A journey into what has gone from a fun, part time hobby to a fulfilling and rewarding obsession.. Culminating in a style I like to call "Authentic Southern (Utah) Barbecue"

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

A Little Background....

So, I have what I like to call a self-induced form of OCD. This stems from the fact that I found myself as a single parent to 3 of the greatest kids in the whole world during my early 30’s. My day started before 6:00 a.m. pretty much every day, then get the kids off to school, then to a full time job, then home in time to meet the kids as they got home from school, then take the kids to whatever activity they had that day, then home, dinner, homework, bed and finally getting myself settled at around 11:00 p.m.

As the kids got older and began moving out on their own, the chaos slowly calmed down but I found that I always had the need to be doing “something”…Nothing really in particular, just that for such a long time there was always something that needed to be done, my mind couldn’t stop feeling like it had to be moving. As such, if I don’t find something to focus on I kinda go a little nuts.

Anyway, I have always been a competitor, (not to be confused with being a competitive person, just that I like to test myself). I have played racquetball since I was 15 and finally quit playing competitively in 2008. My body started telling me several years ago that I am not 18 anymore so I needed to find other things to occupy my mind. I started flying radio-controlled airplanes about 10 years ago, which has turned into another huge obsession but I find that I am limited by time and weather and such. I play golf often as well as fish and try to get outdoors as much as possible. But, as time went by I realized that the things I enjoyed take me away from home too much and are too dependent on other factors.

I remarried to a wonderful woman in 2001 and after some time I found that I missed cooking. When it was just me and the kids I did not have a lot of money nor the time to go out to eat so I HAD to learn to cook. At that point I was cooking to feed my family but along the way I realized that I was actually having fun trying to come up with new and inventive ideas to keep the kids interested.

About 3 years ago I caught the cooking bug again and went through a few phases as far as styles and types of food, Mexican, Italian, Americana and fusions of anything I could think of. Then, about 2 years ago I found an article about “competitive barbecue”. I was mildly intrigued that there were people out there, people who for the most part had no formal culinary training, “competing” in barbecue. I began reading as much as I could and discovered that this was something I really wanted to try.

The rest, as they say, is history…

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