It's a BOWL of MEAT!

And your point is?

Hey ya'll, if you have ever been called weird by your neighbor while he was grilling a squirrel, we might have the same neighbor. He's got no room to talk, he's grilling a damn squirrel.

Everyone knows, squirrels are best when fried.

One of my friends has a great recipe for pigeon. It's a little gamey, but that's a plus. Brazed rotisserie pigeon is actually very good.

That's the kind of friend I should be hanging out with. I don't know why I have nearly vegetarian friends. Actually, yes I do. You're alright in my book... even if you won't eat beef.

I can understand somebody not liking rattlesnake kabobs, or maybe broiled ostrich, but beef replaced chicken as the main meat staple of the American diet sixty years ago. Maybe going to a place called Noodles and ordering two sides of beef (no pasta) is a little carnivorous, but you would be amazed how good and fall-apart juicy their beef is. But, no, "It's a bowl. Of meat." Like that's somehow wrong. And you call me weird. It is a bowl (a tiny one for $4.32, at that). Of meat. People need meat to survive. At least this people does.

If you think PETA means People Eating Tasty Animals, we're on the same page. We didn't get to the top of the food chain just to eat plants. So let me just put together a list of critters, cuts of meat, and good ways to cook them.

Ostrich: I like dark meat when it comes to poultry. I'm not entirely sure how Craftwood Inn cooks it, but their ostrich is worth every penny. It is tasty, fall-apart juicy, and glazed in some kind of amazing sauce. If you want to have this big-ass bird, don't try and do it yourself, go to Craftwood Inn in Manitou Springs, Colorado and get their ostrich, off of the dinner menu, not the appetizers. You'll need a reservation and a collar. While you're there, get the cheese soup. Or maybe buy that for your less adventurous friend.

Squirrel: I said it already, fry it. Non-native squirrels are considered invasive pests, in addition to good when battered. I personally recommend without batter, though. Make sure it is done through: wild critters can have all sorts of nasty things. Fry in vegetable oil, not fatback, in order to get the most squirrel flavor. take the guts out before cooking, but you could leave the fur on if you want. Cooking/cleaning-wise, it's somewhere in between rabbit and fish.

Rabbit: I have limits. Rabbits are pests to farmers, and multiply like, well, rabbits. Farmers will shoot them on sight, and then either leave them twitching to die, or take them home. If you ever see a farmer shoot a rabbit and leave it for dead, go find it and break its neck. Don't let it suffer. I won't eat a rabbit that was purposely killed in front of my eyes so we could have it for dinner. But if I saw it shot and left for dead, or I know it was killed just for dinner purposes, but I didn't have to watch, I'll eat it. They're big enough you need to drain the blood. Clean and cube. Make rabbit stew. Let it sit on the heat for at least four hours. Six if you can.

Rattlesnake: Best when pregnant. Then you get eighteen for the price of one! Although a funny joke (if slightly macabre... I do love a girl who can shoot sarcasm from the hip like that, though), don't do it. First of all, rattlers can bite poisonously for more than an hour after they're dead. Let someone else get the snake. Only ever kill snakes if they pose an immediate threat to people or livestock: snakes control the rodent population, and a rat problem is worse. If you want to kill a viper, shoot it with a low-speed firearm, but not from too close a range. It will strike at the hot bullet. You can try to use a shotgun, but you'll put a lot of holes in the purty skin, and you won't be able to make a belt out of it. Cut the head off (if it isn't already blown to smithereens) and hold the mouth shut. Tape shut, even, for at least an hour. Incinerate, not in a cookfire. Snake, especially rattler, but watersnakes are good, too (good luck surviving a cottonmouth hunt) is very good when put on a kabob and fire-roasted. You can also pan-fry, make jerky, or make a meatloaf or crabcake-like dish. Keep the rattle and display.

Pigeon: My friend won't share his recipe, and I'm not in the mood to bag a pigeon and experiment. As far as I can tell, it is citrus-marinated and fire-roasted or rotisseried like a chicken. I think he bastes with a simple syrup every now and then. Fully cook it. Don't be afraid to burn the outside if you have to in order to get the inside done.

