Q Haven BBQ Blog

Saratoga Springs

2011-08-22T08:57:00.015-04:00

As soon as I pulled out of the Harpoon parking lot I began thinking about what to do next. I knew there was a Friday-Saturday contest five days later in Saratoga Springs, with a relatively small field and $12,000 in prize money. Decided, why not make the drive up there and throw a dart at the dartboard? Figured that even on a bad day we could win enough of the prize money to cover fuel costs. Unfortunately, all we won was gas money.

Since my work days off are Friday-Saturday, didn't have to worry about getting time off, which is helpful. I can get Sundays off but don't like to dump that on my bosses on short notice.

Got to the site, which was a harness racing track and casino. Looked like a nice place, although I didn't explore at all.

As soon as I got the trailer unpacked and the basic set up done, the skies opened up. Naturally. Fortunately it poured for 15 minutes and and was great the rest of the two days.

The contest site itself was great. It was the first time I have ever met the organizer Arlie Bragg, but I knew going in that he runs some serious events. I wish more organizers had come up to see how he runs things, as the guy clearly knows how to take care of the teams. There was awesome power, as my air conditioner was on from the moment we arrived until I pulled out to leave and we had no problems. He also built a fenced in area with a full restaurant dish washing station, a commercial ice cooler filled with bags and bags of ice, and ash dump exclusively for the teams. As contest setups went this guy is first class.

Our site.

We were set up with Meat@Slims next to us and Sean Keever and Big Guns BBQ behind us. Couldn't have asked for better neighbors.

Sheila had to work all weekend and did not make the trip, but we made some basic garnish boxes and I brought them to the site, where they were transferred to the actual boxes. This was our first time trying this method and we will definitely do this again. On turn in day, my sisters Jenny and Kathleen fine tuned the boxes, including doing touch up with parsley I have been growing on my patio. The home grown stuff is really nice, next year I will be raising an entire parsley garden.

But our turn in boxes looked great. Best appearance scores we have ever had, all but three scores on the entire sheet were 8 or 9. A lot of that had to do with the overall massive scores that were being handed out at the event, but I feel we deserved the high scores.

Anyway, on to the meat. Chicken I thought came out decent, but was a little on the salty side. It took 7th place call out of 16 teams. Ribs were next, I thought they were good, but they were also 7th place. With such a small field I knew I was screwed as far as winning the contest and the $3,000 first place. Bummer.

Anyway, pork was a disaster at Harpoon, and I was determined not to let that happen again. Another call, this time 6th place.

Final category was brisket, and while it was decent, I just wasn't happy with the results, but it was good enough for 4th place. Although the category score was a 173, which at most contests is good enough to win the category. But this was a weekend of massive scores, the trademark of upstate New York contests.

So in the end we were 5th overall, and walked away with a mere $325 of the $12,000 prize purse. It's ok though, sometimes you go to an event just to have fun and wind up winning some dough, other times you go with the goal of trying and win money and end up having a great time. That's what happened here.

Was the first time that I was able to get a massage after turn ins. Was a nice way to end what was a a fun weekend of BBQ.

Harpoon

2011-08-08T08:50:00.009-04:00

The weekend of July 23rd and 24th brought the Harpoon New England Championship BBQ in Windsor, VT, one of our favorite weekends of the year. We always have a great time at Harpoon, and this year was no different.

Arrived around noon after an uneventful drive. Usually the drive up to Harpoon is relatively easy, a clear shot up Interstate-91, but the states of Massachusetts and Vermont decided to add a layer of challenge this year. Numerous bridges are being repaired, and they have them closed down to one narrow lane, with around an inch clearance on each side of the trailer. Amazed I did not clip the trailer at least once, it was really close.

Cristiaan and I got on site around noon Friday. Went to lunch at the brewery with Mike and Kris of Lakeside Smokers, was great to see them again as always. Great lunch, and afterwards members of our team for the weekend started to trickle in. Some of pour longtime friends were coming up for the weekend, including John Kozub, who introduced me to my wife and was in our wedding. Also there were Bill Bonato and his wife Sue, who we have been friends with for a long time. They were coming to enjoy the event for the first time and help us with vending.

My Mom came out too, her first contest since my father passed away last October. It was great to have her at a contest again.

KCBS is Saturday at Harpoon, and NEBS grilling is Sunday. Teams are also allowed to sell their food at Harpoon, which is good and bad. The good is that you can make money, the bad is that it can distract you from the reason you are there in the first place, which is to try and win the contest.

Overall the KCBS contest cook went ok. I have been working on some changes to my chicken recipe, as it has always scored decently but has never been first place. Clearly my changes have gone the other way, as chicken was 20th place out of 40. Back to the drawing board.

I was determined to cook better ribs than our last time out at New Hampshire, where they were 33rd out of 39. That was completely unacceptable to me. Harpoon ribs came out much better, and were 5th.

Pork was where I really screwed up. Distracted by the vending and overall zoo around me, I neglected the pork. It was done too early and all I really had to turn in was mush. It finished 24th, and I was shocked that it finished that high.

Brisket was another story. I normally only cook one brisket at contests but at Harpoon I cooked two, knowing I could sell it all. I cut into the first one and it just wasn't exactly where I had hoped, so I tried the second one and it was right on. The judges confirmed this, and it was second place.

Overall, we were 6th for the contest. Our good friends at Lakeside Smokers won, which was awesome. If we are not going to win I want them to, and they nailed it. Nailed the whole weekend, as they also won the grilling contest the next day.

Think I am going to leave the discussion about the grilling contest out completely. No calls, and a pedestrian finish of 15th overall. I did not put my best foot forward here and it showed. I think the food was ok but you really need to take it to the next level when it is open garnish and such a strong field of teams. Also, I stubbornly refuse to cook a dessert for chef's choice, even though I know that it what has been hitting.

12th place wings.

Cooked ABT's for chef's choice. A disappointing 16th place.

But overall it was a great time, especially cooling off in the river after a long day Saturday. Truly a highlight of the weekend for me.

Harpoon was great as always. While we did not win the ultimate prize, we got a couple of good calls and had a blast with some great friends. To me, that's what it is all about.

Southwick

2011-07-27T08:10:00.002-04:00

Really falling behind with my blogging these days. I'll catch up eventually.

Made a last minute decision to cook Grill-n-Daze, a one day grilling event in Southwick, Massachusetts on July 17th. I originally was just going to go up and vend, but when the organizer told me that I wouldn't have to pay the vending fee if I competed, I decided why not just enter the contest as well.

I originally thought the contest was on Saturday. However, a few days before I was informed that the event was actually Sunday. This would not have been a problem if I did not have to work that Sunday, and would never be able to get it off on such short notice. It just meant that I had to cook all day and write all night. Needless to say it was an extremely long night.

Mostly this event is cooked by locals. I arrived Saturday afternoon, just me and Max. At first I was a little confused about the contest location, because there was not a sole there. But I was in the right place. Bob of Smokey O's came down and we went to lunch at one of the local spots, it was a nice afternoon.

I had heard there were huge crowds at this event in years past, but it was extremely hot and that kept some of the people away. But we sold all of our ribs and had a good time there.

The contest had me a little worried. It was one of those deals for an established team that many consider a no win situation. If we do well, people would say that we are just beating up on the backyard teams. If we don't do well, people would say "haha, you lost to a bunch of backyarders." But I decided that I really don't care what people say any more, and I'm just going to do what I want to do and have fun doing it. So we entered three of the four categories, chicken, beef and pork.

I viewed this as a tune up for Harpoon, cooking my competition chicken and pork recipes, and beef short ribs for the beef category. I quickly found out that I would not be able to practice presentation, because the turn in boxes we got were literally half the size of the usual ones we get at KCBS contests. I literally crammed six pieces of each category into the box and turned them in with no garnish.

Awards came, and no call for chicken. Here we go...not a good sign. Then came pork, first place. Beef, first place. Really cool trophies, mini-Weber grills. Overall we had a good time, very different than most contests we cook, and we met some great people. That's what its all about.

I'll try to get the Harpoon post up soon. In the meantime, I am heading up to Saratoga Springs, NY Friday to cook the Taste of BBQ Nationals event at the raceway.

New Hampshire

2011-06-26T14:10:00.003-04:00

Had a great time at the New Hampshire Rock-n-Ribfest last weekend. This was our first KCBS contest since Norwalk in September, so I was anxious to see where we would stack up after such a long layoff. Overall I was happy with the results, with a few major exceptions.

Arrived on site at around noon Friday. It was just me and Max, with Sheila coming up later in the day. We were a little concerned because it would be just the three of us, with nobody to help out with Max. Since he is almost three, he obviously requires a lot of attention. But he was just great all weekend, especially KCBS Sunday when he kept himself occupied and just did his own thing right through turn-ins.

Anyway as I started to get the setup going, it began to rain pretty hard. So I scrambled to get the pop up tent open, so I could unload everything from the trailer and put it all under there to stay dry. Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to open one of those EZ-ups solo, and I snapped it. "Hello Sheila, can you stop by the house and pick up the backup tent before you come up?"

Friday night was a great time. I always love Friday nights at a Saturday-Sunday contest. There is no pressure to be up early Saturday, so we can hang out and have a good time. I don't get out a whole lot in my day to day, as I work at home now, so I really like being able to visit with people and have fun on nights like these.

As usual, we had a blast hanging out with the Lakesides. We spent a lot of time under a tent city, as several teams had pooled their pop up tents and created this huge space. Charlie Cicero of Mighty Swine Dining shared a proscuitto with us that had been curing in his walk in refrigerator for a year and a half, it was outstanding. Some fine tequila and Gentleman Jack was also shared. We had a great time with old friends and made a few new ones along the way.

Saturday was grilling. I was feeling good about the sausage and pizza categories going in, but as documented in a previous post I was not thrilled with the salt water fish fillet category. It sure did show, as I put together a horrible entry that came in dead ass last. It was fish tacos, and the fish was blah, the tortillas were too doughy, the salsa too watery and it just bombed, rightfully.

The good news was that the pizza took second place and the sausage was third. Sheila made shrimp wraps for the shrimp category, and they finished in the middle of the pack somewhere. I liked the entry though.

So we were 13th overall for grilling. I was able to laugh the fish entry off for the most part publicly, but in reality I am upset at myself about it. I could have just grilled up some salmon and dumped butter all over it and finished much better than dead ass last. Why I decided to do fish tacos I have no idea. And if I am going to do something outside my comfort zone, it might help to practice it first.

Anyway, it was on to the BBQ contest. It was just me, Sheila and Max at this contest. We had no visitors, no guests and really were able to focus on prep. Everything went well heading into the overnight.

Woke up Sunday morning and the smokers were chugging along just fine. However, when I temped my pork it was ahead of schedule. I had to nurse it to the finish line, and did not like the finished product. Shows what I know, as the judges scored it third place. I chalk this one up to being able to make last minute adjustments, something that was never my strength but I have been working on it. I used to just put the meat in the box and just turn it in. But I have learned subtle adjustments can be made that make a big difference.

Unfortunately there were no such adjustments that could save my ribs. For some reason they just tasted off. I can't really put my finger on it, but something wasn't right. Judges confirmed it for me, 33rd out of 39th. Ouch, I would have to go back and check but I think this was my worst ever rib finish. I thought the box looked atrocious too, although the appearance scores were not too bad.

Chicken was ok, 16th place.

I was a little concerned about brisket going in. I had not cooked a brisket since the Norwalk contest (although we took first place brisket there). Also, the current trend has many teams using these fancy, waygu briskets from cows that are hand fed by virgins and massaged daily. I still buy my briskets at Restaurant Depot, but I have gotten better at picking them out. But there is always the concern that using a lesser meat will eventually hurt me in the end.

