Sunday, October 09, 2011

Texarkana Eggfest

Ever since we got into cooking on the Big Green Egg back in 1999, we have met some of the nicest people in cities and towns across North America.  We have formed friendships and bonds that will last the rest of our lives, all because of the Big Green Egg.

We try to attend Eggfests as often as possible.  This is where we Eggheads gather to enjoy cooking and sharing recipes with old friends and new friends as the number of Eggheads grows.

The latest Eggfest was in Texarkana, Texas, on October 1st.  Most of us out-of-towners went up a day or two early and returned home on Sunday.  It's about a five hour drive for us.  The host dealer, Dot's Ace Hardware, went out of their way to make us feel welcome to Texarkana and provided us with Big Green Eggs to cook on. 

There were approximately twenty cooking teams prepared to cook enough food to serve up to 600 local residents who were curious about the Big Green Egg.  Yes, we all worked fast and furious to feed them and eventually we had more food than empty stomachs.  We filled them up with a wide range of delightful dishes just to show them how well the Big Green Egg cooks food.  At least 22 visitors purchased Big Green Eggs and will now begin to have the kind of fun we have when we cook our our Eggs.

As always, we had a lot of fun, met a lot of people and introduced Egg'n to a community that loves good food just like everyone else. 

I put together a little video of some photos I took during breaks.  Enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIdjUXFeOKw

Kitchen Remodel

We've lived in this house for 23 years and have improved upon a lot of things we simply could not afford when we bought the house, or for that matter, for many years afterward.

We did most of the improvements ourselves because it was the only way we could justify the expense and because we enjoyed doing it ourselves.  Of course we had to learn as we went in most instances but even the learning part, mistakes and all, were fun.

The most recent improvement was to get granite countertops.  The old Formica countertops had pretty much seen their day.  So new countertops became the highest priority.  It was expensive but well worth it in the end, especially when we opted to tile the back splash ourselves.  In addition, we installed the plumbing which included a hot water recirculating pump that will probably save us 15,000 or more gallons of water that went down the drain while waiting for it to get hot.  By us doing the plumbing and back splash install ourselves we saved $1,000 in labor costs.  And we think we actually did a better job than what a contractor would do.

Take a look at our latest project.