I know a few things about myself. I love BBQ and I am very very competitive. This past weekend, I learned how I can be competitive at BBQ. Before I go any further, let me dispel the idea that I cam going to join a competitive eating circuit. I am talking about competition BBQ cooking.

Last Saturday, my Mom and I spent the afternoon in McConnells, SC, learning about the world of competition BBQ. We spent the day with Pit Masters Garland Hudgins and Brian Teigue learning their secrets to spare ribs, chicken, pork shoulder, and brisket. I was there to learn, so the only camera that I brought was my iphone. Here are a few images from throughout the day.

This wasn’t your typical backyard BBQ class. This class was focused on competition BBQ. Maybe you have seen it on the Food Network of Travel Channel, or you could be familiar with Memphis in May or the KCBS? For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, let me explain. Throughout the United States, there is a large group of BBQ enthusiasts who compete in cooking BBQ. Yes, it is as amazing as it sounds. Teams from around the country will compete in weekend long events where they will be judged on their ability to cook ribs, chicken, brisket, pork shoulder, and sometimes a whole hog. Let me warn you though, it isn’t all fun and games. These are serious competitions with thousands of dollars in prize money and bragging rights on the line.

I had heard of these competitions before, seen them on TV, and my friend Jimmy competes in them pretty regularly. What I learned in class was more about the competition and scoring side of it. Every competition will have slightly different rules depending on what BBQ society governs it, but the general concept is the same. At the competition, you cook your proteins and then over an hour period, you have 10 minute windows to turn in what you have cooked to be judged. Your entry is plated inside of a Styrofoam box and must be brought to the judges during that time in period. If you are even a second late, you are disqualified.

On the left you have a rack of ribs. On the right you will see what ribs look like in a box for the judges. In competitions, Garland and Brian will usually cook 6 full racks and only the prettiest, most uniform, and perfect ribs will make it into the box. Being a food photographer, this concept of “styling” food and choosing only the best to present is something that I could totally relate to. There are many times where I will make 2 dozen cookies and only 6 will be in the shot.

To make things more complicated, different competitions will have different presentation rules. In a KCBS competition ( on the left) the shoulder and thighs are allowed to have greenery with their presentation. This green parsley helps cover the white areas of the box and can hold in heat. On the right, is a South Carolina Barbecue Association (SCBA) presentation. In these competitions, only the meat is allowed to be in the box. While seeing one box at a time may not seem too difficult, imagine having to have four of these done in a one hour period, and each dropped off exactly on time. You may think you can work ahead, but you can only do so much work in advance.  As soon as the meat is cut, it begins drying out, cooling off,  and “dying” as it is referred to.  Preparing these boxes  is a fine line to walk between having enough time to create you box and giving the judges the best meat possible.

After spending a day learning more about this world of competitive BBQ, I must say that I am hooked. No, I will not be starting my own team tomorrow. I have a lot to learn before I could do that. Instead, I am definitely going to travel to a competition this spring and see what it is like. If my schedule works out, I am also going to take the class and become an official SCBA judge.Those are all adventures for another day.

If you are interested in learning more about competitive BBQ, then here is information on the class I took.

With Valentine’s Day less than a week away, you may be wondering what to get for your Valentine? Well, if your Valentine has an obsession healthy adoration for bacon, then I have the perfect gift.

Everyone knows that Valentine’s Day and chocolate go hand in hand. Sure you could get your sweetie a large red box filled with chocolates. They then could go through the Russian Roulette of guessing which is the candy with the flavor they detest inside. Or, you could skip all  that and give them both chocolate and something they would love! For the Valentine who LOVES Bacon, slathering strips of bacon with rich and decadent chocolate will be the best Valentine’s gift they have ever received.

I could go on and on about how amazing the combination of chocolate and bacon is, but I will spare you. If you are a firm believer in the concept that bacon makes everything better, it shouldn’t surprise you that chocolate is actually improved when added to bacon. Here is how you can make chocolate covered bacon.