Usually you have a good idea what you have with brisket when you make that first cut. I liked it, and as I cut further I felt pretty good about it. The box looked great, and the brisket was 3rd.

The low rib score dragged us down, and we were 8th overall. Overall, I came away happy, eight categories over two days, and four of them in the top three. Could have been a lot worse.

The bummer is that it looks like our next KCBS contest will be at Harpoon. That's a month away. I wish it was tomorrow.

Cape Cod, New Hampshire

2011-06-16T08:19:00.004-04:00

Well the Cape Cod BBQ Championship is in the books. This was the second year I organized it and it seemed like more work this time around. But it's over, and I am relieved. I haven't cooked a KCBS contest since September, but I have organized or helped organize two events since then. These experiences have reminded me that I enjoy cooking contests a lot more than organizing them. But I will be running Cape Cod again next year, but I plan on keeping things a lot simpler.

The good news is that the cooking starts this weekend in Merrimack, New Hampshire at the New Hampshire Rock-n-Ribfest. This was our second ever contest in 2006, and we won it that year. It is not the best contest in the world, with huge crowds and small prize money, but we keep going back. I like looking across the field at the spot where we cooked that year, it seems like so long ago. Especially since we have not won a contest since then.

Looking at the forecast I am beginning to worry that we may be dealing with more of the mud that made that 2006 contest such a mess for everyone. Hopefully I'm wrong.

So I am excited about getting up there for the weekend. I have been packing, unpacking, cleaning, trimming, and planning all week as we get ready to cook this one. The grilling will be a little screwy, with shrimp and salt water fish fillet as two of the categories, and pizza and sausage as the others. I was tempted to just say "screw grilling" and skip it but we are just going to give it a shot. As of this writing I have no clue at all what I am doing for that fish fillet category. I'll come up with something and let you know how it goes.

OK, Let The Season Begin

2011-05-30T19:25:00.003-04:00

My season, anyway.

This past week I finally addressed a major problem of my BBQ team, my tow vehicle. I have been using a Ford Explorer to tow our BBQ camper for the last four years, and it was never powerful enough. Honestly, I am amazed that the truck didn't die on me, and that I was able to get a decent trade amount on it. This allowed us to buy a new to us Ford Expedition with a bigger engine and factory tow package. It is rated to tow a trailer twice the weight of my fully packed camper, so I should be fine for a while.

The USS Lorson....

While we cooked the Snowshoe, I was unable to cook Lexington and couldn't get the time off to go to Rochester, so I really am chomping at the bit to cook. But for the next two weeks, my focus will be on Cape Cod. The planning this year has been easier than last year, when organizing was completely new to me. But it is still a challenge.

Once Cape Cod is over, we start competing. The paid entries so far are New Hampshire, Harpoon and Norwalk CT. Battle of the BBQ Brethren on Long Island in early August is one I really want to cook, but Sheila cannot travel that weekend because of work. That event is appealing to me because the New London Ferry to Long Island makes getting there and back a snap. Only 50 miles of actual driving, and most of it through the scenic wineries of Eastern Long Island. Going to try and make it.

Factor in a couple of vending events, a wedding in August and hopefully at least one more contest, and it's going to be a great summer of BBQ for Q Haven. Icing on the cake would be winning one of these things, it has been so long that I don't even remember what it feels like.

Latest Doings

2011-05-15T18:45:00.002-04:00

It has really been a crazy few weeks, barbecue and otherwise. The Rose City BBQ Cook Off was last Saturday, and it ended up being a great day. The weather held out for the most part, and the people in our adopted hometown of Norwich came out and supported the effort. In the end, the event raised more than three thousand dollars for charities that serve the homeless of Norwich.

This was my first time as a vendor at this kind of event. I have vended at Harpoon several times, but most of the other teams vend too so there is little pressure.

I was disappointed with how the vending went, although the response from the public was generally favorable. I was involved in the event planning, and was so busy with work and otherwise that I did not get as much pre event prep done. Also, I agreed to help with meat inspections for the contest teams, and that hour and a half I really should have been focused on my vending.

It just wasn't my best food. But I learned a lot for next time. And I also passed my first true health inspection, and the guy didn't just rubber stamp me, he was temping all my food and my coolers.

Had a catering job yesterday, a 50 person shower in Sprague. Unlike the vending, the food came out great. The people who booked me had our food at Harpoon and remembered us when they decided to do a BBQ themed shower. I still need to work on my amounts but was very happy overall with the job.

Now, I have a few weeks where I can focus on finalizing the details of the Cape Cod BBQ Championship. Then, I can finally turn my attention to the fun part of all this, which is actually cooking BBQ contests!

Hello Again

2011-04-28T21:16:00.003-04:00

Hi again. It has been way too long between posts, I know. I don't really have an excuse, except that I have been writing so much for work that by the time I am finished really the last thing I want to do is write more. It's a little depressing because I always enjoy writing about BBQ, but hopefully the warmer weather will motivate me to write more.

Also contributing is the fact that I have not really been doing a whole lot of cooking. I cooked a few pork butts yesterday, and that was the first time I lit my Backwoods since Christmas Eve. It felt good to be cooking again.

Meanwhile, the planning for the Norwich Rotary Rose City BBQ Cook-Off is going great. A month ago, the contest was stuck at seven teams and morale was low. However, as of this writing there are 18 teams and our secondary goal of 20 teams is now a possibility. However, 18 is great, and we really appreciate the support of every single one of them.

I know as a cook, choosing which contests to cook is not always easy. And sometimes teams are hesitant to sign on to cook a first year event, as they don't really know what to expect. But Sheila and a few of her Rotary Club members have worked awfully hard to pull this off, and the momentum seems to grow a little more each day.

As for Q Haven, the season is still a work in progress. I am vending at Norwich and organizing Cape Cod, so it looks like our first contest will be New Hampshire in mid June. We will also be going back to Harpoon in July, and to Norwalk in September. The rest, completely up in the air.

Snowshoe Grilling Challenge

2011-03-13T22:46:00.008-04:00

Cooked the Snowshoe Grilling Challenge this past Saturday. We did really well at the contest, taking 1st place in Sausage fatty and finishing 4th overall. But the hardest part was pulling it all together and just getting there.

I knew months ago that Sheila would be away the entire weekend for work. But I also knew that I was cooking the contest. So I had to first find someone to watch max for the day, and second find someone to help me. As usual, family came through in the clutch.

First, my sister Kathleen agreed to come up and watch Max for the day. I knew she would be happy to do it, but I also know that she works in a restaurant, and taking Saturdays off are usually not easy. But she pulled it off.

For the contest, my brother Cristiaan agreed to come help out. Again, he would love to be at every contest, but he is a manager/owner of a restaurant and getting off Saturdays are very hard. But he made it too.

So the planning and packing went fine. I really have the packing for these grilling contests down. I see some teams bringing these big elaborate setups to one day grilling contests and I just don't understand it. But that's just me.

So I got everything into the Explorer with plenty of room to spare.

We got to the site by 8:15 or so, which was plenty early for my plan. I needed to have the fatty on by 9:45, so I had plenty of time to do our minimalistic setup, get some fire going and start cooking.

The timing of everything went fine. Having strip steak and pork tenderloin as the first two categories helped with timing, as I was grilling both and they would be done quickly.

The strip steak, I cooked it as I would for myself, salt and fresh ground pepper, grilled to medium rare, rested in a butter bath for five minutes, sliced and finished with a veal demi glace. This one tasted better than it looked, and wound up 8th out of 24 teams.

The parsley really looks bad in the pictures in all of our boxes. I thought they looked a little better in person but pictures don't lie I guess.

We had trouble getting our hands on curly parsley, Cristiaan was going to pick up a case at the Restaurant Depot in Orange CT, but when he went the day before the contest they had none. So I hit two supermarkets near me and grabbed the crap they had, and Cristiaan grabbed some additional crap parsley at a store near him in NY, and we did the best we could. Sheila would have helped for sure, as she always does a great job with our parsley.

Next was pork tenderloin. This was the only category I really practiced leading up to the contest. I tried several recipes and none really satisfied me. I ended up doing a combination of flavors that I use in my competition pork and rib recipes. It came out pretty good, just missing a call at sixth.

Next was sausage fatty. I have developed this recipe over the last few years, and it has done pretty well. Nailed it this time, great flavor, great moisture, nice basic presentation, first place.

Final caregory was chef's choice. Last year I did bacon wrapped jalapeno ABT's and they came in 6th. I decided to do them a little differently this year, and they came out great. Moved up three spots from last year and came in third. Cristiaan really helped on this category, he pretty much assembled them and they looked better than I had envisioned.

So overall, we came in fourth out of 24 teams. A good showing, considering the impressive team list and the fact that I had not so much as lit a smoker since the day before Christmas. My practice has pretty much been on my cast iron grill pan on my electric stove, hardly where you want to replicate contest game day conditions. But I'm happy with the results.

Now what? I don't know, stay tuned.

New England BBQ and Catering Visit

2011-02-07T08:55:00.002-05:00

Finally made it up to New England BBQ and Catering this past week. Steve Farrin of I Smell Smoke and Brendan Burek of Transformer BBQ opened the place in Canton, Massachusetts a few months ago. It is a great spot, with a large commercial kitchen and a store, where they are selling BBQ supplies. There are things for both the competition cook and backyard amateur, rubs, sauces, Wicked Good charcoal, wood chunks, etc.

Steve and Brendan are doing a little of everything in this new venture; catering, take out, supplies, cooking classes. I look forward to visiting often to load up on supplies as needed this season.

Meanwhile, I mailed out the first application of the season today, for the Snowshoe grilling challenge. I really like the Snowshoe, it is the perfect way to shake off the dust after a long, cold New England winter. Last year, we were reserve grand champions of the Snowshoe, which meant a lot to me. All of the big teams from the region cook the Snowshoe, and doing well is a good way to build momentum for the year.

The Snowshoe categories are strip steak, pork tenderloin, sausage fatty and chef's choice. While I haven't done any "official" Snowshoe practice, I have a pretty good idea what I will be cooking.

As far as the rest of the year goes, well, it's all pretty much in the air. The goal is to cook Grilling on the Bay and Rochester, vend at Norwich, organize Cape Cod, cook New Hampshire, cook Harpoon. The rest is up in the air.

That's My WSM

2011-01-29T15:12:00.000-05:00

My Weber Smokey Mountain blew over during the last snowstorm and is now entombed in snow. Over the last week here in Connecticut we have received around four feet of snow. That's not a typo, feet. Hopefully this stuff will melt soon and that patio can resume cranking out BBQ.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Still Around

2010-12-19T20:19:00.002-05:00

Hello there, I'm still alive!

I just haven't really had much to write about lately. I have not done a whole lot of BBQing over the last few weeks. I did go to Big Bubba's BBQ a couple of weeks ago and it was really bad. I usually have pretty good food there but not this time. I hope it was just a bad night, because Big Bubba's is the only half way decent BBQ anywhere near our current home in Norwich, CT.

My friends Brendan Burek and Steve Farrin opened a new place in Canton, MA, New England BBQ and Catering. I hope to make it there for a visit soon.

The place is a retail BBQ store, which is something we sorely lack in the Northeast. When I was at the American Royal last year in Kansas City, we went to Oklahoma Joe's, which has a BBQ store attached. It was so cool, all kinds of cookers, rubs, sauces and other BBQ tools and items. I immediately said to myself that we could use a store like that in New England. Well, here it is.

Hopefully I will get to visit them up there soon. They also are doing catering and cooking classes.

In the meantime, I will be cooking some stuff to give to family and friends for Christmas this week, I'll post some pictures or something.

