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Yes Jon we did it in my VW beetle. We went to the Grand Canyon, Roswell, Four corners, and Meteor crater stayed with some friends in Las Cruces New Mexico and of course my friend in Florida, what a beautiful place he has. My friend from Hawaii and my friend in Florida are my best friends and I have known them since 1957. Our next trip will be the Yellow stone, Mount Rushmore, and Crazy Hourse monument and more.

And I present...... Driveway Tacos: Made a satay type marinade as I was going for an Indonesian flair.... And thin sliced some beef and chicken - chicken not pictured since I don't touch much once raw poultry is in play. Thought a peanut sauce slaw would go well with the satay tacos.... was lazy and didn't make my own peanut sauce - but this wasn't bad.. Then onto my taco shells - used egg roll wrappers spritzed with oil and baked on my taco rack in the KK. Did the beef and chicken in the pan... honestly since it's not where I want it yet, don't really want to dirty it too much right now. My teaser photo from the KG forum. I had a lot of fun with my big reveal over there. @ckreef helped - I had been dropping hints all month long and he would comment on them. Cracked me up while I patiently awaited the big day when it arrived. Brought in and chopped up more... And I present.... Indonesian Driveway Tacos as my KK's maiden voyage....

She left out the drama of the driveway tacos. Last day to enter the taco challenge on Guru. We are all expecting any entry from her but where is her entry? Nobody knows about the KK. I keep pushing her to just unbox it and do it in the driveway. Don't tell anyone just do it. Well, work kept bugging her all day long. At around 10 pm with just enough time to get the tacos entered she pulls off the cook. And finally the cat was out of the bag. KK has a KK.

I have been busy today, started to cure a 3.5 lb slab of pork belly. Next on the list were chicken drumsticks and airfryed sous vide potato wedges. What a miserable day, cold and wet- The sparks are flying- SV potato wedges ready to coat with ghee and airfry. Plated with the airfryed SV potatoes, I wish I had gone another 2 mins. on the potato wedges. And just a little of the action.

I have been looking jealously at your posts about La Chamba cookware for some time. Postage to the UK looked prohibitive until I got into a conversation with Charles at My Toque. Their postage charge looked the most reasonable and he gave me a discount for buying a few pieces. The pieces, finally, arrived today. Well, they didn't so much as arrive as get rescued from the local Parcel Force depot when I got fed up waiting for the paperwork to get sorted! Box full of polar bear poo, as The Husband calls it. Beautiful artisanal ceramics. Looking to use the pots to cook up dishes in real time and also in the residual heat when I have finished my main cook. The lids don't all fit tightly but well enough for my purposes. Here is the large roasting pan (Their model no SPX) in the 23". I ordered two of these. One broke in transit. It was the only breakage and I am in touch with them about insurance. And the 5.5qt RS6 oval roaster fits just fine in the 21" The 10qt RS15 didn't fit in either KK but, happily, does fit in my indoor oven. Here is Serena, looking grumpy about being asked to give you an idea of the scale of this enormous pot. She looks small but actually weighs 6kg. I am convinced she swallowed something heavy somewhere along the way. And yes, the sun does shine in the UK. Sometimes.

Yet more great food @MacKenzie. I think I will avoid the forum first thing in the morning - making me too hungry!!!

