I have been totally obsessed with barbecue this summer. I have been barbecueing many many meals, going to a few ribfests and reading a couple of barbecue cookbooks I got my hands on. Here is my problem though: No matter how hard I try, I just can't make
Man, I tried to write an entry just now and that is what I came up with, a bunch of crap about barbecue sauce. I will summarize that entry in one sentence: If you have ever worked at, or currently work at, a really good barbecue restaurant (preferably in the actual south US) and know the secret to making a good sauce, please contact me. And if you just know how to find a sauce recipe on the internet, don't worry, I do too, I have a lot of recipes, I just can't get the right one. Anyhow!
It is tough making a diary entry when you are dumb like me, it can be hard to come up with ideas to write about. In my comments recently, someone just put "write a Star Wars entry", which is pretty handy, people just calling out requests like that. Please now don't everyone put requests in my comments though because I will realize that I can't write about any of them since I am dumb, and then I will feel bad.
Luckily, I can write a Star Wars entry, because who doesn't have an opinon about Star Wars? And here is my opinion which I am pretty sure noone has ever said in the past many months since the new Star Wars movie came out and an entry like this would actually have been timely: Star Wars movies are really horrible. I know, I am truly original for saying that. I watched the first 15 minutes or so of the new Star Wars movie (someone gave me a pirated DVD of it they got at the chinese mall), and what I was surprised at wasn't that it was bad, but that I actually got angry. I think this was because I had just seen about 20 minutes of the second-last Star Wars movie on TV a week or two before and couldn't believe how bad it was, and I assumed the new one couldn't be that bad, but it pretty much was. So there is my Star Wars entry!
Maybe I should just make an entry about every controversial (if the controversy is "did this movie suck or not", not an actual interesting controversy) movie that I have seen. The only one I can think of though is Napoleon Dynamite, which I saw on video kinf of recently. And I guess I am too old to have strong feelings about this movie, either negative or positive.
Okay, movie talk sucks. Back to barbecue! There's a show on all the time this week called "All Star BBQ Showdown" (I just did a quick internet looky and I guess it's on the outdoor life network? Why do I get this network? Maybe it's on a different station here in Canada), and it's great. The basic premise for it is this: Every episode, they have 2 really good barbecue chefs and one 'civilian' team who have varying levels of knowledge about barbecuing stuff, but who always come in 3rd. And these three teams have to barbecue some meat and are under a time constraint (the time they have varies depending on what meat they are cooking). The twist is that the teams show up and don't know what meat they are cooking or what sort of contraption they are using to cook it until the last minute. One episode it could be brisket on an average-sized smoker, the next it could be ribs on a larger smoker, and the next it might be a whole hog on a very large smoker. Seriously, what does it say about me when the biggest thrill I get while watching TV is seeing what meat and cooker they are going to use on this show? It says I am an idiot. Anyhow, the best part of any of the episodes I have watched so far is when one of the civilian team members explained how he loved barbecue competitions for the rush you get in them, and then said totally seriously "I call cooking barbecue the world's original extreme sport" (I wish I had the wording exactly right, but that's basically it). I love that.
1:21 p.m. - Sept. 12, 2005