Antelope, deer, elk, or moose: This is an art in and of itself, but jerky and old-fashioned barbecue are popular options.

Wild Boar: As with all wild animals, especially ones that forage through trash and scraps like pigs do, take your grandmother's advice: make sure it's good and done or you'll be good and done! Trichinosis is very real, and very insidious. Cook your meat well done and that risk is eliminated. Wild Boar is good cooked like a Hawaiian pig, roasted on a spit, or butchered and cooked like a beef roast. Craftwood Inn also has great boar. I highly recommend it. I'm not sure precisely what they do, but it's magic.

Frog: Egg battered and lightly fried is popular, but I find that the legs are still a little off in terms of flavor and texture. I personally prefer cooked on a griddle. Make sure it's well-greased, preferable with bacon fat, fatback or other animal grease. Cook until browned, but do not burn.

Snail: Not escargot, snail. The kind that eats your garden. Cook like the meat course in a fondue meal: in boiling oil (maybe it's an oily beef or chicken stock, I'm not sure). Think of the meat course at The Melting Pot. Make sure it's salty (the oil, not the snail). Use one of those tiny forks to get the snail out of its shell once it's all cooked and dead and stuff.

Fried ant: Crunchy, nutty, and delicious. Don't do it yourself, buy it ready-made. I wouldn't eat the ants in my yard, that's for sure.

Mealworm: Yes, that is the worm in the bottom of the tequila bottle. No, you don't want that one. Tequila is mean stuff, and getting to the worm means drinking a lot of it, and then arguing with a bunch of other drunk-on-cheap-tequila people over who gets the worm. It's an honor in some circles. I've seen the cops show up to break up tequila worm fights. Don't mess with that. Mealworms are tasty, but put them in an eggroll or spring roll in place of another meat, like chicken. Fry. Enjoy.

Prepare for complaints from a dainty friend or two.

Small Town Southern Man

Alan Jackson's video would be embedded here if embedding weren't disabled for it. Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUhaqUHGeQU

I just got back from my cousins' graduation party. Four of 'em graduated this year, and two of them (the closest two) were among the first third-generation of graduates from the school. Of course, "party" in our family is code for "pig roast and a keg." Since it was Frontier Days, there was not a CO2 cartridge to be found within literally 50 miles of Colorado Springs, not even for a beer deliveryman's family, so one of the boys got one in Lamar and drove in with it. If they hadn't found one, I'm pretty sure someone would have either shot a hole in the keg or attached the shop air compressor to it.

I always forget how much I love being out in the sticks with the ranchers until I go back. The spaces are big, the buildings small, the trucks required and the roads undivided or dirt. Life is a hell of a lot more simple. The high school had its biggest graduating class ever with 58 graduates. They had all been going to school together since they started school. Peyton is a small town. I also noticed that my family are all very short, since it was the first time I'd seen 'em since elementary school. They're good people.

Redneck Recipes

I mentioned that we really DO have a lot of uses for bacon grease. One of them is to just leave it in the pan when making scrambled eggs. Makes then ten times better. Another use for bacon grease is lamp fuel. Seriously, I've seen it done. It's a little inefficient, but you have a hell of a lot of grease and not much parrafin when you're a farmer. Think of "backwards" farmers in Missouri. You probably just pictured someone I'm related to, and if they ever find out what you called them, you in for a whuppin'.

Remember, we take pride in our barbeque, and it is a talent handed down from father to son. Then the son comes up with his own way, and repeats. I cook by smell, not time. If it smells right and looks done, it's done. There is a large grey area in the term "right." This is why barbeque is an art. It will take trial and error for you to learn what's "right" for you. Volumes are deliberately vague.

Here's another redneck recipe. Chili. This chili has won chili cookoffs. This chili has fed families for weeks. This chili is MINE.

You'll be needing

• 2 pounds of chuck steak
• some taters
• two big-ass cans of tomato paste
• one normal can of chicken stock
• three big carrots
• an onion
• some Stubb's Smokey Mesquite BBQ sauce (trust me, no substitutes)
• the talent to light and feed a hot, extremely smokey maple fire. NO ACCELERANTS!
• roasted semi-mild peppers-- buy from the dudes by the highway and freeze.