Chocolate Covered Bacon

Ingredients

1 pound of your favorite bacon

8 oz melted chocolate (I used semi sweet chocolate chips, but you could use dark chocolate if you prefer ,can be melted in microwave or over a double boiler)

1/4 cup toffee bits

Lay bacon strips out in a single layer on foil lined rimmed baking sheets. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 385F. Time will vary depending on thickness of bacon. Remove from pan and let cool on a layer of paper towels or brown paper bags. Once cooled, break strips in half. Holding a halved strip in one hand, dip the bacon in the melted chocolate making sure to cover the area below your fingers completely. Using a spoon, scrape the excess chocolate back into the remainder of the melted chocolate. Repeat the process until all the bacon has been covered. Place chocolate covered bacon on parchment paper, sprinkle with toffee bits and let dry.

If your Valentine is a Bacon lover,  they will love you even more after receiving chocolate covered bacon for Valentine’s Day.

Yesterday was the Super Bowl. A time when everyone in the USA talks about football. Whether they are die hard fans or just there for the commercials, Super Bowl Sunday has become a holiday of sorts. As all holidays should, Super Bowl Sunday revolves around food.

Over the last 2 seasons of tailgating, I have noticed that football fans love food. So, for the Super Bowl, it comes as no surprise that what you will eat on gameday is a big deal. What makes the Super Bowl different from most football games is that all the food and pregame action takes place in your or a friends home. This means that you have your kitchen, running water, and oven all at your disposal. This might not sound like a big deal, but if you are an avid tailgater, having these conveniences available allows you to cook anything! So for this Super Bowl Sunday, I decided to take advantage of watching the game at home and dine on foods that aren’t ideal for tailgating.

On Sunday, I went over to my Mom’s house where she was making a wide assortment of foods. First up was  “Groasted” chicken with a red pepper, vinegar, and peach BBQ glaze. You may be wondering what groasted is. Well it is a word I made up. The chicken was first grilled outside to give it nice grill marks and some char flavor. After a few minutes on the grill it was roasted in the oven and basted with the BBQ sauce until completely done. Part grilling, part roasting= Groasting.

Whether you are tailgating or watching football at home or a bar, there is just something about chicken wings and football. They just taste better when football is involved. My mom was cooking the pieces of a few whole chickens, so there were a few wings involved.

At tailgates, it is a common practice to see fans theme their gameday menu around what teams are playing. I decided to partake in this practice and theme part of the gameday menu for each team. For the New York Giants, a New York Strip Steak.

Have you ever tried to cut something  while holding a plate and standing up? If you have, then you are aware of why a steak isn’t ideal for tailgating. With my Super Bowl meal taking place at home, I had the luxury of a steak knife and a table to sit at while eating. It doesn’t matter whether you are eating at a tailgate or grilling at home, you always want to let your steak rest after cooking.

For the New England Patriots, I made a Boston Cream Pie.

While this dessert of  sponge cake with pastry cream and covered with a chocolate ganache is delicious, it isn’t ideal for tailgating. The cake needs to be kept cold and will slide around if moved too much. I did attempt a gif for this dessert, but it just didn’t turn out the way I liked. I am still perfecting food gifs, but hope to share with you how I make them soon!

For dessert, my mom made a blue and blackberry cobbler.

With great food and a great football game ( or commercials) this past Super Bowl Sunday was everything I cold have hoped it to be. The only problem is that football is now over. It has been a an amazing last 5 months, and I am counting down the days until labor day weekend when it will begin again!

While the games are now over, my life will still revolve around football for the next few months. Soon, I will be able to let you know more about a project I am currently working on.

In a former life, this glass bottle did once hold a chocolaty and refreshing yoo-hoo. Now it has been re purposed for something far better (yes better than chocolate). Nope, those aren’t green beans. This bottle of filled with chilli peppers and inside is Hot Pepper Vinegar.

