August 04 2007

Well gang, The kick-off party for this year’s benefit will be held at Rudyard’s British Pub on the Sunday after Labor Day, and we sure hope that you can make it.
The editors of our club cookbook have decided to include several of our old favorite stories that have to do with cooking.
The following is one of them.
`One of our oldest members is Charlie Coleman, and of course everybody calls him "Charcole"
It seems that "Charcole" invited some friends over to his place and had a shooting competition set up, and a fresh pork ham on the grill that was to be finished with a pineapple, and mango bourbon glaze.
One of the ladies was making a punch for the fairer sex, and had dumped a bottle of Ever Clear into the punch bowl to get it started.
The shooting competition was coming along just fine with a closely matced field of competitors, when someone mentioned that the barbecue pit was really putting out a lot of smoke.
"Charcole" scratched his head, walked over to the pit, and lifted the hood.
Afterward it was figured out that "Charcole" had put the huge ham on the grill while the coals were much too hot. Scored side up of course. As long as the lid to the grill was closed, all the fat just hit the coals and smoked a lot.
But when "Charcole" lifted the lid, thereby allowing fresh air and oxygen inside, the flames shot about seven feet in the air or so.
Not to be one caught off guard, "Charcole" looked keenly around, and grabbed what looked for all the world to be a big bowl of water.
With the grace and verve of a ballet dancer, he wheeled, grabbed the punch bowl of Ever Clear, and heroically poured the high octane fluid onto the doomed ham in one fell "foomp"!
The results were predictable. The look of cool aplomb was no longer on "Charcole’s" face.
In fact, his eyes were as big as saucers, and if he had still owned a pair of eyebrows they would have been up in his hairline somewhere.
After putting out the fire with the kitchen fire extinguisher, his wife called to have some barbecue delivered from a local hickory pit, or some such place.
"Charcole" went around telling everyone that the instructions were to cook the ham at 450 degrees for the first 45 minutes or so, in order to make the cracklings nice and crispy. But that ,of course, would have been for a conventional oven.
He also spent the rest of the afternoon trying to convince everybody that if you put more bourbon into the glaze, and poured it on the rocks, it made a really exotic and festive party drink.
Oh, sure.

Till next week
Helga Biermeister
Secretary