Grill your steak. Chop everything. Put tomato paste, chicken stock in stewpot on grill. Stir. Smokey fire, close lid. Wait a few minutes. Stoke fire. Open lid. Stir. Repeat until 2/3 to 1/2 original volume. Add a glob of BBQ sauce. Stir. Taste. Add more to taste, keep it a little weaker than "it oughta be". Add fixin's. Stir. Stoke fire. Plenty of smoke. close lid (your pot is ALWAYS uncovered). You should have a medium-hot fire. You know your grill, it's thermometer, and the lies it tells. You know what medium-hot look like in the language of thermometer-lie. Keep your smoke going for as long as you have patience for, and ten minutes after that. Taste. Serve. NEVER cover it while it's hot. This'll keep and keep and keep.

You can adjust this recipe. One of my favorite ways is to dump in a bunch of hot bacon grease. Another use for the grease is to mix it with Worstershire suace and marinate your steak in it before grilling. You'll thank me.

Is that for you?

And other embarrassing moments avoided since the invention of the self-checkout machine.



Are you stuck doing the shopping for your family? While someone you love is in dire need of immodium? "I love you, but not that much..... oh, all right. But you owe me. We ain't changing the channel during Indy this year."

This has been a major embarrassment averted by... Checkout Machine!



A lot of fathers and husbands know this one:

*ring*

"Yes, Honey?"

"I need you to pick up some... sanitary products."

"Some... you mean... wait a second, I am a grown man. I ain't goin' up there and putting that on the conveyor belt. I gotta see these people every week."

*puppy dog eyes on other end of phone*"Pleeeeaaaase?"

Relax, sir, your supermarket is equipped with.... Checkout Machine!



It's not just at the supermarket, either. Sometimes you're at the library picking up an embarrassing movie that just came in. I believe in keeping human librarians employed and always checking out my stuff that way, but sometimes an exception must be made. For example, your documentary about gay activism has just arrived, and a glance around the room reveals that only the uber-conservative librarian with the icy stare is on duty. This could be deathly awkward, especially since you're in there every week like it's a Blockbuster.

Fear not, Checkout Machine now lives in libraries, too! (She doesn't have to know)



Or maybe you're out and about with a friend, and stop off at Safeway for some food. While you're there getting all the fixin's for a good meal of strawberries and fake whipped cream, you realize how this probably looks. If you stand in line to have a chashier ring you up, that means that both the casheir and the bagger might be getting the wrong impression, and you and your ladyfriend might get followed by some aspiring filmmaker. Solution to your strawberry fix and people getting the wrong idea:

The greatest invention since sliced bread (except not really. You can ring up your own pre-sliced bread with it, though): The Checkout Machine.



Let's talk about Cool Whip for a second. This is a fantastic invention. I'm pretty sure it's not actual cream, or if it is, there is a lot of other stuff in there with it. Cool Whip, unlike aerosol whipped creams, has a very low coefficient of collapse. That is I'm-pretty-sure-I-just-slept-through-math-class-ese for Cool Whip doesn't melt as fast as canned whipped creams do.

This property makes it ideal for topping desserts which must be made and then survive the journey to the barbeque inact. This propety also makes for some fun food fights, and allows it to stand fluffed in a bowl for weeks from manufacturing to consumption. Previously, making whipped cream was a very labor-intensive task, and, having no binders, your creation had a tendency to melt and run before you could really enjoy it. Seeing a problem, some redneck took the shortest route from point A (whipped cream a hassle, but delicios) to point B (whipped cream easy and cheap, but still tasty). In case you ever find yourself without a map on this route, it is somewhere near Route 66 and Everywhere, and at exit 252 you can get off and find Cool Whip. I can't speak to whether or not the Cool Whip will give you directions back to the interstate.