The Monday after Food Blog South, I headed with my agent, Mac, down to Mobile, AL, for a press conference he had with one of his other clients.  After the press conference we drove from Mobile back home to Charlotte. Like every road trip, you have top stop for gas. If you are like me and spend A LOT  of time in the car, you grow fond of stopping. I blame all the hours driving to college towns for tailgates, but I have developed a fondness for certain Truck Stops. Truck Stops are awesome! They are almost always open, have plenty of drinks and candy to eat while you drive, and can be a nice break from the road. I have developed my favorites on I-85 and I-77, but had never been on this part of I-65 before. Whether it was fate or coincidence, I will never know, but I couldn’t have been happier with Mac’s decision to stop and get gas in Greenville, AL. There we stopped at the coolest gas station I have ever been to. The Smokehouse. Part BBQ restaurant, part general store, and of course a place to get gas, I could have spent hours looking at all the treasures this place had inside. In the back of the store, past the wall of hanging autographed portraits of former Auburn and Alabama coaches, was a room lined with rows of canned goods. There was everything from home made hot sauce to pickled corn and carrots. After picking up a jar of Sweet Potato Butter, I came across an interesting array of vinegars. There were a dozen or so jars that in former lives had all contained something else. Now they contained a wide variety of hot pepper vinegar. If you have never had hot pepper vinegar, you are missing out. It is the perfect addition to anything that you need to add a little tang and spice. Most commonly seen with BBQ, it is also perfect for greens of all varieties, cornbread, and even fried chicken. The hotness and flavor will very depending on the bottle’s contents, so it is easy to make one that fits your taste buds.

Making the vinegar is quite easy. All you need are clean and sanitized glass containers, spices, chili peppers, and white distilled vinegar.

I don’t have an official recipe for you yet, more of guidelines of how you can experiment. You will need

- Clean glass containers with tops. I re purposed a soy sauce bottle, maple syrup bottle, and an empty bottle I had sitting around

- an assortment of chili peppers. Use whatever you like, for example Serranos, jalapenos or habaneros ( if you like it very hot)

- whole garlic cloves

- whole peppercorns

- white vinegar heated to just under boiling

How many peppers you will need and the amount of vinegar you be able to make depends on the size of your container. For my 3 containers, I used about 2 cups. To make your jars, add a teaspoon of peppercorns and a whole peeled garlic clove. Then add the combination of peppers you like. Cut the tops off of the peppers and stuff the jar full of them. If your jar’s opening is too small, you may have to cut the peppers into strips. Just remember, the more you cut the peppers, the more surface area you create for the vinegar to absorb the flavor. If you like your vinegar really hot, then include the pepper seeds. Otherwise cut the seeds out before putting the pepper in the jar.

Once your peppers and seasonings are in, its time to add the vinegar that has been brought to just under a boil. Using a funnel, carefully pour the vinegar into  the bottle. Pour slowly so the contents don’t overflow. Stop pouring just before the top. You want to leave a little bit of head space.

Now your vinegar is ready! Over the next couple days/weeks, the flavor will intensify. You can store it in your pantry or in the refrigerator. Here are the 3 that I made.

In a few weeks, I will tell you which I like best and show you some uses for the vinegar. Enjoy!

If you like eating great food, talking about food, meeting other people who like talking about food, taking pictures of the great food you are eating, oh and of course eating more food, then a food blogging conference is for you. If you like all of these activities and love Southern Food the Foodblog South is the conference for you.

Last year, was my first trip to Foodblog South. It was also my first experience at a food blogging conference as well as the inaugural Foodblog South. In year 1, I was slightly overwhelmed with the amount of food, and content learned while at a food conference. I also did a poor job in bringing enough cards with me.

This year I was more prepared.  I made sure that I had enough business cards, ate less, and worked out more to prepare for the food filled weekend.

In year 2 Foodblog South was even better than year 1. With a larger venue, more attendees, more food, and more speakers sharing an even wider range of topics, Jason and his team completely out did themselves. What they put together was a weekend that was absolutely amazing!

The only down side of the conference was that they didn’t have a multiplier machine where you could be in two places at once. I would have loved to be able to see every presentation, but I had to choose. Throughout the day, I learned about food trends, adding video to your blog, optimizing your blog layout and design, recipe writing, making money through your blog, and how to figure out what your brand is. At the end, there was an inspiring keynote delivered by Kat Kinsman of CNN Eatocracy.  I am still digesting all the information that I learned over the weekend. I would like to think all the speakers for sharing your knowledge! I really appreciate it.

