Blogger Summit at the World Food Championships 2016 - Orange Beach Alabama Day 1

I was fortunate enough to attend the Blogger Summit at the World Food Championships in Orange Beach last month.  I was excited not only about getting to see the competition itself but also learning about food trends, culinary science, and becoming a certified E.A.T. food judge.  

I drove down to beautiful Orange Beach, Alabama on Sunday and had the entire 3 bedroom, beach front condo to myself.  They put us up at Turquoise Place, which are absolutely beautiful vacation condos.  

As soon as I walked in and saw the kitchen with Subzero and Wolf appliances, I thought, "Yeah....I can 'make do' with this."

I had some food prep to do for a photo shoot scheduled for the following day, so I popped a cold beer and got to work.

The first day of the Blogger Summit included sessions that surprised me with how much I learned.

Gulf Shores/Orange Beach Tourism

We were welcomed to the Gulf Coast by Kay Maghan, the Public Relations Manager for Gulf Shores/Orange Beach, Alabama. There is a reason why 6.1 million guests visit each year, creating over 48,000 travel jobs with 1.3 billion dollars in wages.   I have been coming to this area since 1985 and we have family in the area, so I already knew about the stunning white sand beaches, amazing fishing, fine dining, and the incredible year round outdoor activities.  We love this area and always look forward to our several visits each year.

If you haven't checked this area out before or if you belong to an organization looking for a place to have a conference, the Gulf Coast must be on your list, trust me.  Here's a personal tip from me - check out the off season months. Sure, you save money that way but it's a great time to visit because the beaches take on a different look, it's not crowded, and you get to feel like a local. 

The beaches of the Gulf Coast are famous for their white sand beaches.  The sand is so fine and pure that it literally squeaks underneath your feet.  Being a tourism locale like our nearby Great Smoky Mountains here at home, the entire area is geared towards making your visit spectacular. 

I am a beach rat and was on the beach before I could even walk.  Anyone who lives at the beach knows that during the winter months, visiting the beach is a special treat. When I lived on Florida's East coast, I loved walking on the beach when a Nor'easter would roll in.

Luxury Coffee Break - Cup of Luxury

One of the perks of being a food blogger is that we get treated to luxuries that a lot of people would never imagine and that I probably could not afford.  Case in point, on our coffee break we got to try a extremely special hand picked, hand washed, and hand roasted coffee from coffee purveyor, Cup of Luxury.  Did I mention, this particular coffee runs $1,200 per pound?

I waited until everyone else got theirs because I am not a coffee drinker.  I knew the nuances of this fine coffee would be lost on me the same way the intricacies of grade A5 Kobe beef would be wasted on a vegetarian. But I still wasn't going to pass it up :)

Oyster Farming Revolution

Dr. Bill "Dr Oyster" Walton from the Auburn University Shellfish Lab came to talk to us about the growing practice of oyster farming. I'm a geek and was fascinated by this session. I grew up on the waterways of Florida where oysters all over the place, so I was curious as to why anyone would bother to farm an oyster.  The short answer turns out to be quality control and creating a premium oyster are why oyster farming is taking off.

The long answer had a scientific yet easy to understand explanation.  Here are the take aways that I had from the session.

• Traditional methods used the waterway bottom for growing the oysters in either private or public beds.  
• They would seed these with "spat" (for lack of a better term, think oyster eggs) on old oyster shells.
• These traditional beds are subject to fouling and overset.
• The newer farming raises the oysters "off bottom" where they are grown suspended in the water.
• This helps keep the oysters clean and free of fouling.
• The "off bottom" farming simulates and extra long low tide where the oyster uses it's muscles more to stay closed tight, creating a premium oyster.
• Off bottom farming provides benefits like regulating the shoreline, acting as a water filter, and creating habitat.
• Instead of leaving things to nature and chance, off bottom farming lets the farmers chose the ideal environment to grow the best oysters, including water flow, oxygen levels, and perfect salinity.
• This farming trend is taking off, in Alabama there were no such farms in 2008 and now there are 13.  Louisiana and Florida are following in suit.
• On bottom oysters tend to go to canners while off bottom oysters are the premium oysters you get in fine dining establishments.

This session was surprisingly one of my favorites. I only say "surprisingly" because I've never even thought about how oysters get on your plate. But Bill has such a passion for this that you can't help but to catch his enthusiasm for oyster farming.