It makes sense that Cool Whip is a staple in the Midwest, especially, as part of the all-American diet. I can't say I've ever been to a get-together worth bein' at that didn't have Cool Whip. My aunt's and my cousins' weddings have all had Cool Whip in among the fancy "or-derves" once the officials had let out and the reception of liqour and stories began. Every good barbeque, reunion, and Thanksgiving dinner has had Cool Whip available, and at many of those even the non-Cool Whip vittles were housed in Cool Whip-brand tupperware. In case you haven't noticed, Cool Whip is as much a part of many rednecks' culture as using too much hairspray and growing a moustache (generally not the same person).

I am personally partial to aerosol sorts of whipped cream, given their different flavor, when getting whipped cream to top food with. You can't tip your head back and spray your mouth full of whipped cream from a plastic tub. Of course, you can't dip things in a spray can, and like I said, once sprayed, it has the self-life of an ice cube in summer. Hats off to the inventor of Cool Whip, you are a real redneck of genius. (I didn't just rip that off of a Bud ad). Hush now.

I really have way too much random knowledge.

I do. I'm trying to gather more car-related knowledge and less fish-related knowledge, so I'm going to have to share some more fish info with you to get it out of my head.

Blowfish guts are toxic, but the muscle is not.

While Canada and the U.S. generally get along on everything, there has been continued bitter dispute over North Pacific salmon waters since time immemorial. Each country has a line that they're not supposed to fish past, but we all know how well that works. So next time you order some sushi here's an exciting thought: you may be eating illegal fish.

Now, have you ever noticed that no matter who your old neighbors were and who your new neighbors are, the new ones seem worse at first? Well, let me set the scene for this one: The original owners of two 50-year old houses both sell around the same time. They had always kept to themselves, but seemed like nice respectable people. New people buy the houses. One is bought by somewhere between three and half a dozen college-age students who probably aren't in college. There are usually three cars in their driveway and one more, which could fit in the driveway, which they like to park in front of your house. This little peice of shit wannabe sports-car import makes it tough to get out of your drive, and blocks you putting your trashcan where you always have on trash day. The second house was bought by a three-generation white trash family, based on what you've seen of them-- grandma, grandpa, young mom (and no father), and at least two school-age children. They keep to themselves and don't park in odd places, but pretty soon you start finding Docshund poo in your yard (theirs is the only tiny dog on the block, so you know). Who annoys you more?

Well, in both instances, you mount a passive-agressive campaign, putting your trash can right where you always put it even though the car is way too close to it, and begin scooping up the dog poo and tossing it back on their land. None of you yeild and neighborhood staring matches are common. How does it resolve? Well, you're still getting little brown presents every day after a long time of this. As for the young punks with the car, turns out they're car guys too and you're now on good terms (with the import parked on their side of the street). Why the shift? You both sized each other up when they moved in and decided you couldn't possibly have anything in common with them and thus decided to act like some Arab states do towards Israel: ignore them and hope they'll go away. But when they were out on their porch drinking beer, you just happened to be tuning on your Oldsmobile and ya'll got to talking. Turns out they're not violent, trashing the house, orinto drugs like they looked like at first. You're not uptight squares, creepy weirdos, or nearly as insane as you looked like at first. You're both interested in getting as many miles out of your beaters as possible, and come to be something near to friends before they're out of beer and you are convinced that you don't have a compression leak. You don't mention their annoying car out front (they do ask what the turning circle of you car is and if you ever have trouble getting out of the driveway), and when you're done talking, one of the guys moves it over in front of their house. That night, you don't call the cops when their keg party (which is suprisingly non-messy come morning) gets loud. You now officially get along with these neighbors and talk sometimes when you're both hanging out on the porch on weekends.

Moral: well, you figure it out, it ain't that tough.

Now, here's a redneck moment my chemistry professor had the other day. Remember, this is a bright, college-educated guy we're talking about here. When he figured out that people were stealing his calculators in between classes, though, his solution was to duct-tape them to three foot lengths of 2x4, when he could have just locked them in his desk. That would have been no fun, though.

U-Hauls, muscle cars, stump rot, and cooking

I'm not really sure when this turned into The Weekly Redneck Digest of Meat, Fire, Motorcycles, and Women, but it has. And I'm okay with that. I kind of like not touching my computer for a week.

