So I am not going to waste your time rambling about nothing so cutting to the chase and getting to the recipe.

• 3 lb chuck roast
• 2 onions
• 5-6 cloves of garlic
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
• Bottle of good beer. We used a black lager.
• 4 cups of beef stock
• Tablespoon of fresh thyme
• Tablespoon of fresh rosemary
• teaspoon of cayenne (if you are a sissy use less)
• 3-4 bay leaves
• Couple carrots
• Couple really good handfuls of red and yellow potatoes quartered
• 8 ounce package of mushrooms quartered
• Cup of frozen peas
• Bacon

Fire up your dutch oven and throw in the bacon. Remove and set aside once cooked.

Salt and pepper the daylights out of the chuck roast and throw it in the bacon grease to get browned.

While you wait eat the bacon.

Remove the chuck roast and set aside. Add in the onions and cooked until brown over (about 5 minutes)

Add in the garlic and tomato paste and cook for another minute.

Add in the beer, beef stock, bay leaves, cayenne, thyme, and rosemary. Throw the pot roast back in, bring to a boil, reduce, and let it simmer for a couple hours covered.

After two hours, taste, and adjust (let me guess you need more salt and since you were a sissy and choked back on the cayenne you realized it needs more heat). Now chop up all the veggies and throw them in a cast iron skillet with some more bacon grease (cook more bacon if you have to) and let them get brown over.

Dump them into with the pot roast and let this cook for another 20 minutes.

Remove the chuck roast and shred it. Dump in the peas. If it is to really liquidy then mix in a couple tablespoons of flour with water and dump in to thicken it up.

Serve and enjoy.

Everyone has a favorite holiday. For most that holiday is rapidly approaching in the form of a jolly fat man dressed in red with a bag of toys. Mine comes in the form of the walking dead dressed in rags with a bag of candy.

Ah yes – Halloween. All Hallows eve. The day when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is the thinnest. When ghosts and skeletons and the walking dead roam the earth for one last time. Mostly hoping for a king-sized snickers.

Well my apologies dear goblins. I don’t have any king sized snickers to give away today. As a matter of fact, I only have one treat to give to a lucky trickster. But it is a freakishly AWESOME treat, if I do say so myself.

My good friends over at SodaStreamUSA know what a CRAZED fanatic I am for their SodaStream machine. I have been an avid user for about 5 years. I have mastered the art of the fizzy water and I rave on a regular basis on the magic and wonder that is the home made Soda. I have even turned Jeff into a SodaStream Zombie!

One lucky ghoul will receive the following:

This package includes everything you need to make fresh fizzy water in your own home.

* Fountain Jet Home Soda Maker
* 1 60 liter Carbonator
* 2 Carbonating Bottles

Retail value of $109.94

SodaStream will also throw in a sample pack of all their soda flavors so that you too can make the AMAZING recipe we bring you below. This was made using soda we made RIGHT THERE ON THE SPOT with the SodaStream machine.

First things first:

1) Fill bottle with cold water. (Chill for optimal results)
2) Attach to Soda Maker
3) Push button to carbonate. We push the button 4 times. 1 to set and seal, and 3 more times to inject the bubbles.
4) Release the bottle from the Soda Maker, and add a cap full of “Root Beer” flavoring. (We find that you can add as much or as little of the flavoring that you like. We added a little extra for the recipe that follows.)
5) Cap and gently rock to mix.

And POOF! You have fresh tasty home made root beer for this scarily good recipe.

Walking Dead Rib Tips Braised in Deadly Hemlock Root Beer

Gather ye ingredients of toxicity…

Couple lbs of rib tips from your local Zombies, dusted with flour
2-3 T bacon grease (or peanut oil)
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, diced
3 cups of root beer
1 T oregano
1 T thyme
2 t chili powder
pinch of cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper

Flour the rib tips and brown in the bacon grease.

Remove the rib tips and add in the onion. Cook till softened.

Then add the garlic and cook another minute.

Finally add the root beer, oregano, thyme, chili powder, cayenne, bay leaves and cumin.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Cover and let it cook for an hour and a half.

Check seasoning and serve to your minions.

This was so good I refused to send the leftovers to work with Jeff the next day. And made with your VERY OWN HOME MADE ROOT BEER? Well won’t you be the hero.

We also flavor the fizzy water with natural ingredients. Crushed cranberries and sugar, smashed lemons, muddled mint and lime, cucumber slices, sweetened pumpkin puree, vanilla beans and even more. The favor possibilities are endless only by your imagination. Another really cool thing? Fizzy Jello! Over carbonate the water (Like 6 button pushes) and mix with jello. You jello will be all bubbly and that fun meter is so kicked up.