BroTorch Food Trend

The folks at Hormel gave us a fiery introduction to a twist on the food trend of blow torch cooking....the BroTorch!  They weren't sure they were going to be able to pull it off because of the winds roaring off of the Gulf.  The Orange Beach Fire Department was on scene and had to give the thumbs up.  After testing, talking, more testing, more huddled talking, it was finally a go!

Why yes, that is two rakes with a bunch of hot dogs on them....how else do YOU make chili dogs for 2 dozen of your friends at one time?

Okay, no, they don't expect you to do that. It's a publicity thing, not an instructional video.  But you can do your own BroTorching at home.  

Eric Harland, of the MadPig BBQ competition team, demonstrates ways to cook at home using a hand held torch.  Here he is grilling strips of flank steak on top of a pineapple.

I might have to make myself one of these just for fun.  I wonder if the same attachment would fit a MAPpro gas cylinder. MAPpro burns hotter than the propane that they used and propane can sputter when held inverted whereas I understand MAPpro does not.

Keynote Speech - Mike McCloud

At lunch, Mike McCloud, CEO of the World Food Championships, came to talk to us about the championships and the phenomenon of food sport.  At this event, 430 teams, some 1,421 chefs from 48 states and 14 countries are all in Orange Beach to claim their share of a $350,000 prize purse.

The way it works is that teams have to qualify via competition events for one of 9 categories.  This year the 9 categories are bacon, burger, chili, dessert, recipe (breakfast), sandwich, seafood, steak, and of course, BBQ.

Republished with permission from the World Food Championships.

For the opening round, the teams have to cook a structured dish and their signature dish. Their signature dish is most likely what got them there and the structure dish is just making sure they aren't a one trick pony.  The top 10 of each category go on to compete against each other.  Then the 9 category winners compete against each other for a grand prize of $100,000.  Yeah, that's a chunk of change.  The BBQ section is different but I'll cover that in it's own post.

Wampler's Sausage: Farm to Future
This session blew me away.  Wampler's Sausage is a company based in Lenoir City, TN, just a stone's throw from our home in West Knox county.  That's not what blew me away.  What did is that they are leading the way in renewable energy and will be energy independent in 2017.

Ted Wampler explains how their family farm grew from a simple farm in 1935 to a cutting edge facility that is about to become fully energy independent.  That's incredible.

They started with solar power in 2009 and now are using a innovative biomass process to generate the electricity to run their plants. They are working with Dr Sam Wheeler and Proton Power to run these scalable generators for clean energy.  Even more insane is that a byproduct of these biomass systems is graphene, which is a material that is the future.  Graphene has the potential to blow the silicon chip for computer processing and more.

I was impressed with how much Wampler's is all about reducing water use, increase recycling, and reduce waste both on the processing and customer end. They aren't just talking the talk, they are speaking with their wallet.

Food Styling for Social Media - Michael Sewell

The WFC brought photographer extraordinaire, Michael Sewell, to coach us through a food photography session.  

Michael Sewell demonstrating his approaches to food photograpy.

Then they cut us loose to shoot our own recipes that we had created using Saucy Mama's products.

It was fun chaos, food bloggers everywhere looking for the best lighting, angles, backdrops, and more.

My recipe is Cashew Ginger Chicken Spring Rolls that I made using Saucy Mama's Sesame Ginger Dressing.

What a day!  Coming up is Day 2 when we spend the day on a field trip to Bayou la Batre learning about the Alabama seafood industry.

Lobster Eggs Benedict

[FTC Disclosure:  I received no compensation for this post and I'm not contracted by Smithfield Foods or their PR firm.  However, in full disclosure, they did take me on two trips this year.]

When we were in Smithfield, VA, we had breakfast at the Smithfield Gourmet Bakery and Cafe. One of the items on the menu was Lobster Eggs Benedict and of course, almost everyone in our party opted for that dish. It was a split biscuit topped with ham, eggs fried over easy, Hollandaise sauce and of course, lobster. 

Lobster Eggs Benedict as served at the Smithfield Gourmet Bakery and Cafe in Smithfield VA.

 As I was eating it, I told myself I would be making it at home and staying true to my word, here it is.

I'm sure that you guessed we made this on our grills instead of inside.  You were right.  Here's what we did.

First we started with Alexis making pan style buttermilk biscuits.  She did that on one of our ceramic kamado grills set up with an Adjustable Rig but you could also use any type of indirect set up for the kamado grill, such as a plate setter or heat deflector.  It is best to bake them high up in the kamado so you take advantage of the heat reflecting down.

