Hey Guys; so I wanted to smoke a pork butt this sunday for the game. I'm on the west coast, so we're looking at a 3:30 kickoff. I'd like to be finished smoking around 1, ready to pull and serve at 2... counting back from most recipe times that means I need to get the meat in around 10pm saturday night. Issue is, with my hacked together smoker, I'm not comfortable leaving it doing it's thing overnight unattended. I've seen plenty of recipes that call for a start on smoke and a finish in the oven; has anyone ever tried starting in the oven, then finishing with 5 or so hours of smoke? I think this is what I'll try, but if anyone else has some other ideas on how I might pull this off (or general smoking tips) that would be stellar.

So SD beer week is upon us again; My beer-enthusiast best friend is turning 24 on Monday, so we got tickets for the Beer Garden food and beer pairing event this Sunday. $75 a ticket, but it's all you can eat and drink, so it should be an awesome event!

Anyone here have any big plans for beer week? If you're visited the event website, you know there are literally hundreds of events/tastings around San Diego... any events you guys consider as must-attend??

Hey all; so I bought a big bag of katsuobushi yesterday for my latest batch of dashi to freeze, and it got me wondering what other applications people have for it.

Besides the obvious use in dashi, one of my most frequent uses for the fish flakes is based on some dish I had in some restaurant somewhere; I pan fry some tofu in a small skillet, then dump in what's basically the mix for tamagoyaki (a couple eggs, mirin, soy sauce, salt) and throw it under the broiler until its just set, and top with katsuobushi.

Aside from that, I'll use it to top rice or congee sometimes, but no real cooking applications (as in using katsuobushi as an ingredient, not as a garnish). I was thinking about trying to use it in some recipes as an interesting replacement for pork floss.... until I remembered I don't have any recipes that utilize pork floss either. ^_^

Anybody else have some ideas that'll help me burn through the rest of this bag?

After scanning through some of the (legitimate) responses to SE's "Ask a Bartender: Biggest Pet Peeves," and a stellar recommendation by a one Mr. Kuban, I thought it could be fun to talk as a community about what some bartenders do that bother us, and not muddy up the comments section of the article with our complaints (unless what you have to say is directly in response/rebuttal to something the bartender wrote, then it belongs over there, obviously)

Me? I don't like it when a bartender gives me a funny look when I order a Jim Beam double after sitting at the bar. I'm aware I'm in a hip establishment that panders to the recently-graduated-from-college-and-now-earning-more-money-than-they-know-what-to-do-with crowd, and you'd like to peddle me your finer wares, but a $6 dollar double is gonna go a lot farther than the $24 shot (really?? a shot?) of blue label you just poured to that asshole in the suit. Please just let me have my drink.

I also dislike the standard $1-tip-per-drink rule. When I go up and order 4 tall cans of PBR on sunday, and all you do is pop the top for me, I don't think it warrants the same tip range as you mixing up 4 custom cocktails. I mean, it's the service industry, and the amount of time and the quality of the work should have a bearing - so for table full of well made cocktails, I'd gladly tip a tenner, but think it's bull when I leave a two dollar tip after it took you 10 seconds to fetch and crack open my beers, and I get a dirty look for it.

Hey guys; So I was doing a little late night browsing, and I know you guys are tackling this advertising thing on your own now, and there are bound to be one or two little glitchy things.... But I just saw "7 foods that may be causing your leaky bladder" over on the side bar in the "More Like This" section, and just thought you guys should know. I mean I'm not squeamish about that sort of thing, but I imagine there are some people who might be a bit put off by leaky bladder headlines on their food pages. ^_^

Alright a drunken argument with some friends last night is prompting this topic: does everyone prefer melted cheese or cheese sauce on their nachos?

I am FIRMLY in the cheese sauce camp, every single attempt I can recall of nachos with real melted cheese on them has been horrendous. The cheese cools and congeals almost as quickly as it takes to bring them to the table, firmly cementing the top layer of chips together, while all those poor sad lonely chips underneath are naked and cheeseless. It's the same with cheesy fries at a lot of places - when they bring out that mass of fries glued together with room temperature cheddar I die a little inside.

So what's the word from the SE community? Cheese or cheese sauce?

Alright folks, searching for some help with this one - I have never been a Starbucks fan. I order black coffee with no room, and that's it. Now, I do NOT consider myself a coffee connoisseur... in fact I'd be lying if I said that a cup of freshly ground folgers didn't hit the spot every once in a while. But my problem with starbucks (a sentiment which I've seen others share) is that it ALWAYS comes out tasting burnt and acrid.

Now, I've come to accept this at starbucks. Perhaps some people like it, but I find it awful... I love a good strong coffee taste, which will inherently carry a little bitterness, but the stuff that comes out of their drip machines is about 3 notches too high. But that's the way starbucks does it, and I'm ok with that.

Let it also be known that I feel smoky, bitter, dark roasted coffee has its place, such as Vietnamese coffees... But I don't want a straight cup of the stuff first thing in the morning.

Now I've tried Peet's coffee (at many a Starbucks-hater's recommendation) at least a dozen times in half a dozen different locations, always the house coffee, black with no room, and I run into the SAME THING. Is there something I'm missing? Is this what coffee is supposed to taste like, and I just don't get it? Because this isn't going to develop like my taste in beer, where I begin to get used to and eventually really enjoy the complex bitterness... I'm always going to hate this coffee. And if this is what I can expect from these types of chains, I'll gladly steer clear from now on.