Tips and Recipes

A few months ago I asked my wife for a snack and she walked into my office with the plate above. Believe me, it really filled my tanks (food tank and love tank). It was a DELICIOUS example of how to combine two or three favorite foods to make a taste explosion.

When it comes to snacking, these are some of my favorites: crackers and cheese ball (or cheese), peanuts and/or chocolate, old-fashioned popcorn with about three different seasonings on it, and so on. You get the idea.

Now add barbecue to the mix. Sliced cheese and low ‘n slow chicken breast on a good ole club cracker. That’s where the explosion happens. Does snacking get any better than this?

Share your snack ideas with a comment below.

Have fun,

Lavern

In a recent post, I talked about the importance of good planning when you’re cooking for a crowd. Maybe I am a bit imbalanced since I always like to have my chickens lined up, but I think my concerns were valid.

Today I want to move on to my second tip on cooking for a crowd: using decent equipment.

So you are interested in catering for money, fund-raising for non-profits, or being the honored chef at family gatherings, graduation parties, church picnics, or some sort of crowd setting. You are serious about cooking and don’t mind investing in your dream. A good smoker or grill is a solid investment and the best way to achieve your goals.

When it comes to the equipment, here is what you need to think about:

1. Size of cooking space/amount of output.
2. Ease of use.
3. Ease of cleanup.
4. Lifetime value for your investment.

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All of true meaning in life revolves around relationships. There are many types of relationships, but in this blog post, I am thinking of relationships in business. People love to do business with real people, not “faceless” corporations. Your market is waiting to lavish loyalty on you and your brand if you will only earn it.

Market loyalty is one of the keys to growing a small business on a low budget. It’s how you can attract more customers, get your customers to buy more often, and make your customers spend more when they buy from you.

There are plenty of advertising and lead generation strategies that hardly give you any return on your investment, or at least require careful tracking. You can easily lose your shirt if you’re not careful. But when you sincerely invest in building relationships with your market through free gifts, events, or coaching, it’s just hard to go wrong.

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Cooking for a crowd can be overflowing fun and bliss. Or it can be the most embarrassing event of your life.

In my last blog post, I showed you how we cooked for the open house at Cold Springs Garden Center. Today I want to share a few tips on planning ahead when cooking for a crowd. These are based on principles I have learned in our own cooking for open houses, church picnics, and reunions.

Lack of planning is a leading cause for despair in catering. Get your ducks lined up and don’t try to warp time. If you are careless in this point, you are asking reality to dump buckets of stress upon your head. Planning involves fire management, lining up supplies, and preparing enough food for the crowd. I can’t go into much detail on these points today, but you can use these simple tips as a guide for success in catering.

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I love working in the office. Tech and the skill of writing, designing, and marketing. Hey, sitting here writing this blog post to feed my family is just wonderful. Especially, when many other people are working in lonely cubicles or doing things they hate. I am very blessed.

Where am I going with this? While I love working indoors, nothing can beat the outdoors this time of the year. Dogwoods, azaleas, and flowers blooming. Green grass, awesome weather, and leaves on the trees. More daylight in the evenings. Spending time outside with the family.

My backyard is still far from ideal, but at least it’s a backyard. It would be fun to have a spacious deck, open patio, nice even lawn, and beautiful landscaping, but what’s far more important is my family and taking time to enjoy each day.

We can have such high ideals, we miss the possibilities right under our noses. For example, I really enjoy fire rings. Roasted hot dogs, smores (with chocolate and peanut butter!), and fire talks. But for a long time I did without a fire ring because I had things to do with my money besides spending it on fancy landscaping bricks. You know the kind that works really good for a fire ring.

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For as long as I can remember, homemade pizza and barbecue have been very special to me. We NEVER in all my growing up years had enough homemade pizza or grilled burgers to satisfy my cravings. My mom absolutely was and still is a great cook, but for some reason, we didn’t get around to firing up the grill every two days and having pizza every Friday night. You know how it goes. Life is practical, not always full of pizzazz.

Okay, so getting down to my point, if you want to really discover your favorite food, try combining two of them. Depending how you do it, the result will either be mental pizzazz—or possibly mental shock. By the way, I am certainly NOT talking about slapping hamburgers on top of pizza dough and squirting a little ketchup and mustard.

Here’s a sneak peak of what I mean:

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