Look how moist and flaky these biscuits turn out.  I love them this way instead of the typical round biscuits.

Next I made a Hollandaise sauce.  I beat about 5 egg yolks and a splash of cold water until frothy. I put that over a double broiler and whisked in clarified butter until doubled in volume. Then I seasoned it with lemon juice, cayenne, and a bit of salt.  Use a thermos or double insulated mug to keep your Hollandaise warm. That way you don't have to worry about splitting it when heating it back up.

Next I baked 6 eggs in a muffin pan. I seasoned them with a little BBQ rub and salt. This was indirect on a ceramic kamado grill running 350°f.  I bake them until the egg whites are set, about 15 to 20 minutes.  

While the eggs baked, I prepped the lobster.  I just split open a thawed tail, removed the meat, and cut it into bite sized chunks.

Tip:  Seafood proteins are wimps. They can't handle heat at all before they start to degrade, so always keep seafood as cold as possible until the last minute you use them.

I put the lobster bits in the muffin pan, poured warm clarified butter over them and put them back in the grill for just another few minutes. 

Because the butter was already warm, it only took a few minutes for the lobster to get done which is an internal temperature of 135°f.

We had ordered a nice Charles Henry Gray ham but that was for Thanksgiving and I wasn't touching it before the big day, Alexis would have killed me. So instead I ran to the store and picked up a ready to eat Smithfield Anytime Boneless Ham.

Once everything is is cooked, it's just a matter of putting it all together.  Split the biscuit and top it with sliced ham, 2 eggs, lobster and the Hollandaise sauce.

As great as theirs was....I have to say mine was a wee bit better myself :)   Now I just want to try it again using some of the leftover Charles Henry Gray country ham that we had for Thanksgiving. 

I'm pretty certain that this is my favorite time of year for sports because college football is about to hit the bowl season but more importantly, college basketball is going too.  Like millions of homes across the country, game day means firing up the grills in our back yard.

Speaking of teams, Nibble Me This is teaming up with Certfied Angus Beef for the next year.  I've always shared my enthusiasm for CAB but now it's official, I'm on their roster :)  What does this mean for the blog?  Not much really.  They are being very cool about the structure.  Instead of giving us specific recipes or topics that we have to create, they just want us to create using Certified Angus Beef and tell our thoughts about it in our own voice.  I've already been doing that so I said sign me up!  It's easy representing a brand that you already use and have grown to love.

So back to game day, boy yesterday was a big one in terms of rivalries. Some teams were playing for a national championship playoff slot and others playing for pride.  We had FSU vs Florida, Auburn vs Alabama, and Ohio State (#2) vs Michigan (#3) - what a great day of football. These mini-subs are perfect for days like that because you can eat them hot, fresh off the cutting board or you can pull the leftovers out for a quick bite late in the games when everything is on the line.

The star of this team is a rotisserie roasted Certfied Angus Beef eye of round, sliced thin, and then topped with caramelized sweet onions and horseradish beer cheese sauce.

Rotisserie Roast Beef Mini-Subs with Horseradish Beer Cheese Sauce

Published 11/27/2016

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 pound Certfied Angus Beef eye of round
• 6 mini-sub rolls

For the Beef Rub

• 2 teaspoons coarse black pepper
• 2 teaspoons kosker salt
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper 

For the Horseradish Beer Cheese Sauce

• 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cup beer 
• 1 cup shredded Monterey jack cheese
• 1 cup mild shredded cheddar
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 to 1.5 teaspoons grated horseradish
• salt to taste (about 3/4 teaspoon)

For the Onions

• 2 sweet onions, peeled and thinly sliced
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• salt to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat your rotisserie grill to medium high heat, about 400°f.
2. Mix together the dry rub ingredients.  Lightly rub the beef with 1 teaspoon of oil and season all over with the dry rub.  
3. Spear the roast onto the rotisserie rod, secure using the tines, and let roast over indirect heat  with the lid closed until the roast hits 127-130°f for medium rare, a little over 1 hour.
4. Meanwhile make the cheese sauce.  In a medium pot over medium heat, melt the butter and whisk in the flour.  Stir contantly until they combine in a light roux.  Whisk in the beer in small amounts until it is all worked in and well blended.  Add the cheese in small batches, whisking until it melts.  Add the pepper and horseradish, taste for seasoning and adjust with salt as needed.
5. Caramelize the onions.  Melt butter in a pan over medium low heat  Add the onions and stir occasionally until they turn soft and lightly browned.  Don't rush this, you should take at least 30 minutes to slowly build the complex flavors of caramelized onions.  
6. Once the beef is done, remove from heat and let rest on a resting rack.
7. Slice the beef thinly. Top the bun bottoms with the beef, onions, and drizzle with the cheese sauce.