Rose City BBQ Festival

2010-11-22T09:41:00.002-05:00

A new BBQ/grilling event is coming to Connecticut! The Norwich Rotary Club is organizing the Rose City BBQ Festival, which will be held Saturday, May 7th at Dodd Stadium in Norwich. The event will feature a New England Barbecue Society sanctioned grilling contest, a people's choice chicken wings contest, food vendors and more.

The good folks at Dodd Stadium have agreed to let us use the entire facility for the day, and batting practce will be available for the children. Hopefully they will let some of the big kids like me take a few cuts too!

The grilling contest categories have not yet been finalized, but will likely be chicken, pork ribs, sausage and chef's choice. The entry fee will likely be $100, and we hope to offer at least $3,000 in prize money.

The people's choice chicken wing contest: teams will be given enough wings to cook to fill a foil half pan , which will be delivered to a central location for sampling and voting by the public. This will be a blind judging event with an even playing field.

The application for teams and judges should be out soon. We think this is going to be a great event!

McRib

2010-11-11T09:15:00.010-05:00

Well I broke down and tried the McRib at McDonald's yesterday. Can't say I was all that disappointed.

I remember having the McRib back in th early 1980s. I was maybe ten or eleven years old, and recall enjoying it. I'm not sure what the motivation was for McDonalds to bring it back now after all these years, but here it is.

The sandwich was pretty much as I remembered it. The meat is essentially a ground pork patty, doused with the BBQ sauce they serve with the McNuggets. The sandwich was topped with pickles and sliced onions. The meat was actually pretty juicy. No smoke flavor at all though, clearly cooked on a griddle.

Long story short, it ain't BBQ but it's ok.

Rough October

2010-11-02T14:43:00.004-04:00

I'm glad it's November, because it has been a pretty rough October. Lost my father October 18th at the age of 82. One of his great joys in the last few years of his life were to come to the BBQ contests with us. He was at our first contest in Rhode Island in 2006, and even traveled with us down to the Jack that October. He really loved the Lake Placid and Harpoon contests though. It gets a little better each day but we all miss him a lot. Cancer Sucks!

Westport Invitational

2010-09-30T19:22:00.011-04:00

After a successful weekend in Norwalk, we decided to cook an invitational contest at the Blues, Views and BBQ on September 25th in Westport CT. I was hoping to build on the success in Norwalk, and hopefully win a contest for the first time in a while. Came close.

While there were only six invitational teams in the running for cash and prizes, there were also 23 backyard teams. Most were locals cooking for the fun of it, but there were some teams with a little experience in the field too.

The one complication for me was that because of space limitations, I would not be allowed to bring our camper/trailer to the contest. It is a toy hauler, and is where I keep all my BBQ contest gear. This meant that I would have to get everything we would need for the contest into our Ford Explorer. This meant I had to pack tight.

Got to the site behind the Westport Library at around eight Saturday morning, and it was clear that I was one of the last teams to arrive. In order to hit my marks I had to have my cooker ready by 9, so I wasn't worried about the time. If I knew how tight it would be I would have come earlier.

I ended up with exactly one parking spot to run our whole cooking operation. While it was tight, I packed light so it was not a big deal. What was a big deal is that the team next door did not have a dish station and were washing their dishes under an athletic water cooler, which was running right into my tiny site. I usually don't make a stink but I had to be a jerk and tell them to stop. Three bins boys!

The cook went along well. Categories were chicken, ribs and chef's choice, followed by an iron chef category. My chicken takes less than two hours, so there was no urgency. Got the ribs on right on time, and the day moved along without any problems.

My chicken has been pretty consistent lately. I have developed my own program for chicken that is easy to execute and the results are consistent. It came out about as good as I can cook chicken, and took 2nd place for the invitational, and 4th out of the 29 teams.

The judging was different than what I expected. I thought that the six invitational teams would be judged by the same judges, but our food was mixed in with the backyard teams and sent to different tables.

Ribs were right where I wanted them to be too. They took 2nd place in both the invitational and among the total 29 teams. A little more spice would have helped but I was happy overall with the results.

Chef's choice, I decided to go with filet mignon with Bearnaise. I ended up pushing the envelope with the timing and barely got the steaks up to temperature. While they were cooked properly, I missed the short resting period before slicing, and I think it hurt the overall final product. Chef's choice was 3rd overall and 5th out of 29 teams.

The final category was an iron chef deal. At 3:30 p.m. they have us a pork tenderloin, along with a bag of vegetables that included a sweet potato, an onion a red pepper and a zucchini. We came with a pork tenderloin recipe (they have us pork tenderloin at the same contest in 2008 so we took a shot). Ended up doing a bacon wrapped pork tenderloin stuffed with apple and sausage, finished with apple butter. For the vegetables, we made a risotto. Overall was a solid dish but just missed the mark, finished 6th out of 15 teams that participated in iron chef.

In the end, we missed winning the contest by less than five points, not a lot in BBQ scoring. We lost to Steve Zeravica's team R2BQ, who brought in two established BBQ teams to assist, one to do chef's choice and one to do iron chef. So I keep telling myself that it took three teams to beat us. (Just breaking your stones Sled!) I'm sure they all cooked some great food.

Anyway, it was a good day for us, got some really nice trophies and a little dough for our efforts.

While a lot of teams don't like dealing with the public, there was no way around it here. People were right on top of us all day, and I did my best to accommodate people with their questions and requests for samples. My favorite encounter of the day was when a woman tried our chicken and asked whether I injected it with heroin.

So it looks like that's how Q Haven will end our season. We started it with a reserve grand championship at the Snowshoe Grilling Challenge in March and finished it with a reserve GC at Westport. There were plenty of highs and lows in between, the highlight being 1st place ribs at Harpoon and the low being Black Sunday at New Paltz.

Fortunately, I have one final event this year. My good friend Mike Boisvert of Lakeside Smokers has invited me to come cook as part of his team at the Jack Daniel's World Invitational BBQ in Lynchburg, Tennessee at the end of October. It's the 2nd straight year Mike has invited me to join his team for the event and I am honored to go again.

Norwalk, Reserve Grand Champs

2010-09-18T07:37:00.012-04:00

I went into the Norwalk BBQ Competition with a lot on the line. While Q Haven had some recent success in grilling contests, the BBQ results had been less than stellar to say the least. The lone exception being 1st place ribs at Harpoon this year. Aside from that, I had not had a really successful BBQ contest since 2008 Harpoon. Sure we had calls, but were never really competing for the win.

That all changed in Norwalk.

I went into this contest with an "all in" mentality. There was over $20,000 in prize money and I wanted to bring home as much of it as possible. There were 15 different categories over the course of the three days, and we entered all but two, whole hog and people's choice chili. I needed to have some success, not just for the winnings, but because my morale was sinking with each mediocre finish.

One positive from the start, we had a good contest site. We had a vendor selling frozen lemonade next to us, and he basically gave me an extra 7 feet of his site. Gave us much more room to maneuver. The Chili Bomb lemonade guys Peter and Roger were great to hang out with and also kept us drowning in tasty mixed slushes all weekend.

Our site.

We started Friday with the people's choice chowder contest. It appeared at first that our team was doing well, but then I realized that we were located behind most of the other people's choice teams. We had much less foot traffic than the other teams on the main drag had. However, we did our best and finished 6th, receiving 17 votes from the public.

Friday had also brought an Iron chef category. Sheila and I had only done an Iron Chef once before, and it really didn't go very well. It went much better this time. They gave us skirt steak and asparagus as the ingredients. We made marinated grilled skirt steak with asparagus risotto. The dish was really very good, but the risotto needed another five minutes of cooking. Ended up 11th out of 17 teams, but this was a definite improvement from our first Iron Chef attempt in 2008, more in process than results.

Saturday was grilling, and the people's choice wings. The grilling went quite well overall, which is why I was fuming after the awards ceremony, where we got no calls. However, this was partly because they only called to third place. When we got the scores, it turned out we were 4th in sausage fatty, 5th in ribeye steak, 6th in dessert and 7th in seafood, and 5th overall. If they had just called the names of teams in the top five we would have heard our names twice and felt a little better about ourselves.

People's choice wings we finished 11th.

Anyway, I felt better when I saw the scores. Got the brisket and pork on Saturday night, got in better spirits and had a fun late night.

After midnight, I was walking around with a few friends visiting other sites, and my feet were just killing me. In the middle of the road between rows of teams, there was a folding chair. I sat down, and Steve Farrin sat in another chair that was there. Mike from Lakeside Smokers and Brendan from Transformer BBQ then pulled up chairs, then Mr Bobo and people from other nearby teams brought over chairs as well. Before we knew it, there were around a dozen people sitting around a fire that had been carried over, a bottle of Jack was going around the circle, and we had a great time.

Also early Sunday morning, reinforcements arrived. My brother Cristiaan and his fiance Kim arrived to provide much needed support Sunday. Cristiaan also was cooking the sauce category.

Quietly, my sister Kathleen has also become an integral part of our team. She helps out wherever needed, whether it is watching Max, doing dishes or anything else. She is also part of our garnish team, which gets better every contest.

Sheila really gets credit for our improved appearance scores. She has taken the garnish role and ran with it, and every contest our boxes get better.

Sunday morning, I was able to sleep an hour later than usual. I changed my timeline so I did not have to wake up until 6:45. My old timeline called for me to wake up at 5:45. It is amazing how much that extra hour of sleep helped me, I felt great.

The cook was very smooth and relaxed. Chicken was about as good as I am capable of cooking it, and came in 5th place out of 35 teams. The ribs were solid too, but I botched the appearance, which really hurt the scores. Ribs were 16th.

My pork has been improving. Since it bombed in New Hampshire and at Harpoon, I made some changes that appear to be helping. The pork box was probably the best one I have ever turned in, and it came in 4th.

Brisket, well, you just know. While you never really know how well it will score, you sure as heck know whether you have cooked the brisket well or not. This was a good brisket. I really nailed the timing of the brisket cook, and it showed. First place. Felt awesome.

That call got us close to winning the whole deal, just not close enough. Normally, when you have three top five calls in a contest with 35 teams you have a pretty good chance of winning. However, when a team like I Smell Smoke takes a 3rd, a 2nd and a 1st place in three of the four categories, it's hard to win. However, we were reserve grand champions, which was awesome. A real shot in the arm for me and for our team.

Since I was off work for the whole following week, I decided to stay over with Mike and Kris of Lakeside Smokers and celebrate the great finish and extend the weekend a little longer. After everyone cleared out Mike and I went to a local bar and had a few Jack and Cokes, a satisfying way to end a great weekend.

Thanks to the organizers who run this contest. They have been bashed on forums for certain aspects of the event, which I found cheap and unfair. Overall, they really try to run a great contest, and for the most part are very successful. What other contest in New England offers $23,000 in prize money? Free lobster dinner with clams, fries and corn? These guys didn't go to Dunkin Donuts, they cooked breakfast for the teams each morning themselves. Is the contest perfect? Of course not, there is no perfect contest. But these guys should take a bow, then start planning for next year.

Scenes From Norwalk

2010-09-15T19:44:00.001-04:00

Time Lapse Turn In Box

2010-09-14T14:45:00.001-04:00

Message from Ted:

A lapse look at Q Haven building our turn in box for the seafood category at the NEBS grilling contest in Norwalk CT 9/10/2010. My Flip cam has this "magic movie" time lapse video feature and here is my first offering.

Oh and we cooked grilled salmon with maple mustard glaze and it came in 7th out of I believe 16 teams.

Click on a video below to watch it:

Q Haven Building A Seafood Turn in Box
Video Length 1:39
Click here to watch

To learn more about the Flip Video Camcorder, click here.

