Eastern Carolina BBQ Throwdown

 

Rocky Mount just hosted the Eastern Carolina BBQ Throwdown, sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society (KCBS).  And on recommendation of our good friend Robert, our fam headed down there one afternoon for lunch to check it out.  DEFINITELY one of the coolest things I've done in my 4 months as a Tarheel!

The first thing you see is that this BBQ competition is being filmed for a TV show.

These BBQ professionals compete in the following categories: pork, chicken, brisket, and ribs.  We participated in what's called the People's Choice Award.  You buy these BBQ bucks and turn them in at each table to receive a 2-ounce sample of the competitor's pulled pork.  Although there are over 45 teams competing in the different categories, only 14 were running for the People's Choice.  So we tasted all 14.  Then you get to fill-out a ballot and vote for your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd favorite.

Above: the beautiful, fired glass trophy that the People's Choice winner receives.

Most competitors simply hand you a cup of meat, and then have the sauces out on table so you can add them as you like.  They offered many vinegar-based sauces (because this IS Eastern North Carolina), but also had a few sweet sauces.  I prefer vinegar, Tim prefers sweet.  The tastes of the sauces were varied: sweet, spicy, or sour.  One thing that all the competitors had in common, though, was that all the meat was tender enough to melt in your mouth.  You literally did not have to chew some of those porks!

 So besides having great BBQ, how do the competitors coax folks into voting for them???

The most obvious thing was to be very, very sweet to you when you were picking-up your sample.  

 People also decorated their tables in memorable ways, such as carving this jack-o-lantern into a pig.  

 Others dressed in...interesting....costumes.

My personal favorite were the teams that overloaded their sample cups until it was running over!

 But one of the neatest things about the competition was the AMAZING smokers the teams had.  This one was from a team in Georgia.

 

 Many of the teams had trucks and trailers that matched their smokers, and they came-off looking like racing teams.  Some of these teams were very high-end and had big-time sponsorships.

 But big or small, some of the teams had great names!

This team from Chapel Hill (above) was comprised of college students who didn't even have a sign:  they hung one of their t-shirts up as their sign.  But even though they were poor college students, at least I know they aren't starving.

A great lunch was had by all.  I look forward to next year's event!
http://www.bbqthrowdown.net/

Just A Swingin'

So I'm taking a walk through the neighborhood one morning when it's trash pick-up day, and low and behold I see this ABSOLUTELY PERFECT swing sitting on the curb of someone's house.  Who would throw-out a gem like that???  

What do I do?  Well, I run home and sweet-talk my husband into carrying it to our house so the kids and I can restore it.  

I mean, how much work could it be???

 So here's how I restore a porch swing... 

Step 1.  Realize that the swing isn't so perfect after all, and that most all of the slats are old and rotted and need replaced.  Hence why the neighbors were apparently throwing it out.

Step 2.  Since the frame IS in perfectly good shape, go ahead with the project.  Begin ripping-out the old rotted slats and rusty nails.

Step 3.  Try to figure-out the last time we all had tetanus shots.

Step  4.  Head to Lowe's and buy lumber.  In our case, pine.  Very fitting, I think, for a swing that will live in North Carolina.

Step 5.  Measure Twice.

 Step 6.  Cut once.

Step 7.  Say over and over and over and over, "Watch your fingers!" 

Step 8.  Nail the new slats in place.

 Step 9.  Say over and over and over and over, "Watch your fingers!" and "I am NOT nagging!"

 Step 10.  Clean the rust off the old chain with a Brillo pad.

Step 11.  Sand and paint.

Step 12.  Sweet talk your husband one more time into buying some hardware and hanging the swing for you, and...wah-la!  Enjoy your new...ish...swing.

Well, it turned-out to be more work than we expected, but the kids learned a lot about woodwork, and I'm rather proud of how we turned trash into treasure.  In the words of country singer John Anderson, "I can't believe I'm out here on the front porch in this swing..."

Bonus Questions!  WITHOUT GOOGLING the lyrics (No Cheating), answer in the comment section...
1.  Who can be the 1st person to tell me the first and last name of the girl John Anderson was swinging with in that 1982 country song?

2.  Brother was on the sofa, eating a chocolate pie.  Mama was in the kitchen, cutting-up a chicken to fry.  What was Daddy in the backyard doing?
(Answers in next post.) :D

Strike with the Hand, Strike with the Foot

The boys were missing taking karate lessons like they did in Cincinnati, so we signed them up for some here in Rocky Mount.  And this time Little Sister wanted to tag along, so we signed her up, too.  I can't imagine anyone being hurt by Anna, unless they are just cuted to death by a 6 year old girl trying to look tough...

