Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Introduction


Welcome to the 57 Smokehouse Bbq team blog. As the title implies we are an upstart bbq competetion team. Let me introduce myself and the team. My name is Alan Walker I am 43 years old, married to wife Amber for 6 years and we have 3 beautiful children.
We live in Georgia and I work in retail Amber is a bartender. We have always had a love for cooking and I could live by a smoker. I have been cooking bbq for the better part of my life and would love to make it a career. We became intrested in the competetion scene about a year ago and wanted to be a part of it. We joined the Georgia BBQ Association in June and of course I wanted to cook right away (buttheaded as usual). I never took into consideration how much money,time and effort went into preparing for a competetion. I thought ok buy a rig (expensive), pitch a tent, get a case of beer and start a fire. How hard can this be little did I know. I mean they make it look easy on those food shows. I soon found out I had ALOT to learn. I starting looking at bbq cookers and found that my eyes were bigger than my wallet. I have always been an offset smoker fan and I wanted a big one on a trailer. It is real hard to justify $2000 for a grill that you cant use all the time.
I was determined that I was gonna get one right then and there bout drove my wife crazy. She has always been the reason to my chaos and I would and still do test her on a daily basis but that was a tough time. I wanted to be in the bbq business up to my neck. See I never took into consideration all the small items that you need to cook sucessfully in a competetion. I had never been to a live competetion but I wanted it know. I didnt know of sanctioning groups but the ones you see on tv (kcbs,mbn)the big boys of bbq. I found the GBA by accident googling one night. Imagine my excitement a group right in my back yard. I searched the website and downloaded an application that night. Amber sent them a check the next week and we were in. Know what? The contest scheduele was on the website and the next contest was in our hometown about three weeks out. I was like a kid at christmas or worse ask the wife. Cooking in that contest was not an option so we decided to take the judging route. I didnt care I just wanted us to be part of the culture any way I could. We took the judging class and got to judge that very night. We just finished out the year as judges and have meet some wonderful people and eaten some wonderful food. Our new season starts in March and I have the cooking bug again but with alot more patience and knowledge thanks to a great bbq community and great advice. There are great outlets online such as the Smoke ring and the BBQ brethern where you can learn volumes in s short amount of time. The reason I started this blog is to document the goings on and preperation for my first competetion. Just something fun to do. Thanks for the time and stay tuned this will be fun Alan

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