Some Pictures From Norwalk

2010-09-14T08:01:00.002-04:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/tedlorson/NorwalkBBQCompetition#

Q Haven Takes Reserve GC At Norwalk!

2010-09-12T21:27:00.001-04:00

Q Haven took 1st place brisket, 4th place pork and 5th place chicken and earned reserve grand championship honors at the BBQ Pit at the Norwalk Oyster Festival. Was a great weekend for our team. Congrats again to I Smell Smoke for another strong victory.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Ugh

2010-08-25T21:32:00.003-04:00

It has been three days since I got back from the Hudson Valley Ribfest, and this is the first time I can bring myself to start writing about it. Here's the short version: Friday was great, Saturday was great too, Sunday could not have sucked any more.

Details to follow. This post is just to say that I have not completely abandoned the blog just yet.

Maine

2010-08-08T10:22:00.002-04:00

Wish I was up there cooking. But I decided to cook New Paltz in two weeks instead of Maine this weekend, sticking to my plan of only cooking one contest a month this year. I would have liked to do both but just wasn't in the cards this year.

New Paltz should be a fun weekend. They actually call it the Hudson Valley Ribfest and it's actually in Highland, NY, but we all call it New Paltz. It's a really big event, around 70 teams are expected. We have cooked here three times before, and it is easy to get to for me. There is a swimming pool on the fairgrounds that the teams can use as well.

Unfortunately, I have not really done that well at New Paltz over the years. in 2006 we got shut out for the whole weekend, 2007 got a couple of grilling calls but tanked BBQ, 2008 tanked grilling and got a good rib call, 2nd or third place, but that's all. Didn't go last year.

But the Maine contest is a pretty big deal this weekend. For several teams, this is a last chance to get automatically qualified for the Jack Daniel's World Invitational BBQ. Since this is the only Maine contest, whoever wins can start booking their hotel rooms and submitting their vacation time for work, they're going to the Jack.

Kind of sucks to be home working today while that is happening in Maine.

But the good thing is that we got to go spend some quality time with my parents yesterday, who are doing much better despite ongoing health issues.

Early Morning Smoke

2010-08-02T21:29:00.001-04:00

Harpoon

2010-07-28T14:30:00.013-04:00

I will be the first to admit it, I did not go into this year's Harpoon New England BBQ Championship with the best attitude.

When I applied for the contest, I made it clear that I was expanding my vending operation and was looking for a high volume vending spot. They assigned the spots in some kind of non-transparent lottery, and when I got my assignment it was on vending "death row." behind the main drag, out of sight and way out of the foot traffic. When I inquired why and asked if there was anything that could be done to change this, I was politely told that if I didn't like it, they could send me my entry fee back and I could stay home.

So I decided to basically not vend, only selling leftover competition meat for the most part. But it did not really put me in the best mindset going into the contest. I didn't even bring my modest collection of trophies.

Also, Sheila is swamped at work these days and made the executive decision not to come up at all for the weekend. While we clearly would not need vending help, Sheila handles garnish and is my wife and partner and #1 supporter. She knows my program inside and out, so her not being there hurts on a competition and a personal level. And being away from Max for three days is always rough too.

Sheila and Max

Complicating things, my company denied my time off requests for Thursday before the contest and the Monday afterwards. At least I got Sunday off (I work Sunday to Thursday these days).

Oh, did I forget that my mother had triple bypass surgery the day before I was scheduled to leave? (She is doing great and went home from the hospital Tuesday!)

So with all that as a backdrop I packed the camper Thursday night, and around 9:00 Friday morning I climbed into the Ford Imploder, I mean Explorer, alone, for the three hour drive to Windsor, Vermont.

The drive was uneventful, and there was no traffic at all, which was great. Well, uneventful until I crossed into Vermont.

Between exits one and two, I'm going down a hill and I see the cars in front of me all slam on the brakes. At the bottom of the hill, the road eases to the right and starts heading back uphill. At the bottom, I see that a camper that was being towed by a pickup truck had jackknifed. The pickup was on its wheels in the median, perpendicular to the road. The camper was on its side, and was on fire. I immediately recognized the camper, and the people outside as a fellow BBQ team.

The accident had just happened, and the first responders had not yet arrived. I got out and ran over, and thank god everyone was ok. The camper, well not so much. But seeing it really affected me. As someone who tows a camper that scene is one of my biggest fears. Needless to say I drove very carefully the rest of the way.

Arrived at Harpoon and did the setup by myself, which I am getting used to. Because of the location of our site off the beaten path, nobody really came up and visited, so I had plenty of time to take care of all my prep and get things ready for the KCBS contest Saturday.

The Site

The bummer was that I wasn't situated anywhere near any of my friends, especially Lakeside Smokers. They are our great friends and I always want to be next to them. We were kind of on an island in the back of the contest site.

Friday night seemed kind of mellow by Harpoon standards. My brother Cristiaan and sister Kathleen arrived to round out our team for the weekend. We all needed the time away, especially Kathleen who has been doing a great job handling things at home with Mom in the hospital. If anyone needed a little Harpoon fun, it was her.

Got a few hours of sleep, and was up at 5:30 to start cranking things up. The team next to me had about a hundred people there, and there was a tent city literally a couple steps from my cooking operation. I'm sure I woke them all up, but sorry folks, it's a contest, not a campout. If you want to have a campout, go sleep in the woods.

Anyway, the cook went pretty well throughout the morning. The chicken came out well, finished 12th, although I thought it would do better. The brisket was great too, it finished 12th but overall I was happy with the meat and the presentation. Pork, well I am kind of struggling with pork these days. It used to be that my pork would finish around 10th consistently. Not lately, 25th place.

Then there were the ribs.

The rib cook was coming along great. Nice flavor, big and meaty ribs, and the recipe I have been working on is really coming along. However, when I returned them to the smoker for the final stage of cooking, the temperature spiked. I had added some charcoal a little while before and the result was that the ribs were all really dark. Really dark. I had trouble finding six ribs that I was comfortable putting in the box. So until awards, I was telling people that I ruined my ribs.

That's why I pretty much lost it when Q Haven was called for 1st place ribs. I spiked my beer like a football (giving a nice leg shower to the sister in law of Mike from Lakeside Smokers in the process). Sorry!

But first place ribs in this crowd is a big deal to me, especially this year when I haven't been cooking a lot of contests, and not scoring very well when I did.

I have not cooked as many contests as I would have liked over the last year, and this call has really energized me.

While I am not really happy with the other categories and a 12th place overall finish, I feel like I'm close to putting it all together and having a great day sometime down the road.

An interesting thing also happened on Saturday. I was running my rib turn in box and heard my name on the way. It was my former girlfriend who I had not seen or heard from since 1995. While those situations can be very uncomfortable, it really wasn't. It was nice to see her and to hear that she and her family are well, and I'm glad she is happy. The whole experience was surreal, made me think of the Harry Chapin song "Taxi."

Also Saturday, we were visited by new friends Larry and Evelyn Pointbriant, who live in my new home town of Norwich, CT. Larry is very close to being ready to compete on his own, and I hope seeing the excitement of Harpoon will give him that extra nudge.

Saturday night we got pretty tore up. The local product was free flowing and ice cold, and the damn dip was stellar. There is nothing better than damn dip after an evening of drinking.

Sunday was the grilling contest. Chicken wings, sausage, shrimp and chef's choice were the categories. Chicken wings, I did smoked BBQ wings that have scored well for me in grilling contests in the past. Not so much here, 22nd place. That's exactly where my shrimp came in too, 22nd. The concept I had for the shrimp was a good idea, but I don't cook a lot of shrimp, and in this case I overcooked it. That's the bad news.

The good news is that we got a call for 5th place sausage and 6th place chef's choice. I did short ribs, and based on my calculations I was the 1st place among teams that did not do desserts.

I wish chef's choice did not include desserts. My opinion is that if you are going to allow desserts, you might as well make the entire category desserts. It's really strange from a judging perspective to have a cake, a creme brulee, an ice cream sandwich, then a filet mignon or a beef short rib. When I organized the Cape Cod contest this year, I made the chef's choice category "no desserts." It just works better in my opinion.

Or I am going to have to start learning to make some desserts.

So overall, we were 9th for the grilling contest. Although that's not awful, the Harpoon grilling contest is really a "winner take all" kind of contest for me. There is no money in any of the categories, only ribbons, with money payouts only for grand champion and reserve grand champion. But if you win, you get a coveted Harpoon tap trophy, $500, plus a free entry fee for next year, which was $325 this year. That combined makes the grilling contest worth taking a shot at, but you've really got to nail it.

The big winners of the weekend were Feeding Friendz. I am very happy for Wendy, Tim and the rest of their crew, they have been getting better and better and they really nailed it this weekend. Congrats! You're going to the Jack!

I used to linger after contests, sometime being the last team to leave. But lately I get sad when a contest is over, so I think it's better to just hit the road.

I get especially sad leaving Harpoon. Harpoon has something special that I have yet to really experience at any other contest, and it is not the free beer. To me it's a magical place for reasons I can't 100 percent explain. So if I'm lucky enough to get selected to go back to Harpoon in 2011, I will be there. And I will not complain about where my site is either.

So anyway, I got the heck out of there and made it home before Max went to bed. I told him that I won first place ribs and he told me that he wanted to watch Calliou.

Harpoon 2010 Pics

2010-07-28T14:27:00.001-04:00

Click the pic below for the photo album from a great weekend at Harpoon!

Back From Harpoon

2010-07-26T07:56:00.003-04:00

Had a nice weekend cooking the Harpoon New England BBQ Championships this past weekend for the fourth year. The temperatures were hot, the beer was cold, and Q Haven took 1st place ribs!

Overall it was a great event. Full post coming soon!

Lobstah!

2010-07-03T18:52:00.000-04:00

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

More On New Hampshire

2010-06-29T07:26:00.002-04:00

Cooked the New Hampshire Rock-n-Ribfest a couple of weekends ago. I haven't written about it yet because I've been trying to block it out.

This was our first KCBS contest in 11 months, having not cooked a contest since Harpoon. There was clearly some rust involved in our pedestrian finish, but there were some crucial mistakes that didn't help either.

I'll start with grilling. We went into the grilling contest with a plan, especially for the presentations. We had taken reserve grand champions of the last two grilling contests we cooked, and part of it was based ons the presentation s we had developed for our grilling categories. However, those presentations were based on a 9 by 9 inch turn in box.

The organizers of New Hampshire, however, provided the teams with 7 by 7 inch turn in boxes. This threw us off completely, and while I know it is a meat contest, it didn't help us at all. We got two calls in the top ten, but nothing in the top 5 or in the money.

Then came the BBQ contest Sunday. The chicken came out great. I'm really pleased with my chicken overall, it's a recipe I developed myself over time and I really like the way it is working out. 4th place.

The ribs were really bland. This is unusual for me because usually my ribs are very spicy. I didn't realize just how bland they were until I had one on Monday after returning home. The tenderness was there but they were just average. 12th place I think.

The pork, long story short it was done way too early, and by the time I went to pull it the meat was really dry. An easily correctable problem. I sauced it hard and tried to mask it, but the pork ended up in 20th place.

Then came brisket. In a nutshell, I ruined the brisket. It had great flavor and the tenderness was right on, but for some reason I was dead set on saucing it. I did, and I oversauced it, and killed it. As soon as I heard that we didn't get a brisket call I knew that I had made a major mistake. Lesson learned.

In the end, it was a decent weekend. We had a good time with friends, but I have never cooked contests with the goal of coming home with a 4th place ribbon and a check for $20 as the weekend's winnings. Unfortunately will have to wait until Harpoon to improve things. But other teams take note: I'm pissed, and I'm practicing.

