THE LOONY BEAN

Rodeo, California is a small town on the outskirts of a huge Bay Area metropolis. Sometimes our small town gets overlooked in progress. It still has a small town feel with its quirks and sometimes backwardness. We do have the addition of a new coffee shop. Maybe I should say coffee kiosk on a trailer. Regardless, Loony Bean is the latest and brightest addition to our small town. It is open on the weekends and is located at our marina by the bay. The view is very scenic at high tide. It is also located in the parking lot of our local winery. Yes, Rodeo does have a winery. We wish the best of success for Loony Bean.

 

POOR MAN'S FILET

 

Last night we had an interesting cut of beef. The proper name is ‘Tares Major’. It is a cut from the Chuck section right below the front leg. It was just as tender as a filet with a whole lot of beef flavor and at a fraction of the cost of the filet. This particular cut was processed by Creekstone Farms and is from a Black Angus breed. We found this at Lakewood Meats in Lodi California. If we come across this cut again we will definitely purchase.

As you can see this cut of beef is very lean and needed minimal trimming. We salt and peppered and cooked over a very hot grill. We rotated the cut every 2 minutes until temperature hit 120. It was rested for a very long 10 minutes. Tender and flavorful made this a winning dinner. Oh Yeah.

BACKYARD ON THE GRAPE 2022

 

This Saturday, "Fire It Up Events" held Backyard On The Grape in Lodi California. This is a tune-up bbq competition. Competitors cook their meats as any other contests. The difference is, instead of blind judging the entries are judged in an open forum by certified judges. The cook gets instant feed back about their bbq meat contest submissions. We would like to share a couple of images with you.

This type of contest is valuable for the cook. The team hears first hand from his judges what they are thinking giving their particular score. It also can be a tool for the judge to verbalize his reasoning for his particular score. It was a beautiful day for a bbq contest. It was great to get the wheels turning for hopefully a full bbq season. 

 

QUICOS

This Mad Meat Genius has always been a fan of corn nuts. I love the salty, crunchy and sometimes a little oily snack of fried corn kernels. Corn nuts are made from dried corn soaked in water to rehydrate and deep fried and salted. They are so addicting. I found this product called Crunchy Quicos. They are a product imported from Spain. A quick google search of the difference between quicos and corn nuts revealed they are lighter and sometimes bigger than the American counterpart; corn nuts. A taste of these quicos proved this to be true. They may have a lighter hand on the salt too. Regardless of the difference these 'corn nuts' from Spain are very tasty.