I am sorry that I don’t have more food pictures to share with you, but the food didn’t last long enough for me to take a picture (also my camera made it but the memory cards were left on my desk, so that is why there are only instagrams in this post). With this being a southern food conference, there was no shortage of great food. High Road Craft Ice Cream out of Atlanta had several of their best flavors to try.

Goo Goo Clusters from Nashville were there. Jim and Nick’s not only hosted a great dinner for us on Friday night to kick off the conference,

but at the conference they were there with dozens of cheese biscuits for you to try.

After the conference, there was a a beer and cheese tasting after party at Good People Brewery.

I realize that me giving you a brief recap of what I saw and ate at Foodblog South is by no means the same as experiencing the event for yourself. I do highly recommend that you make the trip in Birmingham in 2013.I enjoyed all of the food and great presentations, but the chance to connect with bloggers from all over is what I enjoyed the most!

With the blogging/twitter/facebook social media world that we live in, it is easy for a blogger to form friendships with other bloggers that they have never met. My favorite part of the entire conference was talking and meeting other bloggers! It is amazing how much more you can get to know about a person when you aren’t speaking in 140 character intervals! Thanks again Foodblog South! I can’t wait until next year.

This weekend, I will be heading  down to Birmingham, AL, for Food Blog South. Here is a recap from  last year’s inaugural  Food Blog South With it being a new year and heading to a Food Blogging Conference, I decided it was finally time to order new Moo business cards.

On the left is my business card that I have had for probably 2 and a half years. When I started my photography business, it was before Taylor Takes a Taste was born, so about a year and a half ago I ordered Taylor Takes a Taste business cards. Handing out two cards at the same time to people is somewhat cumbersome, so with it being a new year, it was time for a new card.

I can’t remember who printed my original business cards, but the Taylor Takes a Taste cards were from Vista Print. Vista Print did a great job, but for my new cards I was looking for something a little more unique. In past encounters and talking with other photographers, the brand Moo kept coming up. With such rave reviews from others, it was time to take the Moo plunge.

I tweeted about my decision to try moo cards a few weeks ago and was told by others that I wouldn’t be disappointed. I definitely wasn’t. My Moo cards arrived in this nice hard carrying case. They come 50 to a case, and with ordering 100 to start off with, I now have two of these containers. One I keep in my car and the other stays in my camera bag. Between the two, I have my cards with me at all times. With Moo, you get great printing, a nice thick card stock, and the best part…….

the ability to have different designs on the back! First, here is what the front looks like. On the back, I can upload up to 50 different background images !

I only uploaded  8 different ones to start, but I love how they turned out! As a photographer, I love having the ability to instantly show someone what I do when I meet them. With this many options, I let people pick their favorite! I designed both the front and back of the cards myself, but it you need design help, Moo has templates to get you started. I am very happy with the results and would definitely recommend them to any one in a creative field looking for new business cards!

If you are in Birmingham this weekend for Food Blog South love to meet you! I will have my cards on hand,so fee free to pick your favorite food.

Last week was the two year anniversary of Taylor Takes a Taste. Its a little late, but here is a cupcake to celebrate! Notice anything different about the cupcake?

No, you are not seeing things. The flame on the cupcake is moving! What you see above you is something called a GIF. Gif stands for Graphics Interchange Format. While this type of file has been around since the 1980′s, I recently came across this amazing work by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg called Cinemagraphs,  I was blown away at how they have pushed the limits of what GIFS can do and the creativity that they have used them in.

Until coming across Jamie and Kevin’s work, the most common uses I have seen for GIFs have been of sports hilights and memes traveling through reddit or on twitter. What Jamie and Kevin have done has inspired me to try some of my own! Now there are some limitations to what Gifs are capable of. I am looking at them more as parameters as opposed to limitations. The only real limitation is your creativity and ability to problem solve.