Jon - you asked the question, so... like it or not, you get the answer. But if anyone accuses me of being long-winded ( @cschaaf in particular ), I am blaming it squarely on you.... A few years back, my husband, older daughter and I went to a local BBQ store looking to buy a new gasser since we've always enjoyed cooking outdoors. They happened to be having an EggFest (crazy in the middle of rural Wyoming, I know). So, we were kind of wandering around not really too interested in the eggs, but sampling the food and such. Honestly I wasn't impressed with any of it. And knowing what I know now, the people manning the eggs didn't really know what they were doing either. Anyway, we went inside to look at the Weber gassers and gave our daughter a few bucks to entertain herself. They had some sort of game that you could play to win tickets for a drawing. Now, I can only describe this game as beer pong - though obviously there was no beer involved. So, by the time the event was wrapping up, she had quite the stash of tickets. Where she got the gift of being a natural at that game, I'll never know..... Long story short (kind of) - we walked away with a Mini Big Green Egg as a prize. It sat in the garage for months before I played with it one day out of boredom - think I did an Easter ham on it now that I think about it.... Anyway, I was hooked after the first time. Bought a Vision shortly after that, and then an Akorn Jr, and another Akorn Jr. (because the black came out and I can't stand red), and then I found a used black Big Joe last fall.... In any case, I totally fell in love with kamado cooking. And winning that Mini BGE is what started it all. So, I consider it Kismet - my lot in life - to have landed where I'm at, and that's how I came up with my username. I primarily had been using my Vision and more recently Big Joe, down on a concrete patio in my back yard over the summer. In the winter I have been using the Akorn Jr and sometimes Mini BGE (though it's tiny) that I can keep in the garage. But I don't like Akorn Jr. to get wet which isn't ideal because of snow frequently this time of year and the wind is atrocious as well..... And my back yard and deck is on the north side of the house, so my winter access to my concrete patio stinks since I have to go out on the deck, down the stairs and around the house. That's how I decided and justified a Komodo Kamado to myself (really it didn't take much to convince me) and my husband (that was a slightly tougher sell and we may have a full reloading setup showing up sometime soon in what appears to have been some sort of scheme to keep things "fair"). The KK will go on the back deck and be easy access for me year round. I wouldn't have felt cozy with any of the other kamado's living there. And it will join my husbands Weber Summit gasser and Traeger Timberline and our Blackstone Pizza Oven. There you have it... more than you bargained for in an answer, right.

Thanks @tekobo! I've enjoyed following your adventure getting your two KK's. Thanks, Aussie! You're the man - glad I came over here to see what the Outback Kamado Bar and Grill had to say about my acquisition. Agreed on both accounts - it's about time and I need to get going. BUT - I can tell you that driveway cooking is a little nerve-racking on a driveway with a slight slope to it. It definitely wanted to roll without being chocked up. LOL. I looked at your uncrating thread more than once. And I agree.... the new size made it possible for me as well. Glad to be in such good company! I like your style, @Tucker! Thank you! Thank Bruce! I can't wait to see it in the back yard, too!

My wife's been out of town. So I've been doing some pizza experimenting. I tried trader joes dough, and Serious Eats NY pizza sauce. But I thought it tasted too much like marinara. So last night I experimented with my own sauce recipe based off Marcella Hazan's pasta sauce. I also made my own 24hr cold fermented NY, coal-fired-style pizza dough. This dough was a revelation. I could finally stretch the dough into a decent sized pizza shape. I grated some mozzarella and tried my best to dry it. 5mins in the kamado on a baking steel at 600F. The bottom cooked a little too quickly. Next time, I'll move the ceramic stones to the felt line so the steel doesn't get too much hotter than the ambient temp.

Thanks, Bruce! My joke over there was hoping that driveway tacos didn’t turn into street tacos! It was a little nerve racking. Lol. She definitely would have careened down the driveway into the street if we hadn’t chocked her up.

I sneaked a look at the guru site this morning. The reveal was very funny. Mainly because KK fooled them so well even though all the clues were there. I guess they will get to understand that getting a KK is indeed an Obsession and once someone jokes about it it is sure to come true, sooner or later. What fun.

First overnight KK cook... Two 8 lb. butts, I put them on at 8:00 last night - No heat deflector - aren't y'all proud of me for listening? Six in the morning, they were at 155 degrees Took them off at 2:00 at 194 degrees. The card game was happy!

And much better local adult beverages!

Greetings from central Wyoming everyone! Some of you may know me from the Kamado Guru forum... I joined here a long time ago, have lurked a fair amount, but have never posted. I've been dreaming of a KK for quite awhile now... and finally pulled the trigger when I saw a 21" Supreme that caught my eye last month to the point that I couldn't stop thinking about it. When it finally came down to it, and I told my husband I seriously wanted to do it (after a year or more of joking about it) his only response was that he was surprised I hadn't already bought one. I took that as a green light.... and here I am. Had to do my first cook in the driveway. Going to be a few weeks before we make the trip through the house to the back deck. No worries - that is "brrr" chilly cold and not "eek" screaming hot.... Will do the venting once landed on the deck. Thanks for having me!