So first, a story. Get used to it, I tell a lot of stories. Yesterday at the light rail Park&Ride I saw a U-Haul. Yes, a big ass van, which you can now rent for $20 a day. This made me wonder, why would anyone rent a U-Haul and then take the train to get someplace? They're obviously not moving. Then it hit me. You get headroom, space for passengers and stuff, lots of power, and it's in good condition (generally). If you get in a car wreck and have to rent without a reservation, you can only get a compact car for that price. How shameless do you have to be to rent a U-Haul as a daily driver while the shop fixes up your ride? Well, it takes a lot of nerve. I like the idea. I don't like having to ride around in an underpowered Japanese econobox, hitting my head on the rear window (all 5'4" of me) when someone else is in shotgun. That's when I miss my full-size ride, even with it's little gremlins. Those gremlins don't whack you in the head and cramp your legs. If you rent a U-Haul as a daily driver when you're not moving, you're redneck. Face it, buddy. You ought to be on a Budweiser Real Men of Genius ad. High-five.

Another story. I still have an original Xbox. I still use it. I just found my favorite game, Sega GT 2002. It had fallen behind the TV. So you ain't going to see much of my ass for a while. Send me a suggestion or comment and I'll get back to you, but only after I'm done dragging my 427, 814 horse blown '70 Chevelle. If they had Xbox live for this, I wouldn't even be going to class. Or work. You'd have to roll a grenade under my chair to get me out of there.

So I listed fire in my new description of my blog. Why? I love fire. I love watching fire. I love improving fire. I love cooking with fire. I ran into some of my old friends last weekend, and guess what we did? Yep, fire. They like to take Purell, spread it on newspaper, light it, and then scatter powder such as non-dairy creamer into the fire (like a grain-dust explosion). Not being the criminal sort, they do this on their own property on concrete. But, see, I knew we could do better. Bigger, longer-lasting fire can be achieved with rubbing alcohol. You can burn more stuff, hotter, with stump rot. Oxidizers are fun. Colors can get involved with barium, for example. You can blow things up with just rubbing alcohol. We like blowing things up, but we'll do that later. Turning a soda bottle into a gumball cannon, though, was pretty badass. We had fun with that. That's just our competitive nature: take something cool that they've done and do it better. They're probably working on something cooler right now. I'm okay with that.

So, women. One of my favorite subjects. This is going to have to be a separate post-- I've got a lot to say, but I can't think of any of it.

Motorcycles: For a few years now I've been telling my dad to excavate his crap out of the garage so we can get his motorcycles running again. Given that he's finally started listening to me about "we are going to get at least one of them restored and running before I turn 16," that looks like that could actually happen. Whoo. Classic Massachusetts iron. I also am in the market for a used dirtbike. Just FYI, if anyone happens to have one laying around in the Denver area.

Meat: I feel guilty that my friend has decided to blog about fish (God knows why), has nothing fish-related to talk about, and I know more than I should about fish. I know more than I should about a lot of things. So, here we are. One way to fish in shallow, narrow streams is to spot your dinner, sneak downstream of it, and build a rock dam all the way across the water flow. All the way. If the fish can get out downstream, you're going to be going hungry, so get it right. No need to stop the water, just make sure there are no fish-sized holes. Now, grab a big stick and sneak up (really quiet) behind the fish. Make sure your shadow never goes over or in front of it. Now, whack. Yes, whack the fish. Get it out of the water as quick as possible, too. Once you've got ahold of it and have it on shore, no need to be cruel, put the injured soon-to-be dinner down and clobber his head with a rock. No pain, instant death. Anything over three inches should be gutted. Cook and enjoy (or eat raw--I reccommend cooked). When you're done, don't be an asshole, dismantle the dam. Chuck Norris will come find you otherwise. Now copy-paste, I insist.

Also, more useless fish knowledge: Some salt-water fish are poisonous, but all freshwater fish are edible.

