The Backstory

I wanted to share the backstory that lead up to all of this. It goes back to the early 90's with me and my buddies. So after I got out of the Marine Corps and settled back home, I reconnected with some of my old friends. We liked to have fun on the weekends, we worked hard and played hard. Now one of the things we enjoyed was BBQ and Beer and Music. On any given weekend, you'd find us occupying somebody's driveway with music going and beer flowing.  Now one of my buddies in particular was a bbq fanatic back in the day, enter the scene Brian. Brian introduced me to smokin' tri-tips. Meet the R2 Smoker of the 90's! Not a lot of room in these things but for a simple setup, they did work. So basically this thing was a tower setup, fire on the bottom, water pan above the fire which we constantly had to refill and then two decks for smokin'. Now you can see in the picture on the right, the fire chamber was not big. Now these bowls that contained the fire just set on the deck and you literally just picked up your smoker and placed it over the fire. Sometimes we'd have to start another fire to get it going to continue long cooks. We turned out a LOT of smoked tri-tips back in the day on these things. I guess this is where it really all started for me! Thanks for that Brian!! My fate was sealed then and little did I know it was just the beginning!!

So if you stick around long enough and come back as I add to this site dedicated to what I love, you'll see that I like to keep things simple. Now I'm not judging what anybody else does with their cooks, I just prefer to keep it as simple as possible. I base most of my work on S.P.G. (Salt, Pepper, Garlic). I enjoy sharing the love of bbq with newcomers and they are kinda scared away because they say it looks intimidating. All the spices, all the prep, the wood and it's all so overwhelming. Pump the brakes, it's really not that hard and you don't have to let it be. I'll break it all down for you on some of the most simple of setups. If you have S.P.G. you can do bbq and make it good! Part of learning is asking questions, don't be afraid to ask, I know a lot of people that have been doing this for years and trust me, we want to pass that knowledge down. Now I'm not sayin' I know everything, but I know what I like and so do many others.

So stick around and join me on this journey. I never thought I'd do this to the level I'm taking it, I'm not trying to compete, let's just call it sharing what I love when it comes to food.