Max's First Rib

2010-06-17T09:41:00.002-04:00

Video: New Hampshire Rock-n-Ribfest

2010-06-15T12:17:00.000-04:00

IMG00032-20100612-1131.jpg

2010-06-12T11:32:00.000-04:00

Pizza ready for the grill for the grilling contest.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Cape Cod BBQ Contest

2010-06-09T09:06:00.002-04:00

After months of planning, the BBQ contest I organized on Cape Cod has come and gone. Overall, the event was a success in my eyes, but there is plenty of room for improvement on my end as the organizer. However, I'm really happy overall, and the contest was wwell received by most of the cooking teams.

The decision to try and organize this contest really came last summer. The previous organizer had decided not to have the event, but had booked the venue, and refused to release the date so someone else could continue the long running contest. Previously known as the Peter's Pond Rib and Brisket Festival, this was one of the original BBQ events in New England. The demise of this contest was a real bummer for many cooking teams.

So, I thought this might be a good chance for me to try my hand as an organizer. The key for me was really just to have it be a BBQ contest. I had no interest in trying to land bands, face painters, craft vendors etc. I knew that would be an impossible thing to organize from 200 miles away. So I just focused on the contest.

The contest attracted 33 teams, mostly from New England, but teams from Maryland, Florida, New Jersey and Long Island also made the trip. The unique thing about this contest was that there were RV spots available for teams. I thought as a cooker myself to have access to their own water, electric, sewer and cable TV hookups would be nice, and the teams that took those spots thought it was great.

My biggest mistake was not having enough portable toilets, and mismanaging them. They had already been placed when I arrived Friday, and they were not where I wanted them to be. Instead of being together in between the contest area and the judging area, one was right on top of the contest area and the other a far walk to the other side of the judging tent. Because of this, one got major use and the other just sat there for the most part. There are real bathrooms, but a looong walk away. Next year, this situation will be rectified.

Also, I will be working with the manager at Peter's Pond on expanding the event so they can bring in more public. There is so much room to grow this event. But to me, the key will be the cook-off. Hopefully by raising the scope of the event, we can bring in some sponsors to drive up the prize pool.

Overall, this was a great experience. I tremendous amount of work and no financial gain, but I think the team who attended really appreciated the return of this contest, had a great time and will certainly return in 2011!

Yankee Stadium Visit

2010-05-28T17:58:00.001-04:00

Yes, they served BBQ...

Bbq at Yankee Stadium.

I didn't try it during my first ever visit to the new Yankee Stadium, but we shared a table in the food court with someone who had it. They shared a fried pickle with us and it was actually pretty good. They seemed to like the pulled chicken and pork sandwiches.

Overall the new Yankee Stadium has a crazy assortment of food choices. Here are just some of the other concessions, each with their own space: Nathan's hot dogs, Johnny Rocket's burgers, Famiglia's Pizza, sushi, Chinese food, Philly cheesesteaks, NYY Steak, italian sausage, ice cream, and others. And that's just the booth concessions, then there are the actual sit down restaurants. There is of course the Stadium Club, a Hard Rock Cafe, NYY Steak, and Mohegan Sun Sports Cafe. Our seats were in the Mohegan Sun Sports Cafe seating area.

As a baseball fan who wants to see the game, I did not particularly care for these seats. They are supposed to be the Yankee answer to the Monster Seats at Fenway Park, offering fans a chance to literally sit on the center field fence and watch the game. Just like the Monster seats, there is table service at the seats. here's the view.

Unfortunately, these seats miss the mark for me because they are completely indoors, behind darkened glass. It is very difficult to see the baseball, and the only sounds you hear are sports bar chatter and the piped in sounds of the Yes Network broadcasters. Thank god it is YES and not the radio disaster of John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman.

Ironically they pipe the radio broadcast into the bathrooms. That makes sense to me.

You are better off going to a sports bar and saving the $90 before having your actual seats in the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar. Just my opinion.

The good news is that you can come in to the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar to eat without having tickets for it. I would go and check out the view, and the lollipop chicken wings ($14) were very good.

I can hardly say the same about my "steak" sandwich at the NYY Steak concession stand. At $15 this was the most expensive sandwich I saw in the stadium, so I figured this would be really good. Couldn't have been more wrong. Was basicly deli roast beef. sliced too thick rendering the meat tough, submerged in beef broth, then served on a bare kaiser roll. Dry, flavorless. And all they had on the condiment table was mustard and ketchup, so I had to put ketchup on it to make the sandwich edible. Sandwich and soda, $21. What a disappointment. Here it is.

My sister had a Philly cheesesteak. At $10.50 this was a bargain. Large sandwich on a sub roll with plenty of steak umm on there, and you can choose your cheeses and whether or not to have grilled onions. This is a far cry from Johnny Rockets, where they will not give you a $10 hamburger without American cheese on it (was told "we don't cook to order here.")

On the positive side, all the concession lines moved super fast. You can see the field from pretty much anywhere in the concession concourse. If you don't like your seats, you can pretty much watch from anywhere if you are willing to stand. The huge screen in center field is probably the coolest thing ever, this massive TV screen with the picture quality of the best HDTV you can buy.

I personally preferred the original stadium. It was all about the baseball there. It ias been reduced to a huge debris field next door to the new money making machine.

Charity Event

2010-05-24T09:25:00.002-04:00

Sheila and I cooked pulled pork sandwiches for around 200 people at a Norwich Rotary ribbon cutting for a new playground Saturday. The event was in the Greeneville section of Norwich, an area we knew little about. While it was a Rotary event, the vast majority of those at the event were neighborhood people.

I had cooked a lot of pork, as I wanted to make sure we didn't run out of food. Service started slow, but once people realized that the food was free the crowds started coming. I was so pleased with the way the people responded to the food. People were coming back for seconds, even thirds. One ten year old boy came up to me and said "I could eat this forever!"

Got one complaint, a girl probably eight years old or so. She said "this is making me sick to my stomach. I don't like this at all." There's one in every crowd....

But overall we had a great time. When we got home afterwards Sheila and I both really felt great about it. We had never really done a big charity event like that before and it was really satisfying for both of us. I'm sure we will be doing this again.

Lobster Rolls!

2010-05-20T21:45:00.000-04:00

Some lobster rolls I whipped up in honor of my sister Kathleen's visit today. She's hardcore when it comes to lobsters, even bagging the carcasses to bring home and pick through later.

Oh, and the lobster rolls came out pretty good.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Busy Busy

2010-05-14T08:26:00.002-04:00

Hey there, been too long between posts, sorry about that. So much going on BBQ related lately too. For the last two weeks, Q Haven pulled pork has been on the menu at Buddy's Dugout in Norwich CT where I live. It has been an interesting learning experience to get a taste of the retail food business. I have been doing my best not to get lost in the sea of food cost percentages and been trying to put my best product forward. So far it has been pretty well received by people and has been selling, which is great.

Also, I have been busy as the organizer of the 1st annual Cape Cod BBQ Championship, which takes place in three weeks. It is being held at the Peter's Pond RV Resort in Sandwich, Massachusetts. I have put a great deal of time and effort into trying to make this event a success, and so far things are going great. I have 27 paid teams and am expecting to surpass 30 before it is all said and done. This has been another good learning experience for me, and I hope to use this experience to organize other events in the future.

My number one priority will be to find someplace in Rhode Island to hold a contest in 2011. Rhode Island has not had a state championship since 2006, and it's a shame to have no qualifying contest from a New England state.

In the meantime, anyone interested in visiting the Cape Cod contest is welcome to come on down Saturday June 5 or Sunday June 6. The admission is $5 for an all day pass at the RV resort, with complete access to the contest site and to the entire resort for the day. The Bastey Boys will be vending BBQ to the public.

This Sunday, I'm cooking the tailgate party for the TLG Travel bus trip to the Nascar race in Dover, Delaware. The menu consists of pulled pork, burgers, hot dogs, cole slaw, and pasta salad. There are 45 people coming, should be a great time!

Video: Dinosaur BBQ Visit

2010-04-01T13:15:00.001-04:00

New York Adventure

2010-03-24T08:21:00.005-04:00

During our annual trip to upstate New York last weekend for Sheila's job, we decided to hit a couple of BBQ restaurants. One was Route-7 Grill in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the other was Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse. Since we were going to be eating out for three straight days, it seemed only fitting to work in some BBQ too.

So we left Friday and took the back way through Litchfield County and into Great Barrington, a neat little Berkshires town where antiquing seems to be the biggest economic driver. We had hit Route-7 Grill a couple of years ago, and I was looking forward to another visit.

No dice.

It might have helped if I had checked their web site. Closed for lunch on Fridays. I considered pulling a Clark Griswold at Wally World and storming the place, forcing the kitchen staff to cook us a great meal before being taken out by a swat team. Decided not to do that.

Sheila was expectedly steamed, as we had passed probably a dozen places that would have been great for lunch along the way. It didn't help that it was 2:00 pm either.

So I said "we're eating at the next place we see, regardless of what it is." That totally worked out.

We rolled up on a place called "Bizalion's Fine Foods" about a mile up the road. We walked in and it was clear that we were going to have a special lunch.

This place is a little French cafe and food shop owned by Francois and Helen Bizalion. They bring a lot of the great things about France to their shop, and we had a great lunch served by Francois. I had a prosciutto, brie and butter panini that was just outstanding. Sheila had a quiche Lorraine that she loved. Francois created a special cheese and baguette plate for Max too, choosing a cheese that I don't remember the name but he said was the favorite of his four year old daughter.

We loved our stop here. We will be back next time we pass through the region.

Saturday, we decided to hit Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse, which was on the way to our destination of Canandaigua. I could do a whole post on this place, as this was the fourth year I had a day to explore this town while Sheila was busy with work. Strange place.

Anyway, the plan was to hit Dinosaur early Saturday night before it got too busy. Again, a little research might have been helpful. The St. Patrick's Day parade had been held that afternoon in Syracuse, and by the time we got there it was packed with hammered people with green painted faces, dumb hats and green head to toe. At least an hour and a half wait. See ya later....

So after Sheila's work function Sunday, we hit the road and I decided to give Dinosaur one more try. Took a different tact this time, called ahead when we were 30 minutes out. We got there and were seated immediately.

A wait had already started when we got there, so it was good that we called ahead. We ordered fried green tomatoes as an appetizer, which were probably my favorite thing of the meal. probably because I had never tried them before, and they were awesome.

For dinner, I got something called Tres Hombres, which is a three meat plate of spare ribs, beef brisket and pulled pork. The pork was the best part of the plate for me, very moist and flavorful. I only got a little bit, because Max was grabbing fistfuls of pork and jamming it into his mouth.

The ribs were very good. Sheila got a half rack dinner so we had plenty of them, and they were pretty moist and tender.

The brisket was just ok, one piece was really tough but a couple of others were tender.

Sides were good, Sheila enjoyed the mac and cheese, I had chili and fries, both were fine.

Overall, I liked Dinosaur. The place is clearly doing great business, it's nice to see that it can be done to make a killing in BBQ.

After we left Syracuse, we stopped at a travel plaza and I got a venti Starbucks coffee and two of those canned double shots, and I drove the entire way home without stopping (around 250 miles). It felt good to do a monster driving shift, it had been a long time since I had done big miles like that. Was good to see that I could still do it....

Snowshoe

2010-03-13T06:40:00.017-05:00

We started the season off right last weekend at the Snowshoe Grilling Challenge, taking reserve grand champion honors for the event. It was a lot of work to get there though...

For weeks before the contest, I was torn about what to cook. The categories were ribeye steak, chicken wings, sausage fatty and chef's choice. I debated a lot of different things, but in the end I followed my gut and it paid off.