More food: Yes, I'm writing while hungry, can't you tell? In consideration of my readers who stick to a more suburban diet, I promise I won't discuss how tasty pigeon is, or how to cook snake, not in this post. Anyway, I've noticed that when I'm only getting food for myself, I'm a very simple person. If I want beans and ham, I'll open a can of Busch's Maple-Bacon Baked Beans (put 'em on top of your head and your tounge will beat your brains out trying to get to it), open a package of sliced ham, put the ham in the can, turn on the stove (or light a fire), and cook them both at once. Then I'll eat out of the can. But when I'm cooking for other people, I get fancy. I can get real fancy. When I make hamburgers and take them in my lunch, I literally have to fight people off, it looks and smells that good. When we have company I'll cook anything that we have on hand to order. I know a lot of recipes that are just "yeah, that looks about right", but folks love when I'm the grillmaster at the 4th of July barbeque. Seriously, come over sometime and I'll make you apple pie over a wood fire and you will want seconds.

When I'm on my own, if I want mushrooms I'll grab some mushrooms out the fridge, add butter and microwave. If I'm making mushrooms for you, you're getting sautee'd mushrooms in a freakin' root beer-pineapple glaze and carmelized apricots. I can't help it. I don't know where I got this tendency from. it's freaking me out.

Where they heads at?

I got an email from Alex C. (you go, girl!) asking me to talk about the iced tea in restaurants. Is it really true that almost every food-service joint on this earth has forgotten how to brew iced tea? I hope not, but it looks like it. After doing a comparative survey (otherwise known as getting thirsty in different parts of town), I have concluded that the lost art of iced tea is not hopeless.

Want iced tea at KFC? Well, you're shit out of luck, my friend. Even when the local water doesn't taste like rust, the tea does. My only explanation for this is that they use powdered tea, and powdered tea is bitter. Very bitter. Undrinkable, really. I'm not even sure they're using powdered tea leaves in my neighborhood... maybe just ground-up leaves off the trees. After cars have run over them, on a bad day.

No sugar. Why no sugar? The only sweetened teas I've found were sweetened with corn syrup, making them very sticky. The iced tea at Johnny Rockets is like this. Don't get me wrong, I love their burgers, but their tea is KFC's with some syrup added. Palatable, but not recommended.

Fancy restaurants like steakhouses and that place with the gumbo don't use bitter tea, but they either sweeten with fake sugar, or the tea is mixed weak and not sweetened. Or, perhaps, they quick-brew it and then add fake sugar. In any case, don't order it unless you have to. There is one steakhouse here in Denver, kind of in the "bad" part of town, that sells its food for incredibly cheap and yet makes the best beefsteak I've ever had. These folks have good tea. It tastes like it is probably a commercial brand but not an instant one, and they slow-brew it and then add real sugar. If you're looking for steak and iced tea in Denver, drop by Cowbobas.

Oddly enough, the only real traditional tea I can find is at roadside diners 60 miles from anywhere out on the interstate. You know, the sort of place where the waitress calls you "hun," you can stand a spoon straight up in the coffee without it touching the cup, and everything's as greasy as the oil pan of your Chevy small block.

In conclusion, a lot of fast-food places have even further sacrificed taste for convenience, nice sit-down places don't really care about how their tea is, as long as it looks like iced tea and was made from leaves, and it's the small, uexpected, out-of-the-way places that really care. And even if they don't care, they still do it the way they were taught, the right way. I don't know why most folks who put "tea" on their menus have the nerve to serve something distinctly different than the tea we all know, or why they think that's good for business, but all I can say is, "Where they heads at?" Don't be like those tools: if you're going to do something, do it right.

Time to do a little guest writing.

Seeing as I'm not hungry right now, this post will contain a lot less description of what critters are tasty, containing instead information about fish.

First, here's how to fish the stereotypical redneck way: Get a cooler to put the fish in, some dynamite, and some matches. Go to the fishing hole and make sure there is nobody around. Light the dynamite, toss it in the water, and gather the resultant fish into the cooler. Repeat as necessary. Any explosive will do if you can't find dynamite.

However, as you all know, I like to go beyond the stereotype and examine all of the ways that rednecks behave, and discuss instances where people who are otherwise rednecks behave in a manner that is not unsophisticated.

