Outdoor Thanksgiving Cooking Contest - Winner Chosen!

DunkEm

DunkEm

Joined
Dec 9, 2013
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Outdoor Thanksgiving Cooking Contest

Here’s the deal – a post in the Becker subforum plus cooler weather have got me thinking about doing a bit of outdoor cooking.

The contest is this: Between now and Nov 15 at midnight (central), go outside and cook your approximation of a Thanksgiving Dinner. It can be simple or elaborate, your choice – but it must be cooked over wood. I don’t care if you gather it from your yard, buy some at the store or cook out in the forest. Note: NO PROPANE or CHARCOAL or ESBITS or other non wood based fire. None. You can eat your food raw if you want, but if you use fire, it has to be wood based. (Yes you can use something to help you start it.) You can use a stove the uses wood or do it over the open coals, just make sure its wood.

Cook a whole turkey. Cook a turkey sandwich. Cook some cranberry sauce in a can. Whatever. Just have fun. It's almost Thanksgiving.

It’s going to be a random number generated win, but you MUST POST PICS of the fire, the food and a KA-BAR manufactured knife used in the process. No pics, no win.

The prize: a set of KA-BAR playing cards to get you through the upcoming holidays. Like your in-laws? You'll have something to do with them. Don't like your in-laws? Solitaire is your friend.

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One post per person. Any chatting you've got to do, do it in your entry post or move over to the chat thread otherwise you'll muck up the random number selection.
 
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Enter my own contest?

Why not. No one else is.

It's been raining. It's breezy. I don't have the cooking skills of LostViking or my wife.

So, here's my wood fire cooked approximation of a Thanksgiving Dinner. Yes, my children are blessed to have their mother in their life. She has a lot better skills. And an oven.

The ingredients. Turkey dogs and turkey chili. I'm tellin' ya' kids, it's Thanksgiving. There's even cranberry sauce.



Gotta get the fire pit cleaned out for it's first use of the year.



That giant crack tells me I'm getting close to needing a new fire bowl.



But for now, some tin-foil will do. After all, it's just going to be the back-up/warming fire.



A few branches that were dryish on the porch and wood from the store. Did I mention it's been raining?



Emberlit up and going.


The holiday boudin is first - because it's boudin and people are hungry. (And yes we really do eat boudin on holidays.)



Put the boudin off by the warming fire.



Warming up the green beans. There was a theory that putting it on that little cast iron skillet would keep the bottom beans from burning.



Tried moving the beans. Failed in my first try. Beans were spilled.



Finally got the fire going enough to spread it a bit and put the grill on it. Beans and boudin successfully moved.



Ready for the main course.



Put the chili in.



There's less chili in that can than I thought.



Finally got it heated up and back inside.



Viola!



Dessert?








This Thanksgiving I'll be thankful that we'll have a real turkey.
 
Oh, goodness that made me laugh like hell. Not an entry - even though popcorn may very well have been on the first Thanksgiving menu - but I made two batches of popcorn over the fire Saturday night. The first batch somehow caught fire inside the popper while I was trying to take pictures and post them on BF, and I didn't get any pictures of the "maize flambee" because I was trying to make sure I didn't set anything else on fire - and even in my somewhat beer addled brain it occurred to me that perhaps I should focus on putting out the burning popcorn. Finally got it dumped out and, undaunted, poured in some more oil and corn to start another batch, vowing to pay attention this time and NOT take pictures until my chickens were hatched. Looked good, but it was a little overdone and had picked up a little (ok, more than a little) of the char-corn flavor. I sprinkled some Jane's Mix-Up on here and ate it anyway.

Was too distracted by my 21:

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The final batch. You don't have to look too hard to see that I scorched this one a bit, too. The Native Americans must have been very skilled cooks over open flames:

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Now I'm almost inspired to try and come up with an actual entry.....but it would be tragic if I set a lobster (traditional New England Thanksgiving meal) on fire.....
 
Happy Thanksgiving 'Muhrica! How's this for some trivia. Norfolk Island off the east coast of Australia (it's an Australian territory) actually celebrates Thanksgiving! Why? I have no bloody idea. But they do. Yeah! They celebrate it in the last Wed. in November. Anyway, I made some din dins on the little brazier tonight. Decided to go for traditional Latvian cuisine (my wife is Latvian).

