Farm Dinner at "Grateful Growers Farm" in Denver, NC.

So, Cassie, a good friend of mine, recently asked me to help out with her latest farm dinner she held at her farm in Denver, NC. She raises hormone free chickens and pigs. I've had both and ,lemme tell you, they're doing something great there! I've NEVER tasted anything quite like it in my life. Her animals are treated right and you can tell when you eat them! I was able to take a tour of their farm to check out the animals, they live pretty good, if you ask me!

Any who, a few fellow chefs and I did some awesome food to raise money and awareness for the local farming community as well as help the edible school yard project that is going under way at a local public school. You can feel the energy and excitement as we prepared and serve this unbelievable food from local farmers. A good bit of it came directly from Grateful Growers, but there were tons of other things that came from other farmers as well. Sorry, but I dont know the names as of yet. Enjoy the pics and BUY LOCAL!

By the way, all these pics were taken with my phone, believe it or not! I forgot my SD card that day for the nice camera I usually use, but luckily, these pics came out awesome.

Scored local duck breast ready for rendering!


Couple hottys makin' bread! Man, everything they made was incredible!


Dessert from JWU. They did stuff with goat cheese and goats milk, awesome. Those little shot glasses with straws coming out of them were smoothies made with local goats milk, YUM!


Chef Mike from Carmel cookin' up something delicious.


We were plating the first course, a local spring mix salad with berry vinaigrette. This is a storage shed at the farm, no A/C. It was hot a pretty miserable. I took this pic cuz she reminded me of one of those poor people you see on the C.A.R.E. commercials squatting in one of their make shift huts. This hut, however, is full of SALAD!!


Li'l chicks! They were so cute chirping away under the heat lamps, lol.


The best pork, hangin' out in the sun, joy.


Chickens, doing the same, chillin' in their condo, lol


An app course with fresh picked arugula and baby golden beets (picked literally moments before this pic was taken by yours truly ;) ) topped with some of the best smoked turkey Ive ever had!


I kinda had something for this one, she was such a sexy honey! (Yes, I'm married and love my wife dearly, but I'm sorry, she was HOT!) I don't even have ill feelings towards her because she works for the enemy, lol.


Organic cooking at its BEST, lol


Saute'ed local root veggies.


Lookit all the people! There were over 200 people to be fed!


Behind the scenes in one of the cooking areas.


Behind the scenes in one of the cooking areas.

A Night at the Tractor Pulls...non food related

Yes, another non food related blog, but this might be worth it!

I think that the longer I'm married to a woman from West Virgina, the more red-neck I've become. I find myself attracted to interesting sporting events involving mega-horse powered vehicles. First it was Nascar, then it was dirt track racing, and now TRACTOR PULLS! Shit, whats next, tobacco spitting contests?

The wifey had mentioned that this was something she wanted to check out. I saw the signs advertising it a few days ago and thought it might be fun (huh? I did?!). So, next thing I know I'm sitting on another set of uncomfortable aluminum bleachers with the love of my life watching trucks with over 2500 horsepower attempt to pull heavy stuff 300 feet!

Yes, it was loud, loudest thing Ive ever been to, It actually may have been louder than Iron Maiden at the Worcester Centrum back in '91!

Anyway, there were three classes; 2500 HP two wheel drive mid-sized pickup trucks, 1800 HP diesel tractors affectionately called "smokers" for the billows of black smoke they produce and, lastly and my favorite, the 1800 HP full sized modified four wheel drive pickup trucks. Each class had to pull a couple tons and a "sled" the closest to 300 feet or more as that they could. Total weight, about 38000 pounds!

If you didn't have ear plugs, you were screwed. The exhaust smoke was indescribably thick. We couldn't help but breath it! You could actually taste it in the air! But, BOY WAS THAT FUN!!!

Any who, check out these pics and videos, see what you think...

"I have a culinary BONER right now."

Yea, I laughed when I heard that too. The last words spoken on last nights Top Chef was that crack-head Andrew (below) apparently responding to the upcoming challenge. Hehe, I about PISSED myself!

By the way, is she (below) not the HOTTEST judge on Top Chef? Sorry Padma, TOO SKINNY!!!

So, it was "last lesbo standing" on this recent episode of Top Chef. The most miserable dike in TV history is, surprisingly, still there.



The drunken, coked out New Zealander was asked to "pack his knives and leave". He was way over due and should have gone home about 2 eps ago. Not only did he look crocked all the time, but was a shameful member of our profession. He couldn't season worth a shit, was messy as balls when he cooked and didn't seem to take the fact that he MADE IT TO TOP CHEF seriously. He fucked around too damn much and it wasn't called for. Any who, I digress. I guess I'm just jealous and annoyed that he didn't seem to bring his "A" game. I mean, look at his SHOES! (fag)


Since I blogged last, we, "sadly" lost the "couple", Ryan, Eric and a couple other burger flippers.