My dogs try to catch flies in mid-air, but rarely succeed. But, it's funny as hell watching them leap about and snap at them!

Tekebo, your cat looks like an Ocelot. Thats a big pot, are you cooking for navy?

Serena's a feisty kitty and won't stay still long enough to become a break-in cook! She's limbering up for her second favourite activity of the summer, aside from sleeping in the sun, which is catching and eating flies and bees in mid air. She's a real ace at it. Yes, cooking is the point of all of this. No plans yet. I need one of the pans to speak to me and say they want to be the first into one of the KKs. I've never made flat breads over a BBQ so the comal might be the one to take the prize. Or maybe 'taters in the roasting pan. Or...

I was about to say that cook's Guru Challenge worthy and then Charles finishes the story! Well done, madam!!!

So KK delivery looked to be Tuesday of this week from my tracking. I checked it Friday morning and didn’t look like it had even left Utah yet. Was shocked silly when the freight company called me on Friday morning to setup delivery. My husband was off work and I was getting my tail kicked and couldn’t leave work. They said they would call 30 minutes out so I could be there for the delivery too. Well, they didn’t call and I get a text from the husband saying so much for a call with a picture of the crate in the garage. So... missed out on all the on the truck and being offloaded pics.... Anyway, I had given up on the idea of a KK challenge cook, so the early delivery really threw a wrench in my plans once @ckreef piped up and nonchalantly mentioned me getting up early, having Christmas in March and cooking in my driveway... which I of course thought was hilarious. I mean I pretty much had to do it after that... lol. And I’m glad I did. Loved every minute of it.

Nice road trip, Bruce! Sort of a redo of Ken Keesey and the Merry Pranksters - except in a Bug and not a bus!

And yes, the sun does shine in the UK. Sometimes. Plus, glad to learn that the putty tat wasn't the break in cook for that pot!

So I can find it lol. Outback kamado Bar and Grill

On return leg of your next tripto Yellowstone you might want to stop at Holei in the Ground in central Oregon. It is about the size of Meteor Crater in Az. We have camped there and pursued other hobbies using that big hole. This was taken at the rim of the hole in November several years ago. We were visiting a friends nearby ranch and stayeddown at the rim of the hole so we could use its good natural backstop. Google Earth has a photo taken during the dry summer.

It all looks lovely especially the shots with Serena. The lids fit but not quite like we are used to but that's OK. Glad Charles took care of your broken dish problem so quickly. Now to get cooking.

Looking forward to future cooks in them.

Drive way tacos I love it!! They look yummy bet the neighbors wanted some lol. Look forward to more of you great cooks

Great pictures.......thanks for sharing!!!!

Kismet, that was a wonderful first cook and there are sooo many more to come.

What a fantastic trip, Bruce. Just lovely.

Look closer Outback kamado Bar and Grill

Great story..........thanks for writing it out. Have a similar one but have to "blame" the KK purchase on MacKenzie and Bosco!!!

Bruce, That is great that you finally got to do something you have been thinking about for 15 years!!!! I drive a lot and 6100 miles is a crazy long way. Did you do it in the VW??? Jon

Sooooo unfair! Today is one of my twice weekly fast days and your cook has got my taste buds going. Might have to "postpone" fast to tomorrow. Really good looking cook and, I imagine, really tasty too.

Spring? We're on the boarder of full on summer. 2 days ago it was 85* and sunny.

Dave it is, now if I can just remember that.;)

Nice cook

Amusedtodeath, your butt cook was awesome, see it pays to listen to us.

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Hey Kismet Congrats on your new KK looks stunning its about time indeed lol your are going to love cooking on it its too clean you better get going

Good use for that sticker. I wonder if anyone will ever mention it to you.