Lets look at a normal jpg that I would shoot of a cupcake

While this is a pretty shot, it could be more interesting. We all know that when a flame is lit on top of a candle it flickers around and doesn’t stay till. By turning the image into a GIF, I am able to show that movement. Here is a look at the GIF again.

Notice how the moving of the flickering candle adds movement and interest to the image. The animation is running on a loop, so it will continue to flicker back and forth without stopping. The possibilities of  this are truly endless! It is a great way to show movement with food that usually wouldn’t be there. Instead of having a motion frozen with a shutter speed, you can show that movement.

There are some limitations however.

1. to keep the filesize small and manageable for web viewing, the animation can’t be too long.

2. This is the biggest draw back. GIFs color memory can only support 256 colors. Notice how the colors between the normal jpg and the GIF are different. The GIF looks flatter and a little washed out. When making a GIFF, you need to keep in mind what color range you will have in the image.

With it being a new year, it is a great time to try new things! I have a lot more testing and playing around before I give you a guide of how to make your own GIF, but there will be one in the future.

Have you ever made a GIF before?

2 years ago today, I started Taylor Takes a Taste! Wow the last 2 years have flown by! Here is a recap from year one, and now for a recap of year 2.

Year 1 was amazing, I thought it wasn’t possible, but year 2 was even better! Here are some of my favorite posts from the last 12 months.

January

In January, this double chocolate pie , experiments with beer bread, and my first Food Blog Conference!

In February, I celebrated a lot of National Food Days, gave my first food photography tutorial, and was ready for spring!

In March, I made funnel cakes, deep fried cookie dough, and had a little March Madness tournament of my own.

In April, I continued to celebrate National Food Days, went to a soft shell crab festival and shot and shot a book promo !

In May, I went Strawberry picking with the Charlotte Food Bloggers, had a crawfish boil, and checked out the Charlotte Food Truck scene.

June brought a month filled with cream pies, food photography tutorials, and National Food Day celebrations!

In July, I celebrated the 4th, taught my first food photography class, and did more food photography tutorials!

In August, I counted down towards tailgating season and celebrated a few more national food days.

September, October, November, and December, brought with it 15 weeks of traveling, tailgating, and 2 food photography workshops.

For this season’s tailgating tour, I moved the tailgating posts to a new site Taylor Tailgates, so if you haven’t seen them all please check it out. In the fall, I traveled to another 15 games, putting my total at 29 tailgates in the last two seasons.What I am doing with all this tailgating content is something that I can’t quite reveal yet. Hopefully in the next week, I will be able to tell you about a project that I spent all of 2011 working on and will spend a good part of 2012 working on as well.

This year has been amazing! I have eaten a lot, traveled a lot, and taken thousands of great pictures. In the Spring of 2011, Julie and I started the Charlotte Food Bloggers group. We are working on redoing our website now, and have a whole lot planned for 2012! If you live in Charlotte and have a food blog, of are interested in recipe writing, food photography, WordPress, and talking about/eating great food we would love to have you join us! We have a whole lot of great things planned for 2012, so I will be sure to share with you what we are up to.

So what should you expect in 2012? Right now, I am lining up several food photography workshops that will take place late spring/early summer, if you want me to come to your city send me an email! I would love to see if we can work something out.

At the end of this month, I will be going to Food Blog South in Birmingham, AL. I had a blast last year, so I am very excited to see old friends and meet new ones! Let me know if you will be there, I would love to meet you!

As far as other posts you will see,  I have a few more food photography tutorials, I will be finishing the largest project I have ever undertaken ( will be revealed soon), and will encounter a whole lot of other things that I haven’t even imagined yet!

2011 was an even better year than 2010! I can’t wait to see what 2012 holds!

Taylor Takes a Taste is turning 2 next week! With that, I am trying to post a few things from 2011 that I haven’t gotten to yet. This restaurant stop is from my October tailgating trip to Gainesville, FL. Here is what I found at Satchel’s Pizza.

