resolutions

Every great plan needs some time to refocus. Earlier this year I spent some time with a cracking fire and a bourbon and brainstormed what I want out of life and my firepit. Here are my plans for 2023:

Cook more steaks

I don’t cook as much steak as I’d like. Oh sure, there’s plenty of venison to go around, but it doesn’t replace spooning butter over a thick, fatty porterhouse. I’m not jumping on the Wagyu bandwagon just yet ($$$), but I wouldn’t mind hanging a tomahawk over the flames.

Explore international cooking techniques

Have you seen the amazing ways they cook in Argentina? Who couldn’t use an asado cross? Or how about getting some swords and cooking picanha like the Brasilians? It’s time to dust off the passport.

Learn to play an instrument

We own a piano, a guitar, a ukulele, and a handful of harmonicas. That guitar keeps calling me, and the ukulele keeps calling my wife. I’ll bet learning a few chords and strumming patterns can’t be that hard, right? I mean, it’s not like you need to learn 100s of songs at first. We have a Skillshare and Udemy subscription, so it’s time to do something with them.

Invite local musicians for a sing-a-long

Until I learn the guitar, I need a plan B. It turns out my barber also hires himself out as a travelling accordion player. When I discovered this last spring, the first thing I thought of was an end-of-quarantine campfire in the fall. Well, fall came and went, COVID is still here, and we haven’t had a lot of fires yet. So anyway, I’m planning it. I hope he knows some Neil Diamond.

Normalize a pan of bacon at every campfire

A couple months ago, we stopped by Eastern Market in Detroit. On a whim, we picked up a few pounds of bacon ends, as one does. That night around the fire with some friends, we pulled out a cooking grate and a cast iron pan and fried up some bacon. It turns out passing a plate of bacon around a fire is a big hit! This is a new tradition that everybody can get behind!

Streaming campfires?

Streaming a video of a campfire might not be a worthwhile idea, but I might give it a shot if it can be done on the cheap. For people that can’t be around an actual campfire that evening, maybe a stream would suffice? Maybe? I mean, they would need their own bacon….

Get creative

I have a few unique ideas for campfire cooking both in my backyard and at camp. You remember the bacon-wrapped Brussels sprout stalk, right? That was just the beginning. It’s time to start building.

Fireside Forums

I have this dream of using the comfort and sanctity of the campfire environment as a vehicle to share ideas and talk about the world. This happens at most campfires without planning it beforehand, but what if there was a schedule, and topics, and guest speakers, and (gasp) reading homework? I think that could be a really interesting method of making the world a little brighter. At the very least, it would make the world more educated, and that’s always a good thing.

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