You know, Im not one to judge (chuckle), but wouldn't it be a good idea to completely BRING IT when you compete on one of the best shows in the land? These dudes that we sent home just flopped around, drooling a little while the others blazed around them like psychos. Eh...

They had a cool quick-fire challenge with Uncle Bens 90 second rice packs. I thought that was a true test of skill. They only had 15 minutes to make a dish man! Sweet stuff. Most did well, others did...well..SHITTY, but whatever. A few of those dumb dumbs didn't seem to know how to cook something in a microwave for 90 seconds, which I thought was a big act for the TV, but what do I know, lol.

So, on a brighter note, their elimination challenge on last nights episode was to make a meal for four that was kid friendly, easy to prepare and under 10 bucks! What a sweet challenge! Its so easy to do well when you have a few hundred bucks and all those bad ass GE stoves, but if you only have 10 bucks AND you have to do this while teamed up with a kid, THATS a real challenge.

Unfortunately, besides Iron Chef America, Top Chef is the only thing for the chef thats worth a damn on TV these days. All those other dumbed down hollywood bullshit shows have me hot under the collar and should be removed, replaced by stuff the chef enjoys. What about a night on the line during mothers day dinner? Or, a wedding catering for 2500 people and a bunch of 7 dollar an hour temps waiting the tables. Even better, what about the ass holes that host the other shows battling head to head in an un-air conditioned soup kitchen with NO SIDE TOWELS and dull knives. The loser gets to be a guest on the Rachael Ray show! HAH!!! I'd pay MONEY to see Ramsey watching 'Rays teeth sparkle, spitting out droplets of EVOO while screaming YUM-O to his face, LOL!!!!

ok, Im done, I just love writing this shit. :)

Race night at the DIrt Track...

Yes, I know, this is supposed to be a blog about things I do that are food related. I would hardly categorize dirt track racing as food related (although, they did have some awesome fair food there last night. From turkey legs to pulled pork. We opted for the hand cut potato chips, yummy).

Aside from the 8 dollar chips and the 3 dollar coke, the only other thing we ate was RED CLAY DUST!!! HOLY SHIT was it dusty. When we got there at about 7:00 pm, a big rain storm was finishing up. Everything was wet, especially the track and the bleachers we parked on (for 4.5 hours, I might add). They spent the first two hours getting the track ready to race on by continuously driving over it with a collection of random cars until it reached the correct consistency. The correct consistency they were going for was dust, apparently.


I'm not trying to make out like we had a bad time, because we didn't. We had a BLAST. Although, It was tough to breath and look to the left as with each blast of wind brought more and more eye gouging and lung burning red dust.


It was REALLY exciting and FAST. Each dusty fast moment was interrupted by a wreck about every 3 laps. So, all night was like your TV turning itself off every 5 minutes while watching a really good action packed movie! 100 laps, wreck every three! AHHHH!!!

Anywho, I captured a couple pics to show you what we endured. Enjoy...

Edible Garden and "Food For Thought" Charlotte

The slow food movement is coming along in my area pretty well. A new group that I am a member of called "Food For Thought" is helping bring the "Edible Garden" concept to the local public schools. They are starting off with one school in town, pictured, where we had a simple spaghetti dinner for awareness of what they are doing. Went well. I wasn't able to actually attend but was there in spirit because I made the sauce. :)

Yes, pulled off ANOTHER fund raiser (why do I do this to myself? LOL) A buddy of mine and I worked this fund raiser to help advertise my private chef service. We helped raise money for a culinary educational scholarship for high school students.

Honestly, it was just a free-food-for-drunk-people event, but we had fun. I hope to land at least one private paid event from this, but who knows. It was for a good cause and thats all that matters.

My favorite, 5-spice Braised Duck over Rice with Thai Chili Garnish

Marinate Pan Seared Loin of Venison over Asian Mushroom Medley

Mustard Braised Pork over Asian Rice


Mini Veal Osso Bucco (from another table, not mine), YUM!!

By the time I got around to taking pictures, everyone was leaving so I didn't get many pictures.

Last day at PDS...

Welp, the time has come and gone. My last day at my old unit. After all the good days and bad, the time has come that I get my own place. They "promoted" me to another place last week and the employees from the PDS kitchen threw me a little going away party, which was nice. I was touched and very suprised that everyone felt the way they did about me leaving. Here are a few pics:


My two BAPs, what a pair :)

Most of the gang ...
Me, and the Queen...
Dude?
Aww, they made me a sign!


Ive always wanted to cut a piece out of the MIDDLE of a cake, lol.

Team Building Night with BofA Employees...

Got the pictures from the team building excersize we hosted last Thursday night for some bank employees, what a blast. The chef in charge broke the team of guests up into 5 groups and had each group watch a chef make each course. I was on the main course and sauce. Here are some pictures a team member took: