The right way to ring in the new year

The rest of the year is pretty much downhill from here. How do you compete with a day spent smoking and eating dry rub ribs, brisket and deep-fried chicken wings?

MeatFest started as a simple enough idea: bring two families together for a day of college football and outdoor cooking to start the year off right. A new smoker and a deep fryer, the guys concluded, could easily be combined to create a feast of delicious meat. And since delicious meat only comes about by careful supervision of the outdoor man-kitchen (which just happened to be only feet from the big screen TV inside), the guys would have the perfect excuse to stay close to the TV all day and not miss any key plays in the Bowl games.

The wives soon caught wind of their plans and learned that the only things on the menu for the day were, in fact, beef and chicken. Some quick thinking added guacamole, celery with blue cheese dressing, deep fried oreos and funnel cake to the menu to create a more well-rounded day of dining. And, in what ended up being our only actual meal of the day, we also enjoyed some ham and cheese sandwiches (pork...more meat) for lunch before the official kick-off of MeatFest 2010. The rest of the day was spent sitting around grazing as we enjoyed whatever meat came out of the fryer or off the smoker soon after it reached a safe temperature for eating.

Caleb and Sam woke up from their naps just in time to enjoy some delicious hot wings with us, and we later found out that both boys are huge brisket fans. The Abbys were more interested in the deep fried Oreos than anything else.

Sorry you missed it? You can purchase your official MeatFest 2010 t-shirt by clicking here.

Special thanks to our friends for hosting this New Year's Day edition of MeatFest 2010.