BBQ Journey

It is no secret to those who know me that ribs are second only to prime rib on my list of favorite meats. There has only been one, possibly two times in my life where a rib has disappointed me. This is not one of those days.

I am not a man who likes brandy. Or cognac. Or scotch. Or whiskey.

One of the reasons I embarked on this barbecue journey was to expand my culinary palette, which for the most part was only refined enough to tell the difference between a strawberry and a cut of prime rib.

Sometimes you just don't have a ton of time. Sometimes it's easiest to just throw something on the grill and move on. This post is a lot like that, too. To call "Bacon Wrapped Chicken Wings" a recipe is using the term loosely. Here's a chicken wing, here's a piece of bacon. Wrap bacon around chicken wing. Grill and enjoy.

I follow a website called "Bacon Today." It posts a new bacon-infuse, bacon-wrapped something every day. There are recipes, news, and anything you could possibly want to know about bacon.

Have you ever seen a person extinguish a candle flame with just two fingers? To this day, it astonishes me not that this is possible, but that a fellow human being would even attempt it.

Watermelon was always on the table in July. I didn't question why watermelon only appeared in July. I didn't care. But there it was in its sweet, delicious glory. In July.

I can't eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without thinking of my father. He went decades having at least one PBJ a day. Always with white bread, too. With a diet Mountain Dew. And some Lays potato chips.

I used to request the portion with the bone in it on nights Mom cooked a ham steak. I'd take my little finger and poke out the marrow as an appetizer before I tore into the rest of the steak. That small, succulent piece of fat tastes better than any other part of a pig I've enjoyed.

I remember Mrs. Cupps, my high school health education teacher, saying as she popped in a tape of a mother giving birth that decisions I made today would impact the rest of my life. My 14-year-old brain didn't believe her. The decisions I made included taking the scenic walk home so I could pass by the hot dog stand and pick up a chili cheese dog. Most times I did.