Learn to Grill

Whether it's at a family reunion, trackside at a NASCAR event or on the tailgate of a pick-up truck at a local football game, grilling outdoors in dixie is a long lived tradition. From appetizers to desserts, cooking on a charcoal grill can be fun and easy. If you want to grill like a pro, start by reading the grilling 101 topics and you will soon be cooking with the best. If you're already a seasoned pro, checkout the beyond the basic topics to find great reference material and grilling tips.

We have resently purchased a Char-Griller "Super Pro" to use in testing new recipes this summer. The choice of the Char-Griller was largely in part to the fact it is a heavy duty grill with cast iron grates, smoking capabilities and falls within the price range of the average Joe. It's a great grill for a beginner as well as a seasoned grill chef wanting more cooking options than those of a simple pan grill. The Char-Griller also lends itself to some easy mechanical modifications that will improve it's performance. In the Char-Grillers story we are going to chronicle our day to day use as well as document and test our modifications so that other users can determine if these mods are within their mechanical capabilities and if the expenses are justified.

As our preparations for the summer garden begin and with the economy in the dump, we decided to offer up some of our gardening tips for those wanting to save a bit on their grocery bills by starting a backyard garden. We all need vegies for our shish-kabobs, and nothing tastes better than those fresh from the garden.

The first tip we will offer up is to build yourself a compost tumbler. Compost is result of decomposed organic material. You can create your own and it's a great soil amendment that you can never add too much of to your garden. The traditional method of composting is piling layers of kitchen scraps,leaves,grass clippings, manure or straw in a make shift pile in the back yard. You then water this and turn the pile and mix it with a pitch fork every few weeks and eventually you have compost. This is a great way to create compost if you live in the country and a young man with the strenght to turn the pile, but if like me you live in an urban area with restrictions on outdoor compost bins, then you might want to use a compost tumbler to create this garden gold known as compost. These tumblers contain the material keeping animals and pests away from your compost and make it easier to mix your organic materials. There are commercial models available such as the Tumbleweed Composter or Envirocycle Composter but if you're mechanically inclined you can build one from recycled materials. Check the video above for more information.