When a redneck man goes fishing, he often will do it with his buddies, searching for bragging rights. In these cases, the best lures, gear, and boats that money can buy are often involved. This is fishing the yuppie way, and I personally do not have the money or the constitution for it. But when a man goes fishing, he is doing it in a redneck manner (even if in other parts of his life he's not a redneck) when he uses his daddy's old broken fishing pole, or a pole he bought at a yard sale, or his tackle box contains as many woodworking tools as it does fishing gear. Hand-dug American worms are another point of pride among fishermen like this, the guys to whom it's not honest if you didn't have to try. That's redneck ingenuity.

Noodling for catfish is a way that rednecks and hillbillies have been known to fish. This is a process in which a large catfish is caught by the redneck wading in the water, sticking his arm in an underwater hole, and if a fish bites him, it's probably a catfish. It'll hang on, too. This is one of the most efficient ways to catch catfish, but it is also one of the most dangerous, as catfish have innards (don't ask for the technical term) down their throat that will cut you up pretty bad if you twist your hand around too much. Also, catfish territory is also alligator territory, so you never really know what you're going to get bitten by.

Now you've got your fish. Here's some popular ways to cook your fish. Remember, just because you have an oven in your house doesn't mean that you see the need to use it when you have other approaches that work just as well. We're just hungry rednecks, not high-class chefs.

Cooking fish in a dishwasher is a famous approach. I've never tried this, but I hear the way it's done is the same as formally poaching a fish in a paper bag in the oven, only you use aluminum foil. My favorite seasoning is Worcestershire sauce, but I hear that my cousin knows a guy who makes great Jack Daniels catfish in the dishwasher. My cousin tells me that the key is to make sure it's only set on "dry" or something, similar to thawing in the dryer. If you use the whole cleaning cycle of your dishwasher, you'll have aluminum and fish everywhere. basically, season your fish, make sure there's a lot of liquid marinade in the foil, and then seal up the foil good and tight. Put through the dry cycle on your dishwasher and serve.

My preferred cooking method (other than over a wood fire) is to wrap my food and put it on the engine block of the car for a long trip. It takes some practice, like cooking over wood without a thermomter or timer, but the resultant fod is delicious, if only becausr you have a hot meal when you arrive at your destination. It is possible to overcook things with this method. More detail on how to do this method later, after I've done some sleeping.

I'm not really insane.

I just love good food. Those of you who know me know that I love meat. Beef, elk, venison, fish (I will do a review of the best-tasting fish if you want), rattlesnake ( a must-try for all of you), snail, chicken, turkey, crab, shrimp, buffalo, antelope, rabbit, squirrel. Wild boar is delicious. So is pheasant, but pigeon is better. Pork. Bacon. Ham. Have you ever cooked a honeybaked ham, sliced it, and then fried those slices in a skillet? I have. Put baked beans on that and you have the breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions. My point here, however, is that a few nights ago it was going to be a low of -2 degrees. Fahrenheit, and I'm apparently the only nutjob who thinks that's good weather to have a barbeque. Winter, due to its cold temperatures and forbidding ice, is a major damper on my carnivorous diet, and I decided that I wasn't going to put up with it. Now my ski gear (and everyday coat) smells like maple smoke and I like it.

It takes a true devotion to meat, potatoes, and baked beans to be willing to dress up in goosedown-lined pants (did I mention that goose is tasty?), thermal underwear, two flannels, wrap a scarf around your face, put on a Carhartt coat and start grilling. Chuck steak is the best cut to grill, by the way. Good flavor, good texture, doesn't cause flareups, and is cheap. The butcher will tell you it's stewmeat, but don't listen. One of these days I hope to shoot a snake and grill it. Anyway, if you've ever grilled in subzero temperatures, you're probably a redneck. If you're interested in how to not screw up the food, get frostbite, melt your clothes, or even how to get the fire started when it's damn cold, ask and ye shall be told.

I hear it's traditional this time of year to toss some shrimp on the grill, too. I might do that next time King Soopers is having a sale.