Yield: 6 servings
Prep Time: 00 hrs. 20 mins.

Cook time: 01 hrs. 15 mins.
Total time: 1 hrs. 35 mins.

Substitution Notes:

• For the beer in the sauce, we used an American style light lager but you can use whatever you like. An amber or stout will give you a darker color and deeper flavor. 
• The Aleppo pepper looks like red pepper flake but it is milder in heat and has a nice smoky flavor.  You can just use red pepper flake or any red ground chile (cayenne, chipotle, ancho). 
• I used store bought prepared horseradish. If using fresh, back off on the amounts some unless you really like the sinus clearing sting.
• If you don't feel like caramelizing the onions, you can always just top your sandwich with french fried onions from the store like my son opted to do.  

My typical rotisserie set up is like this, with coals banked around where the meat will be.  Of course, I light them first using a chimney starter or gas assist if the grill has it, and then move them into position. You can buy a "universal" rotisserie accessory for most grills for about $50.  For kamado grills you will need a specialized rotisserie kit.  

Completely Optional Step:  The eye of round is a pretty lean cut of beef, so I like to give it an injection to boost the flavor and moisture retention. I happened to have some brisket injection on hand so I used that.  But you can just mix 3/4 cup of beef stock, several tablespoons of unsalted butter, and a heavy splash of Worcestershire sauce over medium heat.  Then inject that after it cools slightly.

After seasoning the eye of round with the rub, I tie it to make the shape more uniform.  It's going to be thinner on one end anyway, but that's okay.  A real butcher would tie this with one string but I'm real slow at that so I cheated here.  It works! 

Rotisserie cooking is a type of dry heat cooking method that adds a great color to meats and forms a tasty crust.  If you don't have a rotisserie, you can do this over a regular grill.  Use a raised rack (higher than your regular grill grate) and turn the roast frequently, about every 5-7 minutes until done.

The roast should only rise about 5 degrees after you pull it off. I like to pull mine around 127°f but I was distracted and got it pulled at 131°f instead. 

You can use an electric slicer, especially if you refrigerate the roast before to get it firmer.  But we were eating this right off of the cutting board so I went manual with a 10" slicer knife.

Alexis said this is some of the best sliced roast beef that she's ever had.  Tender on the inside, flavor packed on the golden crust, it blows away anything you can buy in a deli.

The Horseradish Beer Cheese Sauce was pretty amazing too.  This would be good for dipping onion rings, or something like that, too.

The mini-subs are surprisingly big for being "mini".  They won't leave you hungry but you can still handle them with one hand, freeing the other hand up for a cold adult beverage or the remote (just in case your team is losing, ha ha).

Just in time for the holidays, check out the free Roast Perfect App from Certified Angus Beef for help in creating beef roasts like this and others.

It's an easy to use app for your smart phone that has tips, video, recipes, and tools to help you nail that perfect beef roast for the upcoming holiday feasts.  You can get it in Google Play and the iPhone App Store.  

Thanks again to Certified Angus Beef and the Sunday Supper Movement for partnering with Nibble Me This for the coming year! 

Grilled Pumpkin with Cinnamon Whiskey Glaze

Cinnamon whiskey has been all the rage the past year or two.  So what can you do with cinnamon whiskey BESIDES make bad life decisions at 2 in the morning?  How about grilling pumpkin with this cinnamon whiskey glaze!?!

The glaze would also be phenomenal on cinnamon rolls or drizzled over pumpkin pie.  This is a recipe that I created for Char-Broil so you can find the full recipe there.

Brown Sugar and Beer Brined Wings

College basketball is heating up and the bowl season for college football is going to be kicking off shortly.  These Brown Sugar and Beer Brined Wings give you something different from the usual buffalo style wings.  They are ideal for folks who want more sweet than heat in their game day wings.

