In April we enjoyed our annual trip to Meadow Creek for the Dealer Day and public open house. It was nice to spend a day with Melvin and the dealers learning about the future of Meadow Creek and how we can better serve our customers. Besides, we got to hang around some smoke and great barbecue for a couple of days.

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In April I helped cook at the Cold Springs Garden Center Open House. Usually, we go more elaborate, but this year we decided to simplify and just grill hot dogs. I cooked them on a Meadow Creek BBQ36G Grill. It’s gas-fired and had the optional lid. I grilled 400 hot dogs on this thing during open house.

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I’ve been wanting to tell you about the annual NBBQA Conference and Trade Show in Mobile, AL last month. I was honored to meet a few of my email subscribers at the conference, but many of you were not able to attend.

I can’t give you a thorough overview of every part of the event, but maybe I can feed you a few nuggets will inspire you to attend next year. Barbecue has quite a few different segments by now: Backyarders, competitions, caterers and restaurants, fund-raisers, and even disaster relief. It has become a serious enterprise and the National Barbecue Association supports every segment of barbecue.

The event offered a lot of different learning and networking opportunities for caterers, competitors, restauranteurs, and more.

Cooking a Whole Pig for the Butcher Class

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Birthdays are always a big deal at our house. My special day three weeks ago was no exception and somehow it ended up involving barbecue. (How did that happen?) Anyway, I gathered the goods, fired my Meadow Creek SQ36 Smoker, and cooked up a storm.

The latest (March) issue of StoryQue contains my story and a bunch of dazzling photos. I shared quite a few tips for beginners, including how I cooked and prepped everything. Here is a video from the magazine and the first part of my story:

As you may have heard, I had a birthday earlier this month, and I just had to cook some good barbecue. I’d like to talk about my day, what I cooked, and briefly how I cooked it. The whole experience was a little extreme but I had a great time.

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I’ve got a great friend down yonder in Texas land. His name is Michael Farmer and he runs a company called KA-Ranch BBQ Company. I got hooked up with him a couple years ago when he offered to send me some rub samples. The package arrived and he had included a handful of Texan style recipes and a tshirt! His products made a great impression on me and I enjoyed the stuff he sent me (except I never could get that XL shirt to shrink enough to really fit me. 🙂

Since I started publishing StoryQue, I asked Michael if he’d like to contribute to the magazine. We had sort of lost track of each other, but he was eager to help with the magazine. In the February issue, we published his Dr Pepper Brisket Recipe and in the upcoming March issue, we’re running the story behind his new “David’s Overall Rib Rub” and step by step instructions on how to smoke ribs for beginners.

Michael was kind enough to send me another package of goodies and it arrived today Priority Mail. Everything was packed very well with styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap. He gave me a pint of Fort Worth Rib and Brisket Sauce, a one pound bag of David’s Overall Rib Rub, a glass shaker each of Wild Willy’s No 1derful Rub and Trail-Dust (these two didn’t have labels yet).

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Since we launched it six months ago, StoryQue magazine has grown into a great success and we’re just getting started! 🙂 The sky is the limit and we look forward to sharing this adventure with our readers.

Dedicated StoryQue Website

I just launched a dedicated website for StoryQue, my monthly barbecue magazine, at www.storyque.com. The website will be a portal for announcements and information about new issues and our team of contributors.

StoryQue in PDF Format

I’m also excited to announce that StoryQue is now available in PDF format. The iPad app is a lot nicer than reading a PDF, but so many of my audience prefer to read stuff on their desktop computer or don’t have an iPad, that I decided to make it more readily available.

Besides, it’s a ton of work to publish a magazine, so why not make it available to everyone who’s begging for it, right?

As soon as you subscribe, my system will email you a link to the latest issue. As long as you remain a paying subscriber, you’ll get a download link for each new issue when it’s released. All you need to read the file is a computer and the free Adobe Reader.

Click here to subscribe to the PDF version.

Latest Issue

The January issue has been out for about 10 days now. It’s got a lot of good stuff to help you start the new year off right. Kell and Ryan talk about taking notes and getting consistent results. There’s also a story by Jeff Allen on the annual NBBQA conference. In all, this issue contains a variety of recipes, tips, and inspirations to help you step up your cooking.

Special Issues

Inside the StoryQue iPad app, you’ll find Ask Jeff, a free download we just added this month. It contains the questions and answers from Jeff Phillip’s Q&A column in the 2012 StoryQue issues. Plus Jeff’s fascinating story of how his love for the outdoors and cooking led him to pursue the art of smoking meat and teaching others how to do the same.

In the coming weeks, we plan to release a couple more really good downloads. Our goal is to provide lots of free content inside the StoryQue app for even those who for whatever reason don’t feel like subscribing or paying for back issues.

If you have an iPad, install the free StoryQue app in your newsstand and get swipin’. 🙂

Have fun,

Lavern Gingerich