedback on how it worked. Now as a taker of the free pre-release copy, I agree to share my thoughts and experience using this diet method. Therefor, this is the beginning of a new journey which will document here for the record.

Promises, Promises

I have been very unfaithful to my poor little blog over the years so I am now looking to fix that problem. Writing is not a strong point for me which makes the whole blogging thing very difficult. It is not for a lack of ideas, rather a lack of organization of my thoughts and spitting them out in a legible format. Maybe I should not have slept though all those classes at school. Whoda thunkit?!?

Things have changed in many ways since the time I started the Barbecue and Beer blog and I have a lot to talk about. I have gone from building a smoker for the backyard to competing in BBQ competitions to creating and building a marketable brand. All of this said, I have a lot of great things to blog about.

Now for the promise.. I promise to myself and to my poor little neglected blog that I will dedicate the time needed to create at least one blog entry per week about a BBQ or beer related issue. So, starting at this point I will start posting entries to the Barbecue and Beer blog as well as the Sograte BBQ Blog. K, that's it for now, see you soon!

Oh and don't forget to subscribe!

"Life's a Pitch, Then You Buy It" - RIP Billy Mays

Every time I turned on the TV, this man was yelling at me about some life altering product. Some of these products became common house hold items. Whether or not you ever bought anything Billy Mays was selling, you were familiar with his face, his voice and his pitch.

In April of 2009 Discovery Channel launched a new series featuring this unique man and the team behind him called Pitchmen. In a single episode, Pitchmen earned my respect. In a single episode, I was no longer annoyed with these commercials selling a magic putty, drill mounted hole diggers and other seemingly crazy products. I was now mesmerized with Billy Mays and his producer Anthony Sullivan for the process of finding products that thought would be useful in our lives. The insight into the process of finding products to pitch, the effort put into giving the consumer maximum value was eye opening. The Pitchmen series quickly became a 'must see' show along with Deadliest Catch and Man Vs Food.

Billy Mays made many peoples dreams come true. He spent his life bringing other peoples inventions to a very broad market. Billy put everything he had into closing the sale, no matter what the product was. What an inspiration to us aspiring entrepreneurs.

On June 28th 2009, Billy Mays was found unresponsive by his wife. The fascinating pitch man had passed. With my new found respect for his booming voice telling me why I need Oxy Clean or Kaboom, I will truly miss this man yelling at me about his latest product.

Discover Channel will be airing a tribute show to Billy on on July 9th.

May GOD bless your soul, Billy Mays!

Friday Night Drinking Thread

As I work on getting back to blogging on a regular basis, I introduce the BBQ and Beer blogs's Friday Night Drinking Song. This Fiday the 13th and Valentine's eve I give you Ribs and Whiskey from Widespread Panic.

Lyrics:
I seen your sister naked
Nothing I tried to see
Caught your sister by the pool there
Nothing I tried to see
Well I hope it's not huntin' day
I hope it's not your daddy's shootin' day
Ribs and whiskey make my mind feel tight
Whiskey makes my body feel hot
If you won't be my love
I'm gonna find a new place to spend my night

The 2009 Crawfish Season is Here!

If you are in the market for live crawfish but cant find them locally, I highly recommend The Cajun Shop. You can order live or precooked crawfish delivered to your door in a shippable and reusable cooler. A shipment of crawfish comes complete with cajun spices, mardi gras beads, instructions and even crawfish bibs.

At the time of my last order, crawfish were out of season and only available as pre-cooked and frozen. Even being pre-cooked we re-boiled with more spices and had a great time with it. I chose them because they were about $4.00/b cheaper than buying them locally, and that included overnight shipping charges.

Check them out here cajun-shop.com

2008 Barbecue Season Wrap-Up

This is a quick wrap-up of the 2008 season. Out of 6 events, we placed a total of 13 top ten finishes. Of these 13 top tens, there were three 1st places, one 3rd place, one 4th place, one 6th place, three 7th places, two 9th places and two 10th places. This was a good year overall with some good times and some bad times. We endured some very crazy weather and even a flood but still managed to leave every event with at least one reward. Looking forward, we are very excited about the 2009 season as we will be chasing a few bigger events this year and even try to hit some Texas State Championships cook-offs. As always, we are willing to promote the good name of any business that wishes to support the efforts of the Sograte BBQ team.