These things are called Sharsliks. Lamb, mushrooms, onion and red & green capsicums (peppers as you lot know em) plus the coup d'etat, the red wine and peppercorn marinade. We made these about 7hrs before we cooked them so they were plenty flavored.



I cooked the majority of them on my cast iron griddle but the mother-in-law insisted I cook hers over the open flames.
"More colour" she says.
"Black is technically a tone Viv" I stated factually.
"Shut up smart arse and char my damn sharsliks" the orders were barked back at me.
I ended up doing mine on the flames as well. Yum.




A touch of KABAR content..

I hadn't cooked outside for quite some time and was wondering why I hadn't. The clouds of bloody mozzies. That's why. Well, after the blood transfusion to replace all the claret that was stolen from me and the grafts to replace the skin on my legs that I'd clawed off I sat down and enjoyed my delicious Latvian meal with my delicious Latvian wife.

Thanks for the chance and the cool GAW Dunk. I'm really surprised to not see more entries..
 
Finally got a little outdoor cooking going.

First, to cook on wood, you gotta have a small pile of wood.
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Next, you put 2 slices of bread in a hotdog griller
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Toast 1 side of each piece. Only takes a minute of so to toast when you have a hot enough bed of coals.
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Build your sandwich – in this case, 3 slices of strong cheddar cheese, with sweet onions and pickled jalapeno slices between the cheese slices.
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Next step is to toast the bread again and melt the cheese. You have to toast a little slower this time around so that the cheese has an opportunity to melt, so all the pieces of onion and jalapeno are glued together so they don’t fall out.
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Lunch!!!!
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All right, by my count, we have two legit entries. BKNC & Zzy. GSOM stated his wasn't an entry, and I went ahead and ordered myself a set of cards. ;)

I'll do the contest winner determination tonight when I get home.
 
Ok, only two of you entered, so rather than going to the effort of finding a random number generator/selector and figuring out how to use it, I decided to go old school - the long honored coin toss.

So as to remove any later accusations of changing who is heads and who is tails to generate the winner I wanted, I labeled this fine 2011 US quarter, the Alaska imprint, with initials for the two contestants.

zzyzzogeton, you got heads.

BKNC, you got tails. Land down under and all that. Plus, Alaska and Australia both begin with A. And now that I think of it, assigning Zzy to a coin honoring a state beginning with an A seems almost wrong.



Preparing for the toss...













Can you feel the tension rising?














And the winner is...

















Well, heck, I guess I should have seen that coming.

Send me an address boys. Looks like you both win.


Thanks for playing all.


P.S. Springy, hopefully you'll get yours by Spring. My RiverStore Prime account's two day shipping doesn't extend all the way to Australia.
 
Haha, awesome. Congrats guys.
 
WOOOOOO! We win Zzyzz! We're the best contestants in the entire world! Thanks heaps Dunk, you're a gentleman and a scholar. I thought this contest was really cool man. And the selection process? Cracking me dude! That was brilliant! KABAR cards for me! And Zzyzz! Yeah baby! PM sent..

Thanks again brother..
 
Woo Hoo... Heads I win, Tails you... Win too?? :D

We're weiners, BK.

PM sent, DunkEm. Thank you for running the contest and being so gracious to award two such outstanding individuals like BK and myself with a deck of Kabar Kards.
 
Good thing I didn't have a legit entry. Three-sided coin?
Congratz, er......gentleman. Pretty cool contest, Dunk. Sorry you didn't get more participation. Also sorry I couldn't muster up anything more exciting than burnt popcorn. Next time.....
 
Hope you both got your cards. Shipping shows they were delivered even to the land down under. If they didn't make it, let me know and I'll see what I can find out.
 
Dunk,

I apologize. I thought I had posted that the cards had arrived. Thank you for them. The deck is currently sitting on the den coffee table where I see it everyday. Don't know if I'll get any card games going over tbe Christmas period. My family will be blowing in and out this year like I have revolving doors. One of the hazards of nieces and nephews growing up and getting hitched.

Have a Merry Christmas.
 
Yes my friend, they did get here. I too am sorry I didn't mention it. I haven't even gotten them myself but they are at my oldies place awaiting me to get them. Mum won't post them up as she wants to see my wife and I so she's holding them ransom! I've been so busy moving house over the holidays that I completely forgot to let you know they made it and to say thanks. I do appreciate it Dunk. Really cool prize! I can't wait to get those babies out and play some Texas Hold Em with the fellas!
 
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