So have I convinced you that you want one yet?

Well this one can be yours. Enter by doing the following:

Leave me a comment here telling how you would flavor your first bottle of home made fizzy water. Check out SodaStream for their list of flavors or come up with one of your own. The possibilities are endless.

For a bonus entries:

Click the button below to send out the following tweet on Twitter:

I just entered to win my very own @SodaStreamUSA Soda Maker thanks to @BodaciousGirl & He Cooks She Cooks – Enter Now! http://t.co/x51NYPc

Tweet

Or share this post on your FaceBook.

Make sure you come on back here and leave us additional comments for each bonus entry.

The contest runs through Friday November 5th 2010 at 7 pm e.t. The winner will be selected randomly by Random.org. and announced at that time.

GOOD LUCK and HAPPY HALOWEEN!

This is really not BBQ because to me BBQ is low and slow cooking but everyone closely associates BBQ sauce as having a majority of the ingredients that are used in this dish so… “BBQ” it is.

Oh yeah and for the record I think we had to set a new record.  We decided hey it is fall and I have a passion for burning stuff (not like creepy arson guy and I just realize there is absolutely no way I can make that previous statement sound right so pray I never get arrested on arson charges because that statement would end me in jail.  However; the spin off Blog He Shanks She Cooks would be awesome).  Anyways back on track… so we build this killer fire pit and are having a blast with friends over drinking beer and b.s.ing.  Next thing we know the joyous Fire Department shows up saying someone is complaining about a smoke nuisance.  Now according to the fire department (who were polite and even turned down the offer of s’mores) even though the fire pit is legal if someone complains we have to put it out.  However; they cannot fine so from here on out the fire pit is going to be constantly running in hopes of annoying neighbors because that is what we do……

With this recipe we busted out our secret stash of booze, dug deep, and found Honey Crisp by Crispin.  Awesome drinking cider but everything is better with chipotles……

For this recipe you will need:

• 2 cups of Honey Crisp (regular cider would work too but try to find the Honey because it adds an awesome flavor and the added bonus is you will have a cup leftover for consumption)
• 1 cup of ketchup
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 teaspoons ancho chili powder
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• salt/pepper
• small dash cayenne pepper
• 1 onion finely diced
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• 2 chipotle in adobo diced
• teaspoon of fresh thyme
• teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce
• teaspoon of paprika
• Canola oil and a tablespoon of butter

Steps to chicken success:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a large pot over high heat melt the butter and oil.
3. Salt and pepper the chicken thighs and then brown them in the oil/butter.
4. Remove and set aside.
5. Drain all but one tablespoon of oil/butter goodness.
6. Add in the onion and cook until softened (about 3-5 minutes).
7. Add in the garlic, chili powder, paprika, and chipotles and cook for 30 seconds.
8. Add in the cider and bring to a boil scraping the bottom.
9. Add in the ketchup, thyme, Worcestershire, paprika, cayenne, sugar, and chicken.
10. Throw in 400 degree oven uncovered until chicken is done.
11. If you want the sauce to be a little thicker once the chicken is done remove it and set aside.  Put the pan over a high burner and boil violently for a couple of minutes.

Serve and enjoy!

Ah yes, nothing like planning a dinner party for 8 when you really wish you were curled up on the couch in a blanket with some hot tea and Jack Daniels watching bad TV. Instead we were doing fun things like chopping piles of garlic and grating fresh horse radish. To clarify, Jeff and I were unlikely advancees in the FoodBuzz Project Food Blog Cage Match Championships. Which was really cool and yet really disturbing. Because I didn’t realize how many of you LIKED SPAM! (And were willing to admit it on a public forum like this here blog.) But YAY we made it to round 3 (partially thanks to YOU dear readers) and now get to cook for our friends. Because we hardly never ever do that more the 3 times a week… This time we were tasked to introduce them to “new tastes and exotic flavors.” Jeff and I agreed almost immediately that maybe we should just make them eat vegetables…

We entertain a lot. Truly, A L O T!!! We’ve both said it many times before – it is what makes us tick. Good food and good friends and good drink are the cornerstones of our life. This challenge was going to be right up our alley. We just wanted to make it a little different and a little special.

So Rule 1) We wouldn’t smoke or grill anything. I knew that was going to be a stretch, but we are always using the grill or the WSM whenever we have friends over. We don’t call it a cookout for nothing. This time they were going to enjoy food prepared the way you rich folk with appliances make food.

