Here I am posting on a Sunday because I agreed to do this blog roll feature-rama thing and asked Jeff to be so kind as to write a post for me and because last week was insaneville for us, we both (he) dropped the ball. However Renee over at Flamingo Musings and Freakin Flamingo is one of the dearest ladies I know and I love her to the moon and back and I am all well I guess the cluster-f^$k in the kitchen can wait a bit while I continue on the blog tour of awesome. Can someone get me some coffee? Spiked por favor.
In case you didn’t notice, we have not been around these parts much lately. So Sunday posting is as rare as posting at all really. Our lives have changed quite a bit and the blog has suffered. Or maybe we have out grown this specific venture. Because it is not like we don’t cook or anything. As a matter of fact that seems to be all we’re doing lately.
What are we working on?
As a few of you may already know, Jeff & I started competition BBQing last year as a way to test our strength of relationship. You hang out in a 10 x 20 popup with a smoker going all night long with 4 different types of meats cooking while you sleep in a chair or on the pavement in a light dusting of rub and see if you do not kill each other before sunrise. We didn’t kill each other and we thought well let’s really change things up a notch.
So our competition BBQ team, Smoke & Honey, became our foodstuffs business. And so far so good. We are starting out at farmer’s markets in town selling smoked jerky, BBQ, sausage, bacon and the like. Plus a bevy of savory baked goods, including these doozies – Bourbon Apple Hand Pies with Bourbon Sugar Glaze and Bacon Dust.
And we cater. And we are planning on just where this is going to take us. What is our end goal?
Plus you know we both still have real jobs.
Pretty much we have decided that we hate sleep and just won’t do that nonsense anymore.
CAN I PLEASE GET SOME DAMN COFFEE!?
How does our work differ from others of its genre?
Everything meat we produce (ok say 90%) is smoked. Our jerky is smoked, our sausages, bacon, etc all smoked. We have even made smoked tasso, salami and lomo. Damn tasty too. So rather than age curing our meats, or just using a regular dehydrator on our jerky, we go nice and slow over a whisper of smoke. It makes all the difference.
Why do we write what we do? (when we even write…)
Simply, to share our love of good food. And good beer. And so we have a reference to go back to when ever we want to make Bock Brined Corn Beef because let’s face it – all I really hear here are crickets… But that is our own fault. Consistent writers we are not. We’d rather be in the kitchen, at the grill, manning the smoker.
How does our writing process work?
Mostly with lots of scribbles on random pieces of paper after one of us storms up some crazy idea about what we want to make next. Then we lose the paper and have to try and redo stuff from memory only to find said paper after we have freaked out about it at each other for hours. Ah love.
We like odd combinations. Things you don’t usually see or hear of. If it is a massive fail we order pizza. If it kicks ass well we know we will make people happy with the flavors we create. We aren’t pretty cooks. Our stuff is rustic, messy and sometimes plain confusing. But where we understand that people do eat with their eyes first, we know their noses and mouths and fully happy bellies is how we finish everything off.
Eventually we take those scribbles on paper and cipher them and get them on the computer and maybe to the blog. However judging from the stack of paper scraps on my desk, I’d say were behind on the whole ciphering part.
Now here comes another part of of blog tour fail. I forgot about the fact that this is a “tour” and you should have somewhere else to “tour” once you were don’t “touring” us. i.e. forgot to ask a soul. I KNOW I SUCK OMG.
However I will not leave you without somewhere, ANYWHERE else to go than here so I think I will just talk about a couple of my latest addictions.
His food is drool worthy. He takes amazing photos. He reminds me a little of me in that he seems to do EVERYTHING. Cooks, paints, gardens, caters, etc. and still spends lots of time with his freakishly adorable boy and his lovely fiancé. Like us he probably doesn’t sleep much, but he knows good food. He knows that pulled pork, fried egg and red pepper jam taste amazing together between two crunchy slices of bread and to me that is like passing some kind of sandwich test. And I am a sandwich professional. Serious.
My Portuguese Kitchen by Paula Costa
She is a natural wiz in the kitchen. She now runs not one but TWO blogs, does kitchen demos, custom catered dinners and the like and is just so wonderful that I long for the day when I can actually give her a hug. A real live hug not just a bunch of parens with the word hug in between. Tho that works for now. She makes these amazing peri peri chicken wings that were the inspiration for Smoke & Honeys latest jerky development creation and check out this bright, colorful, just simply gorgeous Sangria!
Thanks for stopping by you lovely reader you.
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