13 top ten finishes out of 6 events


4th Buffalo Springs Lake Buffalo Wing BBQ, Lubbock, TX
Date: 4-26-08
Number of Teams: 51

Brisket, 7th
Pork Spare Ribs, 6th
Buffalo wings, 9th
---------------------


Homer's Backyard Ball BBQ, Amarillo, TX
Date: 5-17-08
Number of Teams: 79

Brisket, 10th
Chicken, 9th
---------------------


Odessa, TX
Date: Not sure
Number of Teams: Not sure, 30ish

Brisket, 10th
---------------------


No Adult Supervision BBQ Cookoff, Tahoka, TX
July 26, 2008
Number of Teams: 31

Brisket, 7th
Ribs 7th
---------------------


High Plains Epilepsy BBQ Cookoff, Lubbock, TX
August 2, 2008
Number of Teams: 5

Brisket, 1st
Ribs, 3rd
Chicken, 1st
Beans, 1st
High Point winner
---------------------


Bruce Thornton AC BBQ Battle, Lubbock, TX
Date: 8-16-08

Chicken, 4th (Ashlee's Chicken)
---------------------

Barbecue Surprise

So, this guy buys some kind of smoker at an auction, only to find a human leg.

A man who bought a smoker Tuesday at an auction of abandoned items might have thought twice had he looked inside first.

Maiden police said the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee.

Now there seems to be a custody dispute over the detached appendage. The new owner had turned it over police, who then turned it over to the funeral home after finding that it was not a result of "foul play". Now there is a fight over who gets the leg back from the funeral home.

Whisnant, who put a sign on the empty smoker charging adults $3 and children $1 for a look, now wants the leg back.

"He's making a freak show out of it," Wood told The Charlotte Observer for a Monday story. "He wants to put money in his pocket with this thing."

I would have rather bought the house with $100K in the attic.

Cary's Hard Lemonade

After a day of hard day of setting up a lemonade stand, standing guard and cleaning up - it was time for a cup of lemonade that I could enjoy. I poured some leftover raspberry lemonade over some rum and was surprised with the results.

Here is the recipe for some excellent lemonade the adults can enjoy.

1/2 gallon water
1 can Frozen lemonade concentrate
1/4 cup frozen raspberries
3/4 cup sugar
1 bottle Captain Morgan Spiced Rum

Good water is an essential trick to a quality drink, make sure to use filtered or bottled water for best results.

Boil 1 cup of water, add sugar. This dissolves the sugar down to a simple syrup.
Mash the raspberries in a bowl. Strain the raspberries into a pitcher.
Add the frozen lemonade concentrate and simple syrup to the pitcher, then fill pitcher with water.
Mix well.
Fix a tumbler with ice and a shot of rum. Top off with raspberry lemonade.

The kids can enjoy a cup of "virgin" raspberry lemonade while you relax with a glass of Cary's Hard Lemonade.

Picture Slide Show from a Cook-off

Been a while since I have posted anything so I thought I would post a slide show of pictures from one of the cook-off we have done this year.

15K Worth of Free Barbecue Related Prizes at Smokinaphattie.com

My friends at smoking a phattie are offering $15,000.00 worth of prizes to the first 1000 registered members of their new website, www.smokinapahttie.com. That is an average of $150.00 each in barbecue related prizes ranging from smokers and barbecue grills, to gift cards, BBQ sauces, rubs and Smokinaphattie.com apparel. To qualify you must: complete a profile by answering all profile questions and upload a profile picture. IT'S THAT EASY!!!! And it's FREE.

Smokinaphattie.com is like myspace for the barbecue aficionado. This social networking site has features like your own personal page, personal blogs, people search forums, classifieds and recipes. There is no reason look any further for a friendly barbecue community. Meet new people, swap ideas, or just read-up on what everybody else is doing in the world of barbecue.

I am in no way affiliated with Smokin a Phattie and only helping them get the word out to all of my friends in Q. And yes, I am registered. Now quit messing around, get over there and register your new account. They can also be found on myspace.

BBQ Contests for Profit

BBQ Blog has a great post regarding the idea of atttempting to make money through barbecue competitions. BBQ Contests for Profit -- an editorial

BBQ contests have not yet reached the point where the contest itself offers a substantial enough purse to be economically feasible for more than one or two of the competitors at each event. By the time you factor in expenses for meat, travel, lodging, entry fees, wear and tear on vehicles and equipment just for starters, you're in the hole already....unless you are fortunate to win the $1,500 or $800 (average amounts, some contests pay less), you're never going to come out on the positive end of things.

Read it all.

While I will glady pick a competition that has greater prize money over lesser paying comps, I am not in it for the money. Sounds funny, but think about it. This is a hobby. Just like any hobby, it is an expense and not a means of income. You have to pay to play. Any time that you think you are going to profit from your hobby you are asking for disaster.

