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Last night was pizza night, supposed to bake on the KK but due to circumstances beyond my control the bake was late so IDK stove came to the rescue. I really wanted to try the Egyptian Basil that I bought from Burlap & Barrel Spice company on a pizza. I love this spice on other things and thought it would be extra special on a pizza. I just add some of the basil to warn tomato sauce and let it sit while I was getting things ready, added a little of their Mediterranean Coriander too. Loaded pizza, those are Shiatsu peppers on the pizza. Baked @ 500F for 10 mins. I will for sure be making this pizza again.

We had a Steak Bonanza yesterday 3 Bone-In Wagyu NY Strip around 800 Gram a piece and 3 Dry Ages Irish Hereford Thomahawk Rib-Eyes ...... Yummi!

I have eaten almost half of the box and I'm forcing myself to stop right there for fear of what might happen.

I want to do tonite what spring does to cherry trees. Eat as much as you can. Yum

Not a particularly stunning photo but a 19" table top and older 16" table top side by side.

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Those ribs look awesome nice smoke ring. Those steaks look great to.

Pork ribs on the menu today, sprinkled with smoked paprika, granulated garlic and pepper, then added to the 250F-275F for 4.5 hours. Done. Plated. I just love this time of the year where you can run to the garden and get fresh greens and not too much longer, tomatoes.

There are electric barbecues; I'd research the best ones before deciding what to do. What would be gained, keeping your KK under these circumstances? Thermal mass. Huh. Great once at cruising altitude, but that will take a while with an electric heating element, and you'll never reach pizza oven temperatures. I'm reminded how FibraMent used to refuse to sell their thicker stones to consumers, knowing no consumer would have the patience for the long preheat these need. A restaurant keeps their pizza oven on all day, different story. Those "Forged by the Gods" (anyone seen the https://komodokamado.com/ home page lately? I don't remember Dennis looking quite like that!) steel grates. I'd miss them. Otherwise, if you need an electric BBQ, buy one from someone who has perfected the form, similar to how Dennis has perfected the KK form.

1. Look at how the gas burner assembly works for a KK. Start with another door, and fashion something similar with an electric charcoal starter? It will survive extended use, as we're going to toggle the power to it. 2. One can still buy sous vide controllers with an A/C outlet, from many sources. Many of us use a BBQ Guru or similar for charcoal fire temperature control. The basic idea of a PID Temperature Controller long predates these BBQ units; they all control the heat somehow in response to a temperature reading and a target temperature. One could use a thermometer in the KK as input to ta PID controller toggling power to the electric charcoal starter. 3. Would your condo allow use of the KK KK Cold Smoker ? If not, I'd experiment with ways to use the electric charcoal starter to also generate smoke. A lightweight alternative to my "smoke pot" would be an all-steel water bottle and cap, such as the Klean Kanteen and the separate all-steel cap. Remove the silicone seal, and drill a few holes to relieve pressure and let out smoke. Rest on the charcoal starter; you'll get smoke but not flame, as oxygen can't get in. This is mostly guesswork, but I have a reasonable track record inventing KK gadgets. I do have experience with PID controllers. In the early 80's I read Harold McGee on food science, and I also read how in restaurants in France that had vacuum packers, they'd package fish and marinades as an alternative to steaming. (I'm probably conflating two stories in imagining they then put the fish in a dishwasher.) Huh. A light bulb went off, as McGee's main point was how arbitrary the boiling point of water was, yet cooking technique leans against this particular temperature because we're too lazy to stand up. I imagined Sous Vide cooking without ever having heard of it beyond these two clues, and researched gear for chem lab temperature control. I gave up, not sure it would work and barely able to afford the gear in question. It turns out that Restaurant Troisgros had already been using sous vide technique for a decade, to get better foie gras yields, but the idea was not yet popular. A few decades later, when I heard to my chagrin that sous vide was a thing that actually worked (and I still couldn't afford the official gear) I rewired a soup warmer to be controlled from a PID controller, and started cooking sous vide.

I just had breakfast but that wouldn't stop me from chowing down on that pizza.

Ha Ha If you donned that the neighbors might think you were an executioner. Glad it's all under control

@Tyrus turned me on to this really well written article about Nigerian food: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/dining/nigerian-food-yewande-komolafe.html I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the recipes - there is never any set way to cook any of the dishes anyway - but the pictures certainly remind me of home. In other news, Texan friend has turned up with a box of grits. They are 5 minute Quaker grits. Are they "authentic"? She says I will love them and that I am to add cream. I will see what @tony b's recipe says. I have told her I will return the rest to her if it turns out that I don't actually like grits. Shrimp and grits, coming to a house near me soon.

That pizza looks fantastic, @MacKenzie!

Looks delicious Mac

Love this shot!! Thank you..

Yum - I bought 6 more lbs today. This time they were labeled as "Ranier Cherries, jumbo". They were defiantly the cream of the crop.

This jumped into my Costco buggy today. I should have bought 2 boxes, I've already eaten 1/3 of this box.

Loafin’. Another 6 months and I might have a loaf I can present to guests.

As a kid on a family camping trip, I fashioned a slingshot, and went foraging in the woods for suitable projectiles. I found an inexhaustible supply of perfectly formed pellets. I was briefly chagrined when my Dad identified them. If memory serves me right, though, I kept using them. The traditional diet of hare in the south of France (where it is now 45 C) is wild-grown Herbes de Provence. They would be spectacular in a pellet smoker.

I saw some at whole foods yesterday but they looked mostly rotten in every bag. I hope I can find them somewhere else.