2) Different yet close to familiarity. Flavors they knew and wouldn’t shun yet taste combination’s that would test their taste buds. And they would have to say the last part of that line 5 times really fast.

and finally 3) They would drink some really good beer.

That being said – we concocted our menu and got to work:

We were pretty damn excited that for the first time in many months we would NOT be serving chicken wings or chicken thighs or chicken feet. You were looking for a recipe link on that last one weren’t you? HA! No. We would be slow roasting a delicious prime rib with a beautiful horseradish and garlic crust.

Horseradish Encrusted Standing Rib Roast.

6 pound standing rib roast
1/2 cup of freshly grated horseradish
4 cloves of garlic minced
1 T of fresh rosemary
1 T of fresh thyme
2 T of smoked kosher salt
heavy pinch of freshly crushed black pepper
heavy glug of olive oil

Allow rib roast to come to room temperature.

Combine horseradish, garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper an olive oil and smash until a pesto like paste is formed.

Slather that gorgeous hunk of meat (top and sides) with the horseradish mixture till well coated. Note: The bottom of a standing rib roast is the side with the bones. It acts as a built in rack of sorts. I know you know this but my college English professor once told me to write as if who you are talking to has never seen what it is you are talking about before so I did. But just this once because seriously, how obnoxious IS THAT?

Place prime rib in a heavy bottomed pan and roast in a 250° F oven until the internal temperature reaches 115° F. (Approximately 30 minutes per pound).

Remove prime rib from oven and raise to highest temperature setting. (For us that was 500° F)

We interrupt this prime rib recipe for an appetizer…

While we cranked our oven up, we put our jalapeno cream cheese stuffed prawns wrapped in bacon, in the oven. Normally this would take 20-25 minutes at 400° F oven, but given that we have only one oven which was already in somewhat use with the prime rib, we made due.

I think they turned out SWIMMINGLY !

Bacon Wrapped Prawns, Stuffed with Jalapeno Cream Cheese and Drenched with Tupelo Honey (from all natural free range bees)

16 Prawns
8 oz cream cheese, softened
4 jalapenos diced
1 serrano diced
1 T honey plus more for drenching during baking.
16 slices of bacon

Shell, de-vein and butterfly prawns.

Combine cream cheese, jalapenos, serrano and 1 T honey.

Lay a spoon full of the cream cheese mixture down the middle of each prawn.

Wrap prawn with slice of bacon.

Place on a rack in a baking pan, bacon ends down.

Bake in 400° F oven for 15 – 20 minutes, until bacon begins to crisp up.

Drench each prawn with a teaspoon of honey and bake for 5 additional minutes.

Serve immediately.

WE INTERRUPT THIS APPETIZER FOR A MENU EMERGENCY!

Where the FREAK were we going to BAKE the POTATOES? The matchstick carrots were made stove top but ugh the hasselback potatoes!

So we broke rule 1. It was a stupid rule anyway. When we took the prime rib out of the oven and slid the prawns in, the potatoes went straight on the grill, which we attempted to keep at 425° for 35 minutes.

Oh let me go back to that INSANE prime rib:

Once the oven has reached your highest temperature, place roast back in and cook for about 15 minutes or until crust is nice and… well… crusty.

Remove and let sit for 20 minutes before carving.

Jeff’s smile went from ear to ear when he sliced into that roast. And I swear our friends all gasped. Which may have been because Jeff almost took off his thumb on that first slice, but then again it may have been the pure utopia that is known as perfectly roasted beef.

The hasselback potatoes were crunchy and garlicky and the matchstick carrots complimented the roast with sweet delicateness.

(Recipes coming soon! Promise.)

But we were hardly finished. We wrapped up this culinary adventure with Crispin “The Saint” hard cider simmered pears, which were served with mascarpone, a drizzle of maple syrup caramel and crushed puff pastry. (Recipe coming soon! Promise.)

Paired with a really nice surprise from Jeff. Some Boulevard Brewery’s Quadruple Ale which I have been absolutely DYING for for some time now.

He knows the way to my heart is with some really good meat and a strong tasty ale.

…

I honestly think that the success of this night was summed up perfectly with the title of this post; “Tonight, during dinner, our friends were oddly silent…” Normally, as we stand around the grill sucking down wings and brats and burgers and beers we laugh and joke and tell stories and plan our next get together for as soon as humanly possible. But tonight, they were so engaged with what we were feeding them that the only sounds we really heard were mmmm’s and sigh’s and the occasional “oh wow.” But mostly they were silent.

That was the best compliment we could have ever received.