In October, I made my first trip to Gainesville, FL. I was there to check out the Florida Gator’s tailgating scene as they hosted the Alabama Crimson Tide. You can read more about what I found while tailgating here. Friday evening before the game, I took decided to check out a place I had heard an awful lot about. I have several friends that are UF Alums and upon hearing that I was making a trip to Gainesville, they insisted that I make a stop at Satchel’s. Let’s just say, I have some pretty smart friends.

The outside of the restaurant is an eclectic mix of windows, screens, colors, and mis matching chairs. The coolest part was the VW van turned table. Yes you can eat in it! From first glance I could tell Satchel’s was unique, then I received the menu.

You can tell a whole lot about a restaurant by what they have on their menu. Any menu that has both lightning bolts and the American flag on it is an automatic winner in my book. Looking beyond the obvious awesome color scheme, I noticed two great things. 1. They only accept cash. (some of the best meals I have ever eaten are at places that only take cash) and 2 They tell you that you may have to wait up to 50 minutes for your food. Some would be turned off by that , but I take it as a good thing. I will gladly wait for great food.

I decided to have the small (yes that is a small) Satch Salad and a Mama Slice of pizza.

The Satch Salad is a bowl filled to the brim with red and green leaf lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, apples, red onion, secret house vinaigrette, romano cheese, diced tomatoes, and then sprinkled with almonds, sunflower seeds, and walnuts. Prior to the trip, I had heard that after eating the salad you would be tempted to just order some dressing to drink. That rumor is now confirmed.

The Mama Pizza is a slice or a whole pie with 4 toppings of your choosing. After a long deliberation, I decided to have spicy sausage, spinach, sun dried tomato, and roasted red pepper. All that is loaded onto a slice with cheese and a delicious tomato sauce. With this mountain of toppings, a fork was needed to finish it all.

After eating I took a look at Lightnin’ Salvage Enterprises. This store/junk museum/ music venue is just as eclectic as Satchels. With great food and plenty to look at, Satchel’s Pizza is definitely worth the trip. Next time that I am in Gainesville, I will definitely be returning.

Have a great weekend and Monday, I will have a Taylor Takes a Taste 2nd Birthday and 2011 Year in review.

- Taylor

For those of you who don’t know, I AM A HUGE COLLEGE FOOTBALL FAN! Unfortunately, on Monday, I suffered another heart wrenching loss.

Last New Year’s Day, I spent the day cooking food and watching my Wisconsin Badgers lose by 2 points to TCU.

This year, my Badgers were once again Big Ten Champs and made the trip again to Pasadena. On the slate were the Oregon Ducks. While this game was played on January 2nd, I spent the day doing the same thing I did last season.

On the menu for this game were pimento cheese brats, Candied Bacon Muffins, Pineapple Teriyaki Pork Tenderloin and Toasted Cheddar and herb beer bread. Sorry no recipes in this post, these are for a special project that I will hopefully be able to share with you soon!

Despite the loss, I have a lot to  be thankful for. While most blogs do a year end review (mine will happen on Taylor Takes a Taste’s 2nd Birthday which is 1/16/12) I thought I would share with you a summary of my 2nd tailgating tour! This year, I posted all my tailgating adventures on Taylor Tailgates, so if you missed them here is a recap. I went to 15 different games this season all over the South (and back to Madison). Here is a quick visual recap of what I saw.

9/3 Atlanta for Georgia vs Boise St.

9/10 Oregon St. at Wisconsin

9/17 Auburn at Clemson

9/24 LSU at West Virginia

10/1 Alabama at Florida

10/8 Central Michigan at N.C State

10/15 Hampden-Sydney at Emory & Henry

10/22 Samford at Appalachian State

10/29 Miss St. at Kentucky

11/12 Auburn at UGA

11/19 UCF at ECU

11/26 Clemson at USC

12/3 App State Playoff and ACC Championship Game

12/10 SWAC Championship Game

Phew…. What a fall. Even though my Badgers weren’t able to pull out a win I would still call it a successful football season.

If you are interested in knowing more about what I saw while tailgating this fall, check out Taylor Tailgates

By the way, I didn’t go to Pasadena this year. The picture at the top was from a 2010 Cross Country Trip from Wisconsin to California