In Cincinnati, the martial arts the boys did was Ju Jitsu, which is Japanese.  Now they're all doing Tae Kwon Do, which is Korean.  Tae Kwon Do 跆拳道  means "Strike with the hand, strike with the foot." 

One of Anna's instructors signed her broken boards for her.

Daddy likes to believe she'll use her martial arts to beat the boys away when she's a teenager.  :D

Tear 'em up, Anna Jean!

1 Potato, 2 Potato, 3 Potato, 4...

It's harvest time here in Rocky Mount, and today the kids and I got to do something really cool!  Last night at church, a family invited us to get up and go out this morning on a sweet-potato-pickin' with them.  Since I'm still learning to speak Eastern North Carolinian, the first thing that came to my mind was a pig-pickin', and I couldn't imagine why we would want to cook sweet potatoes on a smoker and eat them with barbeque sauce. Ha!  But apparently, a sweet-potato-pickin' is when you go out and glean sweet potatoes after the soil has been turned over.  It works like this...Sweet potato farmers harvest their potatoes in the fall.  But there are so many potatoes underground that they can't really get them all, and some are too small to be marketable.  So once the farmers have finished working their land, they let whomever wants to come and dig-up and keep whatever potatoes they find (although you aren't allowed to sell them).  It's free!  How nice is that?! To the farmer who let us glean his field today, THANK YOU!!!!!!

Sometimes the potatoes are just laying ontop of the ground, like this:

But at other times, you have to dig for them, like this: 

Since the field we were gleaning had already been picked-over some, many of the potatoes were small.  But some were huge! (That's my hand.)

The most fun part of all was that we were allowed to take our shoes off and get as dirty as we wanted.

I want to give a huge thank you to my friend Renee for inviting us to pick sweet potatoes with her.  She and I joked that we were "getting our Ruth and Naomi on."

And this is what a 6-year-old looks like after she's spent the morning working the fields...

 How great is our God to provide for His people so abundantly!!!

"So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow."  (1 Corinthians 3:7, NIV)

What we learned today:

1.  Smaller potatoes are sometimes the sweetest. 

2.  You can't plant sweet potatoes two years consecutively in the same field.  (This field grew peanuts last year, so we would occasionally find peanuts growing in the soil.)

3.  People love to eat sweet potatoes.  Gnats love to eat sweet potato pickers.  

4.  Farmers are very generous.

5.  Rolling around in dirt and digging for stuff is incredibly therapeutic and relaxing.

6.  A field that looks empty and barren sometimes holds great treasure under it.

7.  Hard work can be a lot of fun and very rewarding.

8.  Eastern North Carolina rocks! (But I've been figuring that out for about 4 months.  :D)

Ooh! And one more that I just learned... North Carolina is the number one producer of sweet potatoes in the U.S., and Eastern North Carolina is where most of them come from.  How exciting is that?!

So now I'm off to go bake some sweet potatoes.

 And make them into fries....

And casseroles...

And stews...  

And breads....  

And pies....

10. Time

And finally, the 10th best thing about our family vacation this year...although it was probably the 1st best thing...was TIME.  After a tumultuous year, what a joy it was to just stop and relax, spend time with each other, and do whatever we wanted to do for a few days.  To Christopher, my bookworm, relaxing meant reading 15 exciting mysteries (Christopher gets his love of reading from his Nana).  In John's case, relaxing meant looking for shark's teeth on the beach and critters in the ocean.  Tim relaxed over some good plates of fried seafood.  Anna Jean relaxed in the pool - when she wasn't working hard learning to "kick and scoop."  And as for me, I relaxed through some really long talks with Jesus, clearing my head, taking a deep breath, and preparing for what happenings He has in store for the Barnette family in 2013 and beyond.

Thank you Lord for a great vacation!

9. The Beach

 The 9th Best Thing About Our Family Vacation This Year...

(and probably the main thing about any beach vacation...)

THE BEACH!!!

Tim calls this my "I have the con" position.  :D

THE most exciting thing that happened to us on our vacation this year happened at the beach.  One day while I was sitting in my chair and Anna was playing in the sand, the boys were out in the water.  The beach was pretty vacant that day, so they were the only swimmers within sight.  Tim started yelling, "Get out of the water!"  And sure enough, a shark about  6 feet long swam up in the surf about 25 yards from them.  All the guys made it safely out of the water, and we're pretty sure our friendly shark was fishing for fish.  Not Barnettes.