I hope you enjoyed living vicariously through our photos and cold medicine induced dissertation written word…. and maybe you felt like you were here with us. If so I am really sorry that I flicked that spoon full of mascarpone at you. But you deserved it.

And if you didn’t MIND the mascarpone in your hair – kindly throw a FoodBuzz Food Blog of Crazy Ass INCREDIBLE vote our way. Thanks!

Well this shouldn’t be a tough one but naturally it is. We are both of European descent and both cook from our culture regularly so that wasn’t going to fly. Mexican? Nope – I have mad cantina skills. American? Jeff has that market cornered. I said Greek? Jeff said you can make Tzatziki in your sleep. I said Chinese? He hit me over the head with our 10 year old thoroughly seasoned wok. Sushi? African? Lebanese? No No NO! I was overwhelmed and frustrated and mumbling to myself as I stomped and whined my way all through the house. Then it hit me. I ran into the back room where he was working (more like avoiding me because I was getting bitchy…) I said HAWAIIAN!!! He stopped pretending to work and looked up. I said and what do those crazy Hawaiian folk love to eat? He thought for a minute and said SPAM?? I laughed and said YES! And there is nothing quite outside our comfort zone like overly processed meat!

Hawaii’s fascination with spam goes back to the time of WWII when American soldiers ate it as part of their rations and in turn introduced it to Hawaii. Fresh meat was scarce so the Islanders stocked up on this canned salted meat which required no refrigeration. It has remained exceptionally popular and one of the classic ways the Hawaiian’s eat it is called Spam Musubi (pronounced moo-soo-bee) I think I may have had spam once at a luau themed party I went to many years ago. Jeff has never had it and has made it quite clear to me that this is my baby and only I will be eating it. I told him please even President Obama stopped for a Spam Musubi snack while playing golf at Oahu’s Olomana Golf Links. You like golf!!! He said well when President Obama buys me some Musubi and a new set of Pings I’ll take it under consideration. I guess my you golf too so you must like spam equation wasn’t convincing. Jeff is a tough nut to crack.

Getting the Spam out of the can was probably the most unpleasant experience in all of this. It took some coaxing and stabbing and cussing on my part but as it gracefully slid out of the can making this god awful squishy sound and then hit the plate with a thwack my tummy turned just a little. I wondered just how uncomfortable did FoodBuzz want me to be? Enough is enough already here is a taco… I have never made them before I swear! But I made a Spam commitment to myself and Hawaii and I was going to have Spam Musubi today if it killed me. So I sliced up the slimy Spam and worked up a marinade:

For those of you playing along at home here is the recipe:

1 Can of Spam
Nori sheets, toasted
2 C cooked sushi rice (sprinkled lightly with seasoned rice vinegar and a pinch of sugar)

Marinade:
1/2 C Shoyu
2 T brown sugar
3 cloves garlic minced
2 T sweet Hawaiian onion, minced
2 T grated ginger
1 serrano pepper chopped
1 cayenne pepper, chopped
Splash of sesame seed oil

Tamago omelet if you so desire. I so desired and so experienced massive Tamago failure… (I took the recipe from the book Easy Sushi.)

But I salvaged one…

Mix all of the marinade ingredients together, toss in the slices o’ Spam, cover and refrigerate for about 4 hours. (I know the suspense is killing me too…)

To make a proper Spam Musubi you need a Musubi press. I happened to have a sushi press that I hoped would do the trick because this is Indiana and ha ha ha they may be outlawed here.

So after about 4 hours remove the Spam from the fridge. Take the Spam slices out of the marinade and fry them up in a pan. I even fried mine up in some bacon grease hoping that would LURE Jeff to the Spam side. He is not biting. Get them nice and crispy then remove to cool.

Lay the nori sheets on a flat surface. And place the frame of the press on top of the nori. Fill the frame 1/2 full of rice.

If you are using the illusive Tamago omelet lay that on top of the rice and then top with the Spam. Now take the press part of the press and press down the whole thing so that you press it into a nicely pressed layer cake of sorts.

Then remove the frame.

Remove the press and take the exposed edges of the nori and fold up over the roll, wet edges of the nori to seal. Slice into big bite sized pieces and enjoy!

So I had my first taste of Spam Musubi and I have to admit, once the Spam was marinated and fried in bacon grease and pressed into a roll with seasoned rice and tasty tomago it was pretty good. It won’t be a part of our regularly scheduled meals however. I will leave that to the Islanders.

I hope I haven’t completely scared you off my dear readers and if not, please take the time and tell FoodBuzz that you want us to be the next Duo of Food Blog Supremacy!