I created these wings as part of my sponsorship package with Char-Broil and cooked them on my Char-Broil Kettleman grill. I've cooked on this specific grill for 2 years and it is still holding up to all of my abuse.  The Kettleman is inexpensive ($149), light in weight making it a great portable grill, and it has proven itself to me.  I have about 17 grills that make appearances on my deck but this is one that stays out there year round.

Here is the full recipe for Brown Sugar and Beer Brined Wings.

Live From Smithfield Day 2

I was excited and woke up early on the second day of our trip to the Ham Capital of the World, Smithfield, Virginia, because that was the day for touring Smokehouse 3B.  That is the legendary place where all of the Genuine Smithfield Country hams are cured, aged, and smoked.  I wasn't sure what to expect.  I could see it being an old school traditional place but I was also thinking it might be automated processes with a lot of stainless steel machinery.  

[Disclaimer]  Smithfield Foods paid for my travel expenses for this educational trip

Like I said, I woke up early like a kid on Christmas.  So I went for a walk around the Smithfield Inn, pictured here.

On my walk, I ran into George Washington.  Not the dollar bill George Washington.  This was George "I'm crossing the Delaware, you just messed up son" Washington.

When I turned around from George, I found this rock. Viral marketing from the stone age;) 

We walked down the street to the Smithfield Gourmet Bakery and Cafe for breakfast.

Lobster Eggs Benedict?  Shut your mouth and take my money!  Buttermilk biscuit topped with Genuine Smithfield Country Ham, eggs over easy, lobster and Hollandaise.  I made my own version and that post is coming up.

So....Smokehouse 3B - the place where all Genuine Smithfield hams are cured, aged, and smoked. This is what I came to see.

At first glance, it doesn't look like much.  Certainly doesn't look like it could hand almost 70,000 hams does it?  The first floor is where the hard wood fires are burned but the second and third floors hold some 19 "houses" and each of them can handle about 3,600 hams at full production.

The inside of the smokehouse was dark as if the air itself had become tinted from decades of hardwood smoke.

The man giving us the tour was Jorge Morales, Supervisor of Dry Cure.  I quickly formed the opinion that Jorge is a master craftsman, the equivalent of a Master Distiller.  He walks the above halls every day, every house, checking on the hams during their 6 month journeys. He checks things like temperature and humidity but he also says that he "just knows" - a sort of intuition.

As we walked, Jorge told us how the process has changed very little from the early days when Smithfield started in 1936.    

When the hams arrive, they are salted with the cure. Photo Credit: Smithfield Foods

Today, pretty much the same cures are used.  Photo Credit: Smithfield Foods

Except today they aren't stacked in the open air on pallets like "back in the day".  They are held in large bins and allowed to cure for 8 weeks. Photo Credit: Smithfield Foods

The hams are then rinsed off, netted, and aged at around 4 weeks between 45 and 55°f. Photo Credit: Smithfield Foods

Then the hams are aged between 3 weeks at 90°f and 4 weeks at 85°f depending on a few factors and Jorge's ham whispering.  Photo Credit: Smithfield Foods

Finally the hams are smoked.  Then they are ready for packing.  Photo Credit: Smithfield Foods

The irony....    Photo Credit: Smithfield Foods

Once the hams go off, one from each batch is tested to make sure enough water was removed in the process.  Then a worker punches each ham with an awl and smells the awl to make sure the ham meets their high quality standards.  Yeah, I know!  I thought that was wild too. She tests every...single...one.  And her nose knows, if it's not right, she will reject a ham.  

Surely the packing process is automated, right?  Nope. A ham is handed to a guy with a stack of white paper and he wraps each ham up.  Then it's bagged and sewn up. Everything was hands on.  Photo Credit: Smithfield Foods

After that, we went to the Isle of Wight County Museum to learn more about this historic region.

• The Europeans took their practice of salting hams and combined it with the Warascoyak tribe's method of smoking, creating the traditional cured/smoked ham that we enjoy today. 
• In 1767 Mallory Todd started packing hams and sending to his family in the Caribbean. 
• Although Todd started Smithfield's world wide reputation for quality hams, the town was still all about peanuts. That was until 1921 when a fire on the wharf took out the peanut warehouses.
• In 1936, Joseph Luter established the Smithfield Packing Company.

These signs remind me of some sort of early South of the Border signs. 

The World's Largest Ham came from a 900lb hog.  The World's Oldest Cured Ham was actually carried around by P.D. Gwaltney as a prop as he went around promoting their hams.  He kept it insured for $5,000. 

