Baby steps

I didn’t think that expanding my cooking horizons would be so difficult. To the average male couch potato whose culinary talents involved frozen pizza, macaroni and cheese, and an occasional breakfast scramble on weekends, cooking is not second nature.

But with a cupboard full of cookbooks, shouldn’t I be able to figure it out?

Not so fast.

The very first thing I learned was that cooking takes planning, and a lot of shopping. So I can plan, but shop? Me? I wander around a grocery store like a rat stuck in a maze. I have absolutely no idea where to find anything unless I get lucky enough to see it on one of the isle boards. It is painful, stressful, and aggravating. I am an in and out kind of guy… you know… straight to the beer and out of the store in a blink of an eye.  Perchance I am looking for something other than beer, when confronted with 10 different brands of the same thing I grab randomly, no label reading for me. But I definitely need to find my way around the store.

During my first week of cooking alone I must have made 5 or 6 trips to the store just for spices. It would have been a lot more efficient to look through the next weeks of recipes, and buy them all at once. Newbie mistake. I think the spice situation is under control for now, but man, spices are expensive! I seriously considered ordering online and grinding my own. And maybe once I see which ones are flying out of the cupboard, I will, but for now, time is of the essence.

So my first cooking priority was to season that Weber Smokey Mountain a bit. I did that by throwing some brauts on and smoking them up. I just used one of those name brand brauts and didn’t follow a recipe. My wife has some roots in Wisconsin, and I did get some tips on how to cook a braut properly, but I mainly wanted to start to season the smoker so I just tossed them on. They came out fine, though a little bland for my taste.

On to the next item. I picked out some kind of pork to smoke, and headed off to Costco to try to get what I wanted, only to reminded again that at Costco, you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. Whatever I was looking for, they didn’t have, and I ended up with a pork loin. I cooked the pork loin a bit long and it came out edible, but slightly dry.

My next mission… homemade pizza on the grill! I bought a pizza stone from Amazon, had my recipe ready, what could possible go wrong? What indeed.

The 'manly' way to cook

So I pondered... if I have to invite some buddies over for a football game... in what manner could I cook, but not have them thinking... heck I don't know... but liking cooking too much can be a bit like the guy at work you ask how his weekend was, and he actually starts telling you what it was like. Whoa Tex, TMI, the correct answer is, 'Good, yours?'

So for manly cooking, I think a smoker pretty much is the king of the crop. Yeah I know you can cook good food on pretty much anything, but there is a difference between a Harley and a scooter. If I am going to be able to tell anyone (other than the internet) about anything I cook, it better not be about a quiche. Yet. There may be a time when my chest is so pumped up I am perfectly fine discussing, I don't know... salads, but I doubt it.

So smoker it is. I searched around for a depending, reputable smoker, that there was a lot of hands on info available on the internet, and for me, the Weber Smokey Mountain won. Why? Just check out the name... 'Smokey Mountain.' Smokey. Mountain. Weber (American made, hard working, dependable, tough) (*under breath* and maybe a little overpriced) but damn it, I am a hard working American, wanting to do some cooking to help the family unit, and the Weber Smokey Mountain is what I want to be. So here she is:

 What wonderful creations will I conjure in yonder treasure? Or will that thing launch into space in an explosion of grease and broken dreams. Just you wait to see.

Can Daddy Cook?

Can Daddy Cook? The short answer is no, at least not this Daddy. At least, not yet. But *can* I (Daddy) middle aged, married full-time software developer, learn to contribute to family meals? That is my quest.

I am not going to sugar coat it, I looked at a recipe and had to ask my wife what granular sugar was, and if we had any. As a computer geek, I am sure it was to her like someone asking me where the 'any' key is, except she handled the question much more gracefully.

My contribution to cooking so far had revolved around outdoor grills. You know, the manly stuff. Sure I use the gas grill a lot, but I have 'manly' charcoal grills too. Determined to find some artificial motivation, I decided to get a real manly cooking device, a smoker! Other than digging a BBQ pit in the ground, or cooking a whole pig rotisserie style over and fire, I think the smoker ranks pretty high up there.

So what smoker did I choose? Will I succeed? Stay tuned. Either way, it will be interesting.