I decided that we were going to travel absolutely bare bones to this contest. I always bring way too much crap to contests, which is a pain for several reasons. One, things get confusing and hard to find when you have so much unnecessary stuff. Also, loading and unloading is made more difficult when there is too much stuff. So I brought my smoker, portable gas grill (allowed at the Snowshoe), two tables, one bin, one cooler and the three bin wash station. That's all.

The contest itself is just a great time. While the prize money is not huge, most of the big New England teams are there, so the competition is very stiff to say the least. So to do well at this contest is significant for us, and hopefully sets the tone for a great 2010 season. There were 21 teams at the contest. The weather was perfect, and organizers Gary and Michelle Taft did a nice job putting things together.

For the ribeye steak, I changed my mind numerous times before we settled on the final recipe. At one point I considered just slapping A1 on the steak and turning it in. In the end, I decided to grill the steaks with salt and pepper, then finish it with a gorganzola horseradish cream sauce. The sauce was ok but tasted too much like bleu cheese dressing. The steak took 11th place.

Next was wings. This was a no brainer for me, just used my KCBS flavor profile, smoked the wings and finished with BBQ sauce. No garnish made this category easier. Took 5th place.

Next was the sausage fatty category. I had been working on something that I was calling a "pizza" fatty. Unfortunately, I really wanted to put pepperoni into it, but when I found out it could contain no pre-cooked meats I abandoned this plan. Without the pepperoni it just tasted like a meatball. Went back to my core fatty recipe, breakfast sausage, cheese, peppers. Finished with a maple chipolte glaze. Came out really good, better than expected. 2nd place.

Chef's choice. What the heck do you cook here Ted? My first thought was that since the turn in was at 1:30, I would do ribs. If I did baby backs, I could probably get them done with plenty of time to spare. However, it would have required us getting there extremely early by my standards. So after much deliberation, I took Sheila's advice and decided to go with ABT's. They came out pretty good. We had a whole elaborate plan for the turn in box, but it never came together. However, Sheila made the box look pretty good, and the judges gave it 6th place.

So three calls in the top six and one 11th place was good enough for reserve grand champions. Couldn't top I Smell Smoke though, Charlie and Carlotta put up a monster score and won the contest. They must have cooked some awesome food.

So in the end, it was good to see a lot of friends and make a few new ones at the Snowshoe. Can't wait to get out there and cook again!

Mmmmm

2010-03-12T21:18:00.001-05:00

Oh yeah Mongolian beef!
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Scenes From The Snowshoe

2010-03-10T13:32:00.003-05:00

A little video from the Snowshoe Grilling Challenge this past week in Abington, Massachusetts.

My video skills still need a lot of work, but this stuff is new to me so bear with me. Maybe next time I will actually shoot some video of our own food!

Snowshoe!

2010-03-07T07:21:00.006-05:00

Q Haven started the year off right Saturday at the Snowshoe Grilling Challenge. We took 2nd place sausage, 5th place wings and 6th place chef's choice to take reserve grand champion honors. It was a great time, and we really enjoyed seeing people from the BBQ circuit for the first time in months.

Full wrap-up is coming. In the meantime, a greeting from Sully!

Fried Oreos At Red Rose Cafe

2010-03-06T18:11:00.001-05:00

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Visit To Red Rose Cafe, Weymouth MA

2010-02-20T13:21:00.010-05:00

Glad I was finally able to visit Brendan Burek and Steve Farrin at their new BBQ venture, the Red Rose Cafe. Great food, Dublin and Kansas City meet halfway in Weymouth!

Video?

2010-02-14T00:31:00.002-05:00

Well I got myself a cool little video camera that I plan to use to invade people's privacy and bring some BBQ food porn to life. Might as well start with tonight's dinner at Bespoke in New Haven, was really good. Not BBQ but Sheila did have ribs, which were super tender and served with a sugar lime glaze and pickled onions. I had a braised lamb shank, which was nice and hearty.

The camera actually shoots pretty good quality video, it was really dark in there.

Cape Cod BBQ Championship

2010-02-10T14:26:00.002-05:00

I have been cooking BBQ contests for several years now, but in 2010 I will be trying my hand as an organizer. I am putting together the 1st annual Cape Cod BBQ Championship at Peters Pond RV Resort in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Visit the below web site for more information.

http://capecodbbq.blogspot.com/

This is shaping up to be a great event! Cooks and judges packets are available at that site.

The contest has been coming together so well my only regret is that I will not be able to cook it myself!

Max On The Mend

2010-02-04T16:31:00.000-05:00

Our little buddy resting after a scary day (and week) of severe stomach pain. He will be hospitalized overnight and without any further problems we will all be going home in the morning.
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Someone's Eating Good Tonight

2010-01-20T19:10:00.000-05:00

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MIA

2010-01-17T18:37:00.002-05:00

Wow, this must be the longest I have ever gone without posting. I don't really have an excuse, just haven't had a whole lot to say that is BBQ related. I still don't have much to say, but I feel that I have to post something. So here are a few things on my mind (that are BBQ related).

I have really been enjoying the BBQ Pitmasters series on TLC. I know it has been criticized by some because of the use of the language. However, what I have heard on the show is way tamer than what can be routinely be heard in my own site and many others across the country. It's the way people talk. I personally think they shouldn't bleep the show at all. It's perfectly fine to show people getting slaughtered and shot up on network TV, but they have to cut the curses. It's bullshit. Yeah, I said it....

Overall, I really like the way the show is done. I hope the show is picked up for another season, and new events and teams are featured. Again, Q Haven would be a fine choice. Someone forward this to John Markus....

It's a bummer that Jeff Stith didn't get elected to the KCBS board. I renewed my membership partly to vote for him (and partly so I can stop getting red flagged every time I enter Restaurant Depot haha). He would have been a great addition to that board. The status quo won.

Enough politics....

I am mailing in my application for the Snowshoe, which will be March 6th in Abington, MA. I have cooked this contest for the last three years and never really do well, although I did take first place in fish last year. That's why they removed fish from this year's contest I'm sure. The categories this year are rib eye steak, chicken wings, sausage fatty and chef's choice. I'm looking forward to this kicking off our season.

After that, I'm not so sure what the season will hold. Because of a date conflict my plan to organize a contest on Cape Cod this June are in jeopardy. We have been talking about cooking Pork in the Park in Salisbury, Maryland in April, but that is now looking doubtful for several reasons. That would mean that our first KCBS contest will not be until New Hampshire in June. Bummer....

Christmas Eve Dinner

2009-12-24T20:59:00.005-05:00

Merry Christmas!

Every Christmas Eve Sheila and I make something great for dinner. It has always been our thing before the rat race of Christmas Day. This year we decided to have prime rib, for the second year in a row.

Got a nice, two bone section of certified angus prime rib. For the record I didn't do the hatchet job on the top of the meat, it came that way.

Rubbed it with my usual prime rib seasoning, equal parts turbunado sugar and Schwartz's Montreal steak seasoning.

Cooked at 375 for the first half hour, then lowered the temp to 325 and finished. I wanted to take it to between 120 and 125 degrees in the center, but I got distracted and took it to around 135 degrees.

After sitting for a while it was more of a medium than medium rare, but it was still delicious.

Served with asparagus sauteed with a little olive oil and some fresh minced garlic, and Sheila made Yorkshire pudding. Served the beef with a home made horshradish cream sauce. Poured some of the jus from the beef over before serving, which is why is seems a little gray.

Was a great meal for sure!

Today, we're heading over to my parents house in Orange. For starters my father has another cheese platter lined up for us, and my mom is making a baked brie. For dinner, it will be filet mignon with my bernaise along with the full assortment of sides and dessert made by my pastry chef sister. It is sure to be a merry Christmas!

Contest Sites

2009-12-16T22:01:00.009-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about contest sites lately. Our contest sites sure have evolved in our three years of competition BBQ. This first picture below was taken at our first contest in Rhode Island in May of 2006. What you see is what we brought, which wasn't much. Notice the old style radio. Overall, looking back, we were pretty well prepared for that first contest, although that cheap ass pop up tent did not survive the weekend.

This next picture below was our second contest, New Hampshire Rock-N-Ribfest 2006. I added two new EZ Ups and made a sign myself. We also added more teammates and the tremendous amount of clutter that comes with them. I look at the slovenly site below and cannot believe that we won that contest.

Fast forward to Lake Placid, 2006, our third contest. Used winnings from New Hampshire to buy another WSM, a banner and for a logo design. This below would be our team look for a few contests.

This next one below is from the Jack 2006.

Next is our first contest of 2007. Here we have added the RV, our toy hauler.

By New Paltz, 2007, I settled on the base setup below that we still use to this day. I really like this setup, it's functional, even in a tight 20 foot by 20 foot site.

This below is the last contest we cooked, Harpoon 2009. I felt this site was very functional for vending, and still looked pretty good. The clutter is greatly eliminated.

I have some ideas for our 2010 contest sites. Also, I have finally picked up a couple of banners with the team logo on it. We may not score well but our site will look great!

The Soup Nazi

2009-12-11T13:02:00.001-05:00

He now has a place at Mohegan Sun. No soup for you one year!
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RIP Mike Grudzinskas

2009-12-07T15:45:00.002-05:00

Mike of I Smell Smoke died over the weekend in Arizona, where he was competing with the team. A huge loss for the BBQ community, just a great guy all around.

ABT's!!!

2009-12-05T08:53:00.002-05:00

For the NEBS Holiday party today....

BBQ Pitmasters On TLC

2009-12-04T09:09:00.003-05:00

Tuned in for the series premiere of BBQ Pitmasters series on The Learning Channel (TLC) last night. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I thought it was an accurate portrayal of what goes on at a contest from a cook's perspective. Even included a massive storm and a flat tire!

I liked that it profiled a few of the big, nationally known cooks, but also a relatively new team, and one that had never competed before and had absolutely no clue what they were doing. The guy Paul Peterson probably thought KCBS was a California TV station before that weekend.

If you haven't seen it yet, give it a look. It won't disappoint. New episodes air Thursdays at 10PM eastern, but it replays several times during the week, next Sunday at 1PM and Monday at 10PM.

I'd also like to suggest Q Haven for season two. I might be willing to let someone spray me down with mustard on camera. Also I think "Drunk Ted" might be good TV. I have a feeling our team could turn the show into a drama!

Thanksgiving Feast

2009-11-26T17:34:00.004-05:00

We had an epic feast at my parents house for Thanksgiving.

Things got started with an incredible cheese selection. My father has a "cheese guy" and they made up an impressive high end selection, including Roquefort, brie, an outrageous aged cheddar, an Italian and a goat cheese. Dad also had some incredible caviar, served with creme frieshe and crumbled egg.

The warm up was rounded out with Sheila's spicy artichoke dip, which was awesome as usual.

Fortunately we had the appetizers at around noon, giving us several hours to recover before the 4PM dinner.

I did a turkey honey brined and smoked. It was the first time I have honey brined a turkey before. Kept it simple, brined overnight in a cooler with water, kosher salt, and honey. Dried off, transported to Orange from Norwich, rubbed generously with butter then a dusting of salt and fresh ground pepper. A few aromatics in the cavity.

Smoked on the WSM at 325 degrees, took about 4 hours to when I pulled it off and rested for around a half hour before we ate.

The meat was very moist and flavorful. The one thing about smoked turkey is that the process really ruins the skin for me, it's just too smoky. It was popular with my brother in law Eduardo though.

Traditional sides, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, roasted sweet potatoes and fried onion green beans. Dinner rocked.

Dessert, my sister Jenny made two pies, a traditional apple pie and another that I don't remember what the second one was.

The football games were weak but the meal and family were awesome!

WSM'd Turkey

2009-11-26T15:51:00.000-05:00

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Thanksgiving Eve Ribs!

