Page 21 - March2022 Barbecue News Magazine

Dana “big papa” Hillis
BBQ From Florida
lighthousepointe@ hotmail.com
This is one of the best times of year for cooking BBQ. 50s at night 70s in the daytime. Gotta love the cool air and BBQ Smoke! (Here in Florida!)
Surely wish we could fix the high costs of BBQing. Fuel prices are to high. Brisket, pork ribs, and chicken at an all time high. You can't even find sales on charcoal anymore. Competitions are so expensive to do. Bless all of you still out there competing!
There is a great feeling firing up a BBQ grill and cooking. I have been BBQing for a long time and still love everything about it.
My friend Tom Ihringer from Fargo North Dakota has a place in Marco Island, Florida and stopped by to get some rubs and sauces. Tom is a good friend of John Aboud who is my good friend and world famous BBQ judge. Tom
came to a BBQ class and told
me they have a local rib contest
back in Fargo and needed to im-
prove his rib game. We went
over everything on ribs and he
went home with a few new
techniques that built his confi-
dence. I told him to call if he
had any questions. He called me
the morning of his contest and
asked me if weather could affect
his time line. I asked him how
was his weather and he said,
“It‘s17 below zero and we just got 4 feet of snow!” We determined he might need to start his fire a little earlier and add a little time. It worked because he called later and said he took first place!
Speaking of John Aboud - I have had the pleasure of becoming good friends with John. He is just a fine gentleman. When he is in town he always drops by for a visit. We laugh about all the places I have cooked and he has judged. We have been to Vegas, Kansas City, the Jack, and a lot of small towns around the country. Once we were in a town called Algood Tennessee cooking steaks. We had driven our little old jeep from McMinnville Tennessee to Al- good and got to see the sights on a beautiful ride. We were sur- prised when we arrived at the contest as John was there. It is always a thrill to see him as we never know where we will run into John next!
My neighbor Todd Bender is cooking Backyard in Apopka and I am predicting he wins grand. This guy is a hard working family man with a passion for cooking BBQ. His son Easton cooks with him.
Easton is an honor roll student and professional python catcher. Todd's wife Chelsea makes the best banana pudding I ever had. Good luck crew!
My favorite thing to do these days is teaching my Backyard BBQ class. The people that attend have a lot of fun and we all get to eat way to much. We light up a lot of cookers and cook a lot of food while telling a few BBQ stories and everyone goes home with a smile and a full belly!
We cooked for the Naples Art and Wine Festival last week and over 23 million dollars was generated to help kids. We were proud to be a part of this event again and despite some 38-degree weather and strong winds the night was a big success. These peo-
ple ate a lot of food. The music was fantastic and meeting Billy Dean was super cool. He sang a song called Billy the Kid that was my dad's favorite song back in the 80's.
We’ve been having trouble get- ting bottles but now have re- stocked. All of our sauces are available again. Spicy Peach, Sweet Original, Wild Cherry, Competition Blend, Raspberry Chipotle, Blackberry, Irish
Whiskey, Logans Run Hot, Wolfe Brothers Mustard, and Wolfe Brothers Hot Mustard. We also have our rubs available. All Pur- pose, Honeymoon, Big Papas Pork and Bourbon Boulevard Beef. Contact us or go to bigpapascountrykitchen.com
We miss cooking competitions but we are going to make a short comeback and see if our old recipes still work. We miss our SCA family and will be cooking some events later in the year. Sheila Jones, we miss you. Chuck and Kitty, We’ll see you soon.
We landed a catering job for a beer club. I can't wait to cook for this gang. BBQ and beer= happy!
Hope everyone is staying healthy and having a great 2022. Fire up the grills for the Super Bowl. I don't have a favorite team but would like to see Matthew Stafford win after playing so long and hard for the pitiful Detroit Lions team. So my prediction is Rams win on final drive!
Cook everyone some BBQ. It makes them Happy!
MARCH 2022
BarbecueNews.com - 21
BBQ THOUGHTS