Man Card Member, No. 404431

I can never say no to a grilling challenge. I will freak out during all the prep and cooking, but when it comes out good I will sigh a huge sigh of relief and then typically relish in my victory over the food. And then I also devour it like the Fantastic Mr. Fox family.

I've always been intrigued by the idea of the Beer Can Chicken, but some people either told me it was way too rednecky to bother with, or it didn't turn out all that great anyway, so what was the point? I have not grilled chicken all that often, so this was something I figured I should try.

Remarkably, it's easy as hell. You literally rub the chicken down with some kind of dry rub (we used some tasty, spicy rub I have from The Salt Lick outside Austin) and the shove a beer can up it's arse. (Weird side note: The recipe calls for the beer can to be only half full, and it said to just pour out half the beer. Pour it out? Are you high? That's damn fine Guinness there, sir. I proudly drank it, like a real man should.) Heat up the grill, throw some smoke chips in for color and flavor, and that's it. Grill for about 90 minutes and holy damn if that chicken doesn't have fantastic flavor and meat that actually falls off the bone like other BS artists advertise. So yeah, man card awarded for conquering fire, meat and doing something goofy like shoving a beer can up a dead animal's ass and cooking it. Only a man would think of something so stupid but successful.

Makin' Bacon

Before I left for Ireland, I did partake in a cool little cooking experiment. My mother-in-law, knowing my addiction to cooking, smoking and creating our own food instead of having to buy everything, bought me a cool book, called Jar It, Pickle It, Cure It. The book has all sorts of easy recipes on making things from scratch, which is right up my alley. Some of them are naturally things I won't really care for all that much (a lot of the pickled items, for instance, but one that jumped right out at me was making bacon from scratch.

I'm not a big bacon eater, since it's not good for the heart health, but as long as it's eaten in small amounts and in moderation (like, once every three months) then I don't think it's going to put me over the edge of unhealthiness. And when the wife and I discovered the glory of the H Mart (an all-Asian/Hispanic grocery store) that had raw pork belly, I knew I had to give it a shot.

You basically start with raw pork belly:


You make a mixture of curing salts, molasses, pepper and sugar, and rub that all over the belly like a paste. Throw it all in a ziplock bag and refrigerate it. Every day, you flip it over and massage the belly a little, helping the paste suck the moisture out and getting the molasses and pepper and sugar in. After seven-10 days of doing this, you fire up the smoker and smoke that stuff super-low for about 5 hours.


When that is finished, you cool it off, let it get a little firm, and then slice it however you see fit. Then cook that fine bacon.


The interesting part is tasting real homemade bacon for the first time. It's sweeter, smokier and lot richer in flavor. And at first I thought I had screwed it up until I realized that this is what real bacon actually SHOULD taste like, instead of something that's been processed half-a-dozen times somewhere in Nebraska and then shipped to my grocery store in plastic airtight packages. This was as fresh as it was going to get, and once I told myself to get past the store-bought perceptions fo what bacon should taste like, I found it delicious. Damn delicious. Had to stop myself from cooking up the second piece of belly delicious. I had two big portions left, so I have to use them soon since they only keeper for about six months. Knowing some of my friends, this shouldn't be a problem. As an added bonus, this has allowed the wife and I to laugh about one of our favorite scenes in Muppets history, when Kermit loses his memory.

Idiot of the Day

I'm a notoriously slow eater. Friends of mine were even making fun of me again this weekend when a buddy's girlfriend (who is relatively new to the group) said, "Wow, Chris, it's taken you like 25 minutes to eat that bowl of chili." Yeah, I can't help it, I just eat slow. Don't know if I always have, but it's been something that was pointed out to me in college and has been that way ever since. I just can't shovel the food down like some people can.

This brings me to today's Idiot of the Day. Or I should say, idiots. And honestly, you are a free-thinking human, so you eat whatever and how much ever you want however fast you want to do it. But I gotta pick on people for a moment.

The deli down the street from my office is my go-to lunch spot when I forget to bring my lunch to work or I'm in a rush or I'm just damn lazy. They make a good grilled vegetable sandwich, so it's a solid fallback (unlike the uber death machine that Kelly and I know of as the SizzEx Lone Star, but that sandwich is a whole post on its own).

Anyway, on Fridays this deli decides to unload its salad bar stock since it's closed on the weekends. The result? A promotion where as long as you buy a pound or more of items on the salad bar, it only costs $6.99. Now, I've eaten at that salad bar before, and atr no time have I ever hit a pound worth food from it. You gotta go oozing rivers of ranch dressing or something dense like that to get the weight up, but people attack this salad bar like the zombie war is coming.

It's sick to watch, honestly. I took this picture a couple weeks ago, and people were getting chappy with each other over how much croutons and shredded cheese they were piling on. As one them said, "I gotta get over a pound. It's cheaper." Why the hell are you going to out of your way to overload yourself on food like that? It's sick, really. People just piling on the grub, which they'll never eat, (or worse, hork it down because they bought it, a classic psychological ploy by the food companies) and just stuffing themselves and we wonder why their are diabetes cases skyrocketing and obesity. And it doesn't count that you're on the salad bar when you skip the beets and tomatoes and just go straight for the creamy pasta chicken salad that really should just be Cream Dressing, Accompanied by Enough Solid Objects To Make You Consider Having to Chew. And don't let that photo fool you, the line wraps around the staircase and the damn near out the door as people wait to have their own personal Kobayashi moment.

Eating food is good. Eating more than a pound's worth of food at lunch just so you can pay a flat price whether you eat 1.1 pounds or 5.6 pounds is just idiotic.

Man Card Member, No. 404431

That's right people, I sunk a boat. And it's no game of Battleship, either. I polished off a whole boat of sushi last week. There is this great Asian restaurant that I love, and if you order enough sushi, they don't bring it to you on a tray, they load it up onto a wooden boat and moor that sucked right on the table. Love it.

There's a special feeling that comes when finishing that last piece of sushi. Sure, it's not exactly the same as dusting off the Ole '96er, but I was feeling especially proud. I know John Candy would have given me a pat on the pat. Sadly, the restaurant doesn't let you take the boat home with you after you finish, which I personally think is a load of crap. I don't want some dinky T-shirt like they give you at Hooters, that is weak (although my brother once earned that T-shirt after downing 50 wings in one setting, something I'm sure his innards are still punishing him for years later). I want the boat damnit.