2009-11-25T19:14:00.002-05:00

Cooked up a couple of racks of spare ribs for dinner tonight. Came out really good, went a little heavy on the spice, even for my liking and I like em hot. Max was able to eat them and demanded more, so apparently they werent "too too" hot.

Doing an apple brined smoked turkey for Thanksgiving tomorrow at my parents house. I'll try and send an update somewhere along the way. Happy Thanksgiving!

Ouch!

2009-11-24T11:17:00.000-05:00

BBQ Doldrums

2009-11-18T10:48:00.002-05:00

Been in the BBQ doldrums lately. BBQ equipment is all clean and resting in the garage, camper is winterized, and I haven't had a real motivation to cook. That includes at home, where dinners lately have been fast and easy or arrive in a pizza box.

Going to break the cycle this week. A pot of chili tomorrow, ribs over the weekend. That will be a good start.

The Jack, Along For The Ride

2009-11-01T19:22:00.016-05:00

Before the 2009 barbecue season got underway, I had one of many conversations with Mike Boisvert of Lakeside Smokers. he's one of my best friends, and we often have long conversations about BBQ. I'm not sure when it was, but we were lamenting our inability to get to the Jack Daniel's Invitational BBQ. I had gone in 2006, my 5th contest ever was the Jack, but have not been able to get back. Mike had come real close several times, but grand championships had eluded him.

We made a pact, if one of us made it to the Jack this year, the other one would come too.

I had an off year, only cooked three KCBS contests and didn't come close to winning any of them. Lakeside Smokers took off, and won three grands. I told Mike that he didn't have to hold me to the deal, as I know the thought of a week with me around all the time is enough to scare most people. But Mike absolutely made me feel like he wanted me to be there, and it was settled, I was going to the Jack!

Departure was Tuesday morning from Mike's place in Methuen, Mass. Driving down in the motor home would be Mike, Kris, Brendan of Transformer BBQ, and Kris' parents, Al and Phyllis Eastman. Everyone was easygoing and just enjoying the ride, which not only made it go by quickly but also made it very enjoyable.

The crew...

The motor home....

So we headed down I-90 to Interstate-84 through Connecticut to Scranton, PA. Then down Interstate-81 for the next 800 or so miles through PA, made an unsuccessful drive through downtown Scranton looking for Dunder Mifflin on the way, through Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. Spent the first night in Lexington, Virginia, had a mediocre breakfast at "Aunt Sarah's" finished Virginia and Tennessee, a quick dip into Georgia before coming back up into Tennessee and into Lynchburg.

We rolled into town Wednesday afternoon, planning to stay at a nearby RV park before heading over to the Jack site Thursday. However, we decided to check things out at the Jack site first. Good idea, as more than half the teams were already there, and with a 31 foot motor home and a 15 foot trailer the sooner we could get set up, the better. So we did the right thing and set up our home for the next four nights in Wiseman Park.

The Site....

Thursday was setting up, hanging out, visiting with friends and meeting our neighbors. Directly behind us was a team from South Carolina, Butts and Breastts. Behind us was Spitfire BBQ, a team from South Dakota. Competition teams know how important good neighbors are at a contest, and these were really cool neighbors. On the other side was Home BBQ from Florida, who we didn't see much except the back of their trailer, but they were cool too.

Lynchburg is in Moore County, which is a dry county. This means no drinking, no open containers of alcohol. I had always heard "just keep it in a cup, no big deal."

Fast forward to late Thursday night. Mike, Brendan and I were sitting around the site with one of the members of the Butts and Breastts team. Brendan and I actually were drinking ginger ale, and Mike decided to have a late night beer, pouring it into a cup but leaving the empty bottle on the table. Our site was off the beaten path, and nobody even gave it a second thought.

Well, until the sheriff quietly rolled up and spotted the single bottle and slammed on his brakes. He storms into the site and hauls Mike out of the site to the front of his cruiser. He then calls for backup! At first it seemed like a joke, but it turns out the guy was dead serious. The handcuffs were out, and the guy was yelling at Mike that he was going to jail when cooler heads arrived in the form of backup. The supervisor warned us that if he even smelled alcohol on any of us for the rest of the weekend, we were gone.

We were so scared that we didn't have another sip of alcohol the rest of the weekend. Wink...

Friday's lunch was a treat. We went to Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House, the historic and famous Lynchburg family style restaurant. Mike, Brendan and I were guests of Stephanie Wilson, who had organized a group of BBQ cooks and friends to eat in the basement dining rooms. The meal was awesome, with fried catfish, meatloaf, fried okra, Jack Daniel's apples and more, finished with a chocolate pie to die for. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me, and thanks to Steph for including me.

Friday afternoon the Jack festivities fired up. There was the parade....

Roscoe smelled our cups on the parade route too!

The parade was followed by the trip up to BBQ Hill for the cook's dinner. This was a huge improvement from 2006 when I cooked the Jack, when they only served chili. This time it was fried chicken, washed down by exactly two Jack & Cokes. Good stuff.

Saturday was contest mode. Mike and Kris have their routine down, so I just wanted to pitch in and help out whenever possible. I thought things went great. Brendan's chef's choice entry was awesome, and everything seemed to cruise along.

I do operate a mean dish station....

The awards ceremony, for us it started slowly. After the long speeches, the awards finally began. Dessert...no call. Sauce, no call. Chef's choice, you guessed it, no call. Chicken, ribs, pork. No call. Ugh. Everyone was keeping positive but I was starting to deflate, getting that feeling I have had many times myself in having to accept not getting a single call at a contest.

Until brisket came around. 3rd place....Lakeside Smokers! Mike and Kris were so happy, and it was so great to see them get what they had worked so hard for.

Then, as the celebration started to die down, they again called Lakeside for 7th overall, which is an awesome accomplishment for a team at the Jack for the first time, or any time for that matter.

Then, to top it off, our New England friends iQue won the Grand Championship, to repeat, a New England team won the Jack!!! Just a euphoric moment for all of us, and I am so happy that I was there for it!

It got even better. When Mike went to get his score sheets, they said, "we made a mistake, you also won 3rd place chef's choice." While I was bummed that Brendan didn't get to have the moment during the real awards, I know it meant so much to him to get the call for Mike and the team. The I Smell Smoke guys did something really cool at this point, telling us to come back to the stage. We gathered a crowd along the way, and as the crews cleaned up held our own awards ceremony for the chef's choice call.

By 10:30 at night, we were all asleep in the motorhome. It was one great day.

Sunday we packed up and drove to Nashville. We went out on the town, partying hard with the I Smell Smoke crew and others at the honky tonk bars in the entertainment district. I was sexually harassed the entire evening. I've learned that when you're this sexy, that's bound to happen. It's like the paparazzi, you just learn to deal with it.

The night was capped with a late night trip to the Waffle House with Brendan, Steve of ISS, Steph and Val of the Slabs. The food was god awful, thus the name "awful waffle," but we had a great drunken time.

Monday, we hit the road for home. We drove (well they, I didn't drive on the ride home either) all the way home straight, arriving at Mike's house in Methuen at around six a.m.

While it was really hard being away from Sheila and Max for so long, this was an awesome trip that I wouldn't have missed for the world. It has given me a new found motivation to try and get Q Haven back to the Jack in 2010!

Lunch at Bobby Flay's Burger Bar

2009-10-30T12:29:00.000-04:00

Good stuff!
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Best chicken ever

2009-10-26T18:02:00.000-04:00

On the road in Virginia.
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IMG00328.jpg

2009-10-25T21:49:00.000-04:00

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Mike finds long lost twon brother in nashville

2009-10-25T19:55:00.000-04:00

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Charcoal Charlie

2009-10-23T20:42:00.000-04:00

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Our table at Miss Mary Bobo's

2009-10-23T20:17:00.000-04:00

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Awesome Lunch

2009-10-23T20:16:00.000-04:00

Family style lunch at the legendary Miss Mary Bobo's in Lynchburg. Fried catfish, meatloaf, fried okra, creamed corn, green beans with ham, cornbread, apples with Jack Daniels. Everything a growing boy needs!

Thanks so much to Stephanie Wilson for including me in such a great lunch!
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The Teams Parade

2009-10-23T20:11:00.000-04:00

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Home cookin at Mary Bobo's

2009-10-23T11:12:00.000-04:00

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Miss Mary Bobo's

2009-10-23T11:07:00.000-04:00

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Damn Dip at the Jack!

2009-10-22T22:47:00.000-04:00

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Mike!

2009-10-22T11:28:00.000-04:00

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At The Jack

2009-10-22T10:56:00.000-04:00

Just to back up a little, my team Q Haven did not qualify for the Jack. I'm here with Lakeside Smokers, as my good friend Mike Boisvert invited me to join them for their first trip to Lynchburg. I was honored to be asked and am glad to be able to share the experience. Brendan Burek of Transformer BBQ is here with us as well.

We left Tuesday morning in Mike's father's RV, a beautiful class C motor home. I was supposed to help with the driving, but Brendan and Mike's father in law Al drove the whole way. I feel bad that I didn't help drive, but I enjoyed not having to drive. When I compete, I do all the driving, so it was a refreshing change of pace for me.

Anyway, we arrived last night and just relaxed. Today, we will get the setup done and do a little sightseeing. Tomorrow, the real fun begins!
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Off to the Jack

2009-10-20T10:16:00.000-04:00

Traveling in style!
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Abbott's, Lobster in The Rough

2009-10-12T08:58:00.008-04:00

Went to one of Connecticut's more famous lobster spots Sunday. Abbott's, Lobster in the Rough is located in the Noank section of Groton, not far from Mystic. I had heard a lot about the place since moving to Eastern Connecticut, and this being their last weekend of operation until winter shutdown we decided to check it out.

Abbott's is right on the shore, and you have to take a few narrow streets through this quaint little village to get there. Being October, the crowds were nothing like what I had heard in the summer, where the place is just packed. We were able to go right to the booth and order, a process that is apparently very difficult in the summer.

This is the line on a Sunday in October. Might have been a little longer because it was their closing weekend

The location is really nice. Right on the Long Island Sound, there are great views all around. Boaters can actually sail right to the place and tie up, chow down and sail off.

You can eat inside or out at picnic tables scattered on the grounds, along with several that are out on the pier.

I decided to have what Abbott's is famous for, the hot lobster roll. At most places in New England, a lobster roll is served on a hot dog style roll. Not here, as theirs is served on a hamburger roll with about a lobster's worth of meat on each sandwich. At $12.95 it was not a bad deal.

I really enjoyed the lobster roll. Not too buttery, really just a pile of warm lobster on a sandwich roll. Simple, delicious.

Sheila got the tuna fish roll, which was more mayo than tuna and she said "tasted like Miracle Whip." We split an order of shrimp cocktail, which were of the peel and eat variety. I don't like peeling shrimp, but they were really good, fresh, cold and crisp.

Max enjoyed his grilled cheese too. They even have their own potato chips!

For the real lobster heads, they sell whole lobsters too in a variety of sizes. Here's the menu (if you can read it!)

We had a nice time, our little family on a Sunday afternoon at Abbott's. Max particularly liked watching the huge striped bass that were swimming to the surface and snapping up crackers thrown by the kids!

The American Royal

2009-10-10T08:31:00.004-04:00

Got back from the American Royal a few days ago. It was my first time at the Royal, and if I ever go cook it myself I will now have a really good understanding of what it is all about.

Several weeks ago, Brendan of Transformer BBQ asked if I would be interested in helping to drive out to KC with him. This would be a different experience for me for sure. With my own team, I am the one who does all the planning, shopping, driving and most of the work, so I was not sure how I would handle being a spare part. But I decided that it would be a good experience and that if I could help Brendan, it would be worth it.