World's Oldest Peanut.  This was carried around by P.D. Gwaltney Sr, who was known as the Peanut King.

Next we sauntered over to A Taste of Smithfield which is a charming half general store and half restaurant.

When we were told they used "a smoker out back", the BBQ pit geek in me had to go check it out.  It's a huge Lang reverse flow offset pit.

Came inside for a fun tasting menu.  I think the pork taco and country ham sweet potato biscuits were my favorites.

Next we went to Smithfield's Innovation Center where all of their research, development, and training take place.  They have a mock home kitchen (aka Granny's kitchen) and a full line from a commercial kitchen so they can accurately test their recipes in both real world environments.  They also have miniaturized versions of all of their processing equipment so they can test production changes with 50 lb batches instead of wasting 2,000 lbs each time. Pretty amazing place.

They also have a pig grill.  Cool, yeah?

We had a very frank conversation about designing meat products for various price points. Cheaper cuts of ham, turkey or anything can be made in 3-4 hours whereas a Genuine Smithfield Ham is going to take over 6 months to cure,  go from 20-23 pounds down to 16 pounds, and take 12 hours to smoke. The cost in man hours and loss to shrinkage are going to make a cured and naturally wood smoked ham worth significantly more.

Next it was time to break down half of a hog with Dr. Josh Shook, their on-staff meat scientist  Look at that money muscle (the bulge of muscle in the bottom left corner)!

Tuffy "The Professor" Stone also joined us to talk all things hog.  Tuffy is the owner of Q Barbecue (chain of BBQ restaurants), A Sharper Palate (gourmet catering company), pitmaster of Cool Smoke competition BBQ team, and he is a judge on BBQ Pitmasters.  Yeah, he's kind of a big deal.

Tuffy was dropping mad knowledge on us, including specifics about how many days "post harvest" he wants his ribs (14) and pork butts ("a little less") for BBQ competitions.  A week after this meeting, Tuffy would go on to win a third World Championship at the Jack Daniels Invitational.

As he was breaking down the hog, Dr. Shook told us that Smithfield takes measures to minimize wastes.  They use the entire animal except the skull and eyes.  

A "CT butt" or cellar trimmed butt is the top half of the pork butt. It's called that because processing houses utilized gravity systems to move pork around and by the time the butt got to the cellar, it was the most trimmed down.

The whole pork loin - a world of possibilities from crown roast to pork chops to tenderloins.

Finally for dinner we arrived at The Barn at Aberdeen, an amazing facility located right on the water.

My mother used to ask me, "Were you raised in a barn?".  After seeing The Barn, my answer would be "I wish that I was!"

First was happy hour with local cheeses and appetizers.

Next, Tuffy and Chef Colby discussed their whole hog cook and strategies used.  The winds were roaring off of the water at 25 knots, which any pitmaster knows can really screw with your cook.  Chef Colby wanted to let the pork shine, so he used straight salt on this 185lb dressed hog and then a mop of vinegar, black pepper, onion, garlic, and crushed red pepper.

Tuffy spoke about the difficulty of perfectly cooking a whole hog, rendering the hams and shoulders without drying the loins.  The weather conditions added more complexity. So how did they do?

Nailed it! 

After dinner I had a nice time talking with Dennis Pittman of Smithfield about their amazing Helping Hungry Homes initiative.  

Through this program, Smithfield has donated truckloads upon truckloads to communities and people in need.  Most recently they made donations to two of Operation BBQ Relief's deployments - Hammond LA and in North Carolina.  Turns out, his wife and my mom's family grew up in the same very small town in North Carolina.  He knows the pleasure of a Melvin's Burger from the original "pool room" in Elizabethtown. 

Day 2 Take Aways  (I could go on and on here but I will limit myself to two.)

• I'm making changes to our pork and rib programs for competition BBQ based on what Tuffy told us in the Innovation Center.  

But the main take away was this unedited note from my scribblings at the end of the day.

• Very surprised at the family feel of the company locations that we visited.  I expected the cold machine of a corporation but what I found in talking to people at the plants was doing right by others - worker safety, food safety, HACCP.  It echoes the company tag line of "good food - responsibly" and the CEO message of 'if you see it and walk by it, you are accepting it"

So I wasn't sure what to expect...but I walked away totally impressed with Smithfield and their people.

Next up is my take on the Lobster Eggs Benedict...