Smoke on the Lake - with real smoke

On Saturday, May 7th, we joined a fellow entrepreneur and friend Evan, from Hedgehog Lacrosse,for our first real-live barbecue contest.  Smoke on the Lake is a fundraiser for the Rotary club of North Cobb County, GA.  This event gave us a chance to test out some changes in our hinge design.  Cooking Friday night and five hours on Saturday gave us lots of time to test.  We also got to some Pizza R&D. Hedgehog Lacrosse has a snazzy tent and trailer that we enjoyed over the 2 day event.

We setup at this beautiful setting on Lake Allatoona near Acworth, GA on Friday night.  Not knowing what to expect we only brought 10 pizza doughs along for the night.  The crowd finished those off in no time.  We enjoyed Evan's fantastic wings, a concert and fireworks to end the night.

Early Saturday morning we put the Pizza-Porta to work roasting peppers while getting up to temperature.

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After the pizzas starting rolling out, we had some guest pizza makers show up to help.  Our kids basically took over operations.

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The day was picture perfect with blue skies and a great crowd.  We even got a sneak taste of the winning ribs submission and second place chicken winner - thanks to our neighbors - Team Sweetbottom.  They pulled an all night effort and took home some hardware.

On the pizza R&D front, we tried some different combinations.  We stripped the meat off a batch of chicken wings and added hot sauce, blue cheese, and mozzarella to make a wing pizza that was fantastic.  Then, to test chicken thighs, we added roasted garlic, and Fontina cheese.  It really brought out the flavor of dark grilled chicken.  Another notable experiment was testing different versions of pulled pork.

After an evening and a whole day of open and closing the Pizza-Porta - we are satisfied with the new hinge design.  On to production.

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Thanks kids for running the show for a while!

Make your own hand-crafted pizza this weekend.

Cortlandt