Butchering A Pig, a video tutorial from legourmet.tv

For those of you interested in breaking down a side of pork, I recently ran across this great video tutorial. If you can handle a nice Canadian accent, this guy does a great job of covering everything from whole side to primals, all the way down to country ribs and bone-in chops! Be ready for a commitment if you watch the whole series of videos. Some are under 2 minutes, some over 5, but there are 12 videos in all! Well worth the time.

If you want to see a full screen version, click on the youtube logo. From there you can also find 9 more videos in the series. For all 12, go to Le Gourmet. Enjoy!

Great Find: Bar-B-Que: Luella's Asheville, NC

(a continuation from my Asheville post)

Luella's Bar-B-Que came up in one of the online articles I found during an initial search for good eats in Asheville. It caught my attention, not because of its locally sourced FtT concept (Product of Buncombe Co.), but because they use the same pig drawing in their logo that I use for the LotH tweets. So after reading through the menu it instantly made it on the list. But it was the only BBQ on the must-see list. The bellman at the Inn hadn't even heard of it when we asked. Should we worry? Naw.

Great Find: Cities: Bar-B-Que & Beer in Asheville, NC

So when the news finally settled in that injuries sustained in my recent motorcycle accident (read more here) would prevent me from just about any flight, let alone a three-legged one from Atlanta to Chicago to Madrid to Barcelona, a second plan for a honeymoon, a back-up if you will, had to be made. Rebecca thought that plan should include a whole lot of nothing in case I was still somewhat immobile. And what does her mind translate that meaning? Sitting around on the veranda reading while sipping cocktails. And who am I to argue with that? As a child she had visited Asheville, NC to see the Biltmore Estate and found online that the Inn on Biltmore Estate had a large veranda with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had seen History Channel shows on the place and it intrigued me quite a bit, so why not? I was more interested though by the fact that I had heard of some great BBQ and eating down in Asheville. The BBQ part was almost a given in the Carolinas, but my uncle had recently sent me an article about the ten most surprising food cities as rated by a magazine, that included his beloved Pueblo, CO. Also on the the list was Wichita, KS (Rebecca's one-time home) and Asheville, NC, touted as a leader in the farm-to-table movement and also a city big on beer (recently named BeerCity USA). So sign me up!

Great Find: GastroBrewery: Revolution Brewing Chicago

Every once in a while, when out running errands, I'll remember that there are a lot of places in Chicago that I have been wanting to check out. And on rare occasion, I might actually be in the area of one of those places when I think about it. This was the case a couple weeks before my motorcycle accident when I found myself near the Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago. I wasn't real sure what the menu was like, but regardless, I was in the mood for a good mid-day beer on my Sunday (Monday). So I made a slight detour to the fairly recently opened and well received Revolution Brewing Company.

The menu turned out to be a decent mixture of fun pub-grub and some more traditional things like burgers and sandwiches. A couple entrees and pizzas round this out. But two things grabbed my attention rather quickly and nothing else swayed me away from them. I love a good beer-cheese soup. Rebecca and I have spent lots of time trying to find one, any, in Chicago and have never suceeded. So to see one with a home-made brew and local cheese, it took NO effort on my bartendresses part to get things rolling. And let me tell you, it is great. I am not a fan of sour cream or lots of thyme, but my first bite (slurp) led to me eventually wanting to lick the bowl clean!