The Bar and Bat-Mitzvah. If you’re Jewish, or have Jewish friends with kids, then you’ve probably been to one or even had one. Maybe even several or too many to count. And you know what most of them are like. Large, wedding-like catered affairs usually held at a catering hall, with standard chafing dish food. For entertainment, everyone dresses up in suits and dances the hora.
You’re supposed to attend and hold them because you have an obligation. Not necessarily to have a good time. For the most part, Bar Mitzvahs are a requirement for Jewish parents because every other parent is having a Bar Mitzvah for their children, at great expense. You can’t NOT have one if you have children 13 years of age. If you’ve been invited to a Bar Mitzvah and you happen to be close family or friends, and you live fairly close by — within several hours drive — you pretty much HAVE to go. That is the unwritten rule of Bar Mitzvah etiquette.
This last weekend I went to a Bar-Mitzvah in which I actually had a good time and I didn’t feel like it was a sense of obligation at all. Why? Because it broke every single rule in the Bar Mitzvah book.
For starters, the family holding it decided that instead of outsourcing the entire thing to a catering hall and spend God knows how much money in the process, they would cook virtually all of the food they would serve themselves. Second, they held it on Halloween, and encouraged everyone to come in COSTUME. Third, the parents doing the cooking are accomplished competition BARBECUE chefs and judges. Combine that, and you get …
The Jordan Keiles Halloween Bar-B-Q-Mitzvah!
The Bar Mitzvah boy, Jordan, upper left, inspects his cocktail party spread. The star of the cocktail spread in my opinion were the Apple wood smoked Salami and Bologna, which I thought was genius. Shown also are sushi rolls and Asian pasta salad. Click on the photo to enlarge.
Ready for an unconventional Bar-Mitzvah? Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
Every year, at the time during the late summer when the stars align in the shape of a medium rare hamburger, the foodie elite of the world converge on a single place, much as in ancient times when the Pagans converged on the Stone Henge to celebrate the solstice.
But instead of dancing around naked and eating questionable vittles around giant stone monoliths, we converge (mostly) clothed upon Water Taxi Beach to celebrate the birthday of one of our own, Citysearch.com food editor, notorious carnivore Feedbag food blogger Josh Ozersky, aka Mr. Cutlets, also known as the devourer of worlds.
Each year, it’s been a different themed creature that is sacrificed and prepared a multiple of ways in order to feed the hunger of the Beast from Brooklyn. This time, it was a whole flock of lamb.
Here’s one of the cute little animals being cooked over hot coals on a rotating spit. Wanna see it on video? Yes, of course you do.
The smell that was permeating Water Taxi Beach was absolutely seductive. With all this Lamb, shouldn’t we be celebrating the re-birth of our lord and savior?
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Gary Wiviott’snew BBQ book published by Running Press (which he authored with food writer Colleen Rush) is based upon his popular web-based course on how to master the Weber Bullet smoker in 5 easy lessons. Unfortunately, because I decided to skip ahead to Step 3 after Step 1, he threw my ass out of the program.
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There’s just so much Asian food and salads at Panera Bread a business traveler can eat. Sometimes, a man craves meat. And in my case, that’s a gnawing on bones, primeval, genetic de-evolution to Neanderthal times desire when I’m really, really hungry.
So when I heard about this “Authentic” barbecue place in Richmond — a city hardly known for its BBQ culture — I had to go check it out.
Ready for some finger-lickin’ good ‘Q in downtown Richmond? Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more
Over the summer months in 2008, I’ve spent a lot of time in the Carolinas, in particular, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area (The Triangle) and also the Columbia, South Carolina area. Two cities which are as different as can be from a cultural and socio-economic perspective, but which do share something in common — Barbecue.
Even if you are trying to shed the pounds like I am, when you travel, maintaining discipline can be extremely difficult, especially when you are surrounded by co-workers who want to go out and have a good time. And when you’re in the South with a bunch of out-of-town males, particularly in the Carolinas, evening entertainment can usually be classified into two distinct areas — ones which involve Pork and ones which do not. I’m not going to get into the details of the ones which do not, because that could get me in trouble with the wife.
Here are all my Carolina Barbecue sins exposed, some of which I am proud of and would repeat again, and some of which I would not.
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Some weekends you just want to sit home and do nothing. Two 14+ hour workdays in a row pretty much eliminated my desire to go out and do anything other than shop for food supplies, lie down on the couch like a lump and play with my new Weber Smokey Mountain.
Breakfast at noon — Ancho, Red Pepper, tomato and Zucchini Summer Egg Beater Scramble with Jalapeno Cheese and fresh Cherries. Eaten while watching last night’s recorded Olympics on the DIRECTV DVR. Not what Micheal Phelps eats for breakfast, but pretty damn good.
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The F/1.4 50mm SIGMA lens continues to be a bundle of pure joy. I still wouldn’t say I’ve entirely mastered its use, as I find myself having to take more exposures with it than I normally would to get good results, but the results I do get are often stunning. Take a look at some of my most recent shots.
Ah, escarole and bean soup. I love the way you can control the depth of field by adjusting the aperature far more creatively than with the kit lens.
The only thing I did different on this one was adjust the F stop. Totally different effect on the picture.
Even one of our pedestrian Chinese stir-frys looks quite exciting through the new SIGMA F/1.4
I really like this particular wok shot.
Tasty results.
The tower of Barbecue Ribs. Full sunlight, ISO 100, F/5, at 1/500th of a second.
Like any Barbecue enthusiast, I’ve been trying to improve my technique and the end-results of the actual product by making a few tweaks here and there. I wanted to show you what I’ve done so far.
Ain’t these purty? Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
Since April of 2001, when I moved into my current house, I’ve been the proud owner of a Weber gas grill. It’s served me faithfully and I expect to be using it for years to come. But as good as a gas grill is in terms of convenience, it just doesn’t replicate the flavor of charcoal.
Posted by offthebroiler 
Posted by offthebroiler 
Posted by offthebroiler 