So the plan was to leave Brendan's in Canton, Massachusetts Wednesday morning 9/30. We would drive to outside Buffalo NY, where we would be picking up Brendan's trailer and Mike of Giggling Pigs, who would be driving out with us. We drove straight through to Kansas City, only stopping for gas and quick bites to eat. It took around 27 hours.

Once in KC, we went to the American Royal site and dropped off the trailer. Many of the teams were already there setting up, and it was clear that this was no normal BBQ contest. You always hear that it is the largest contest in the world, 500 teams, etc, but until you see it you can't really grasp the enormity of it. It is truly impressive.

Despite our exhaustion from the drive, we went to lunch at Oklahoma Joe's. Stephanie Wilson of The Slabs works there and at the adjoining Kansas City BBQ Store. Steph had set us up with an awesome welcome lunch, complete with ribs, brisket, burnt ends and sides. It was a great feast and an awesome way to kick off a long weekend of BBQ.

Then it was back to the site to start getting ready for the weekend. For the record, I didn't plan or pack properly for this trip. I knew that sleeping arrangements would be "potluck" for me, as the RV on our site was full. Also, KC was hosting the Royal, a NASCAR race and a Chief's football game, so getting a hotel room was pretty much out. I didn't pack a pillow, blanket or a towel. I bought a towel along the way, and it ended up being my pillow for the weekend in my various sleeping locations.

My mood improved greatly Friday when I finally was able to take a shower, my first in more than two days.

The cooking I was really not a part of. Mike and Kris of Lakeside Smokers were flying in to cook the invitational contest Saturday, while Transformer was cooking the open contest Sunday. They both have their own way of doing things and my goal was not to get in the way. I did try to help out wherever possible, doing dishes, straightening up, etc.

Friday night at the Royal was just crazy. That's the only way to describe it. Many of the teams hold parties, some are small affairs, some much larger. In fact, some of them have rock bands or DJ's, with huge crowds resembling a college bar scene. This was especially true in an area known as the "dark side." It's a section of the contest site that is located under a highway overpass, where the hardest partying takes place.

The Darkside

Anyway, the cooking Saturday seemed to go fine. I got to taste some of Lakeside's food and thought it was all really good, especially the brisket. Unfortunately, Lakeside didn't get any calls, but they finished 27th overall, which is pretty impressive considering that there were 119 contest winning teams entered, really the best of the best.

The open contest was Sunday, with around 500 teams cooking. Both Saturday and Sunday, I was the box runner for Yabba Dabba Que. Their site was a walk of more than five minutes to where the turn ins were, so needless to say I got my exercise.

Eric Mitchell, Yabba Dabba Que

In the end, the New England teams did not fare very well in the open BBQ contest. The only call was for 9th overall for I Smell Smoke!!!, which itself is very impressive. Yabba Dabba Que also got a perfect 180 score for their dessert entry, which was only good for 5th place, as there were a total of six 180s given in the category.

I prepared the potato entry for Transformer in the side dish category, and it didn't do very well, finishing 104th out of 130 entries.

Once the awards were over, within minutes we were back in the truck and headed east. Another 26 hours later, we arrived at Brendan's in Massachusetts, and two hours after that I was home. That was some hard core traveling for sure.

All photos stolen from Lakeside Smokers. For tons more pics visit his Picasa site HERE.

Turn ins at the royal open

2009-10-04T13:59:00.000-04:00

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Keg stand

2009-10-03T22:18:00.000-04:00

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2009-10-03T20:08:00.000-04:00

Dusk at the Royal.
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Invitational Awards

2009-10-03T17:51:00.000-04:00

About to start
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Grits contest at the Slabs

2009-10-03T09:03:00.000-04:00

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2009-10-02T22:01:00.000-04:00

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We Made It!!!

2009-10-01T11:53:00.000-04:00

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On The Road To KC

2009-09-30T14:45:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm on the road, driving with Brendan of Transformer BBQ to Kansas City for the American Royal.

This is a trip that has been in the works for some time. I'm basicly going to help with the driving. It's a long way from New England to Kansas City, so myself and Mike from the Giggling Pigs will be helping Brendan with the driving.

Right now, we are somewhere between Albany and Syracuse, probably closer to Syracuse. I expect this will be an interesting experience. My goal is to just have a good time and hopefully be able to help Brendan and Mike from Lakeside Smokers (he's flying in) in any way possible.

Probably the best help I can be will be to stay the heck out of their way.
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Catering in Hamden

2009-09-05T14:37:00.000-04:00

Great day for a BBQ!
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Old School

2009-09-02T10:34:00.003-04:00

Been using my old Weber Smokey Mountain cooker a lot lately. Part of is is because I have cooked a few parties where I needed to cook a lot of meat. But using it again reminded me of why I liked this cooker so much in the first place.

Very easy to use, and I can get a much longer cook on it than my Backwoods party, at least the way the Backwoods is currently configured. The WSM with a packed charcoal ring and the larger water pan can go 10-12 hours at 250 degrees. The Backwoods has a small charcoal pan which gives me 6 good hours, tops.

I have seen the new larger WSM's starting to pop up at competitions. I might have to make that my next cooker....

Hi Again

2009-08-22T08:11:00.002-04:00

Decided to take a little vacation from blogging, but I'm back. Really haven't had a lot to say lately, been really busy with work, the baby, more work, and a few small catering jobs along the way. Still haven't decided what contest to do next. I had planned to cook Westport, but we are now on the fence about possibly cooking Norwalk. Stay tuned.....

Harpoon

2009-07-27T22:14:00.013-04:00

Cooked one of my favorite contests, last weekend, the Harpoon New England BBQ Championships in Windsor, Vermont. It's a weekend of cooking, friends and beer, beer beer. It was our third Harpoon, and as it had in previous years, the event did not disappoint.

The plan was for me to leave Thursday in order to get to the site in the afternoon and save some good spots for us and other teams.

The trip started off poorly Thursday, as I didn't get more than 10 minutes away from home before I had trouble with the trailer tires, again. I was adding air to the 4 trailer tires when the valve stem just blew off and whizzed past me like a rocket. Further inspection revealed that all four tires had dry rot on the valve stems, so I went over to an auto shop in Colchester and they replaced all four in around 15 minutes, and I was back on the road.

Unfortunately, that whole deal set me back a few hours. By the time I made it up to the contest site, it was after nine PM. One of my main motivations in getting up there so early was to have a choice of sites. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived, most of the sites I had my eye on were either taken by teams that were already there or were roped off.

My choices were: towards the front gate on the main road, a single spot in the high volume vending area, or way back in what is known as "the ghetto," back by the port-o-johns. I didn't want to be near the gate or in the ghetto, so I ended up taking the spot on the main drag. While I had planned to do a decent amount of vending, I did not think we would have enough food to justify being in that spot. But I felt it was either that spot or risk taking food home from lack of traffic, so I took that spot anyway. And we handled the crowds really well. Our site....

For vending, my plan was to cook ABT's, stuffed jalapenos. They are labor intensive, but I had a feeling that customers would love them, which they did. We ran out of them quickly, and even had to put a sign up "no more jalapenos!!!" because people kept asking for them. We also cooked ribs, and sold our extra competition meat too. We did end up selling out.

We also had Rick Westhaver, AKA "Little Dick" on hand to help with our vending. He's only 15, but has been going to contests for almost 15 years and the kid really did a great job for us. He knows his stuff, and don't be surprised if he starts winning contests as soon as he is old enough to cook himself.

Back to Thursday night, which was nice. There were not too many teams there, as most who arrived set up and went to hotels, and I had the camper to myself. Having a one year old boy, there are very few times when you can shut your phone off and just sleep in, which is exactly what I did. I did have to listen to the incessant sound of rain pounding the top of the camper all night, a reminder that this is a contest in the Northeast, where it always seems to rain.

At Harpoon, the KCBS competition is Saturday, and the NEBS grilling contest is Sunday. This is backwards from most contests in the Northeast, where grilling is Saturday and BBQ is Sunday.

Anyway, the KCBS contest is one I would rather forget. Nothing was either terrible or spectacular, it all was pretty much middle of the road. The bummer for us is that we had friends there who had never been to a contest before, and would have loved to give them something to cheer about at the awards. But no calls....

We did much better at the grilling contest.

I really wanted to do well in the grilling contest this year. As a team we have put up some really bad performances in grilling, and I wanted to reverse that trend. In my mind, I really wanted to win the grilling contest. I had only cooked two BBQ contests this year, and did not expect to be able to contend with a couple of top area teams that have been really nailing it lately in KCBS, but grilling is always wide open. And if you win Harpoon grilling, you get:

- One of the coolest trophies out there, which features a working Harpoon tap

- Free entry to next year's Harpoon contest, which will be at least $300

- $500 prize money

A pretty good prize package for a grilling contest for sure. I absolutely felt that we could compete for the win, and I wanted it badly. We came close.

Sheila and I talked a ton about grilling leading up to the contest. We settled on recipes that I felt would score well, plain and simple. Not trying to set trends, no experiments, just scores. The categories were lamb, beef, fish and chef's choice. Around 30 teams grilled.

For lamb, we cooked lamb chops. Got some nice chops, hit them with salt, pepper, fresh rosemary (thanks Jed) and some olive oil. They grilled up really nice. I had planned to hit them with a little mint jelly at the end, but it just looked horrible to me so I turned them in unsauced. Did ok, was 12th.

Next was beef. I did beef short ribs. They came out a little tough for my liking, but they tasted great. I had initially planned to turn in the ones that were all the same size, but sacrificed appearance in order to get the best, meatiest ones in the box. Worked out well in the end, took 2nd place.

Next was the fish, where we cooked salmon. This came out good too, took 6th place. Wrapping things up was chef's choice, which we did chicken wings. The wings were good, but it was the appearance that carried the day. Took 6th place.

So overall, we were reserve grand champions. Came close, but just wasn't enough to beat I Smell Smoke!!!, who swept both contests for the weekend. Even though we didn't win, it felt great to take RGC, especially after not doing well in the BBQ contest and dealing with a lot of adversity during the overnight hours Saturday into Sunday. It was a much needed confidence boost.

I stayed over alone at the site Sunday night. I had heard that in previous years, Sunday night had been a lot of fun, with many teams staying over and extending a great weekend by one more day. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone left this year. It was kind of sad to watch everyone break down and leave. We had just taken reserve and I really wanted to celebrate. At least a few stayed, including several members of the Lunchmeat team, along with Sean McCabe of Bourbon and Beale. Thanks to Lunchmeat for feeding me! It was a low key, relaxing night. I also hung around with Dr. Gonzo for the first time Sunday night. I had met him before but had never spent any real time with him. A really funny and interesting guy.

Before the sun went away Sunday, me, McCabe and Dr Gonzo walked down to the Path of Life Garden and the Connecticut River. I always make a point to go down there at some point during the contest. It is a really beautiful and strange place. If you want to see something really strange, venture down there after midnight on Saturday of BBQ weekend.

Got up Monday, packed up and was on the road by 9AM. Fortunately, this time I had an uneventful ride home, with no mechanical problems. It was great to see Max again, he stayed home and I really missed him. We stayed in touch via Blackberry though.

Ct river in VT

2009-07-26T20:33:00.000-04:00

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Just me and McCabe

2009-07-26T20:24:00.000-04:00

Almost everyone else is gone, but we're still hangin. Finally got down to the path of life gardens, such a great place.
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What a wild weekend

2009-07-26T17:42:00.000-04:00

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Grilling at harpoon

2009-07-26T16:49:00.000-04:00

Reserve: Q Haven!!!
Grand: who cares haha ISS
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The King

2009-07-24T19:58:00.000-04:00

Andy the king
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