While I like events that promise bigger payouts, I am not looking come home and payoff my debts. Rather, if I can recover some of the expense involved, it is more likely that I will be able to hit another competition. Bigger paying events also bring in better competition. It is more fun to compete with heavy hitters that have an extensive track record and trailer full of hardware. Before you can be the best, you have to beat the best. Still working on that, but keep your eyes open.

Lowe's Buffalo BBQ Battle, August 18-19, 2006

August 18th-19th, Sograte BBQ Team (Cary and Steve) went to the Buffalo BBQ Battle held at Buffloa Springs Lake - Lubbock, Texas. There were 104 teams there and most of them were major players that were shooting for one of several major invitaions including the state championship in Meridian, TX and the Jack Daniels.

We were cooking on my new smoker for the first time. We have been working on it for months. Thurday morning (17th), we went out to the shop and wired the trailer, finished some welding, hooked it up and drug it out to the lake. We worked our asses off to get out there as early as possible. We knew that there were only 30 something spots with hook-ups and they were already filling up fast. There were only 2 spots left with full hook-ups when we got there at 11:30 in the morning. The rest of the day was wasted running back to town, shopping and grabbing all of the stuff we forgot.

This cooker was so new that we had not even had a chance to cook on it yet. In fact, it was not even painted yet. Luckily we were there early enough that we had time to get a fire in it learn a little bit about it before we started cooking. We built the first fire in it Friday morning about 10:00. Everything looked great, we were unable to build enough heat it the cook chamber. Now I know that this is a big cooker and built differently from anything I have ever cooked on but after sveral hours have passed and we still could not get over 200 degrees it was time to start worrying. We started discussing some major changes, and needed to get them done fast.

After much brain storming and debating, the first thing we tried was to remove a tuning plate to determine if the plates were not allowing enough heat into the cooker. That was unsuccesful so we we turned the trailer so the firbox was to the wind. This was a big help and we finallly got the the damn thing up to cooking temperatures. We spent about 6-8 hours getting up to 250. Now we were up to cooking temps, but still had a hard time getting much more out of it.

Once we got past that, it was time to start soaking beans, brining chicken, rubbing briskets and all of that fun stuff. We went ahead and started cooking the briskets early because we were not sure of what to expect out of the cooker. Now keep in mind, this whole time we have been pouring keystone light down our necks.

Once all of the prep work was done and the briskets were cooking, we went riding around with a friend on his gas powered golf cart. We were really drunk (well, 'we' was mostly me - Steve was smart enough to stop earlier in the evening) by this time and got reaaly stupid, but had the best damn doing it. Luckily were are all alive to tell about it. That is all a story of its own.

Meanwhile when we get back to camp at 3:30 Saturday morning, the briskets were almost done already so we decided to keep them on the cooker but keep the heat down to keep them from burning up. We went to bed for a couple of hours and got up got everything going. The day was really rough and I did not make the best decisions because I was hurting so damn bad. The good news is that we got everything cooked, and turned in on time.

I over seasoned the beans and they were pretty salty. We had to turn in both halfs of the chicken so we did not get to taste it, but it looked good. The ribs were out of sight. They were excellent. The brisket was far from the best we have done, but still tasted alright.

So anyway, we did not get any top 10's. We final tabled on beans and ribs though.

My daughter Ashlee, 9, cooked our chicken and she was very sad that she did not even get final table. This was her second competition, the first one she took 3rd place out of 8 entries on a basically rained out cook-off. I was able to enter her as her own entry at that one while I still entered mine. Naturally because of this expereience, she had high expectations coming into Buffalo. I tried to keep her down to earth, but that is not as esy as it seems. Beacuse of the $100.00 entry fee, it was not feasable to enter her as her own entry so I let her cook the Sograte entry. She was very disappointed when she did not place and even started crying. I had to explain to her how many people were here and how hard this competition was.

To tell the truth, I was also fairly disppointed in the results until I started looking into what everyone else did. There were no cooks that dominated anything. There was a first timer that won chicken and there were a lot of heavy hitters that did not top ten at all. Really, we were just one of 94 other teams that did not get top tens so getting final table was a pretty big honor. I finally had to listen to my own advice and am very happy with what we did on a new cooker, very hungover and up against 103 other teams.

This was a great experience. I could not have done it without the help of my brother-in-law Steve. He is the best help a man could ask for. We work together in pretty damn good sync. We learned a lot this time out and look forward to the next one. Watch out everybody, 'cause Sograte BBQ is going to be back and better than ever.