Best dinner of the summer--Inspiration Cafe

You know, folks, there’s a reason that our own Gary Wiviott dominates the world of Chicago barbeque. Tonight, at the Inspiration Café, the LTH volunteers (and not incidentally the Inspiration Café clients) had one of the best meals of the summer. Gary’s pulled pork is the reason God gave us pork. Smokey, moist, never tough, never mushy. Bright with pepper and vinegar and whatever was in that rub. Wisely, he started with 60 pounds of it, so there was enough for everyone, with plenty left over even after I wrapped some up to bring home to Bill. At the Café, I don’t think the pork ever got properly united with Gary’s Carolina Mustard Barbeque Sauce, faithfully reproduced by Cathy2, but we remedied that problem at home. I had promised Bill the best BBQ in Chicago when I came in the door, and he quickly added that the sauce was the best he’d ever eaten as well. No wonder Dickson says that under Gary’s mentorship the best BBQ in the western burbs is now at his house..

This is not to slight, in any way, the rest of the meal. I’m not a hot links fan, but it’s now clear that was only because I’d never had Barbara Ann’s hot links. I love the big hunks of meat and the just-right spice level. They too were a big hit at home. Chef d’ Spirit needs to be induced to part with her baked bean recipe. Ditto Shanti with her potato salad and Giovanna her broccoli salad. Your (and our) palWill not only masterminded the whole event but contributed the BA links and enough chicken quarters to open a Popeye’s franchise.

I cannot speak personally, to my regret, to the desserts, except to say that Trixie Pea produced, IIRC, four giant trays of four different cobblers, and the Dritz’s cookies and Crazy C’s banana pudding disappeared as fast as we could put them out.

Wonderful meal. Wonderful company. And even a moderate good deed to boot. What a perfect use of a day. Thanks all.

Despite the heat in the kitchen, I thoroughly enjoyed myself assisting at the Inspiration Cafe dinner hosted by our LTH members.

I think I tasted a little bit of everything -- and everything was delicious. The love of good food our members share was evident in the care that was taken to make a truly delicious meal for the clients of Inspiration Cafe. We were thanked with applause by our dinner guests, and I believe we left enough food to ensure they will have enough for a second dinner later this week.

My 14 year old daughter was thrilled that the people she was serving thought she was entering college. She insisted that each of them at least try the cookies she baked and wanted to know when we could go back and do this again.

Thanks to YourPalWill for setting this up. I love the fact that while this forum is ABOUT food, we are also giving back to the community in food-related ways.

Suzy

Chef d’ Spirit kindly gave me her recipe for the baked beans as we left last night. Here it is:

1/3 c packed brown sugar
1/4 c ketchup
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 (16 oz) can baked beans
1 (16 oz) can pinto beans (drained)
1 (15.5 oz) can butter or lima beans (drained)

Preheat oven to 350 deg

Combine first 4 ingredients in a 1 1/2 quart casserole. Stir in the beans. Cover and bake for 40 minutes or until heated.

Ann,

Thank you for the compliment on the pulled pork, it was a pleasure to cook for Inspiration Cafe. Though I feel compelled to point out in your round-up of dishes you modestly neglected to mention the delicious Spinach pies you brought.

Ann Fisher's Spinach Pie


I've commented before how LTHers, as a group, are excellent cooks and Inspiration Cafe was no exception. From Trixie-Pea's fruit cobbler

Trixie-Pea's Fruit Cobbler


To Shanti's, who it was a pleasure to meet for the first time, potato salad.

Shanti's Potato Salad


Chef d’ Spirit's unusual, and delicious, Baked Beans.


Giovanna's Broccoli Salad.


Suzy and her daughter Sarah Sugar Cookies


CrazyC made wonderful 'nanna cobbler and Cathy2 two types of BBQ sauce. For some odd reason, I don't have a picture of either. Though I did bring home, along with Trixie-Pea's fruit cobbler, CrazyC's 'nanner pudding for Ellen who thought both grand.

Thanks much to YourPalWill, who is on the board of Inspiration Cafe, for setting up the dinner and allowing us to participate. In addition to ramrodding the evening, Will also brought Hot Links and BBQ chicken from Barbara Ann's. Man o Man I love Barbara Ann's Hot Links.

Barbara Ann's Hot Links, BBQ chicken and Gary's pulled pork.


As Ann mentioned we had a surplus of food, for example there was an additional tray of BA's chicken and 4, count em, 4, trays of Trixie-Pea's fruit cobbler, along with 3-trays of pulled pork. Though this is not an exercise in "nothing says excess like excess" simply for, well, excess sake. The pork and other items will be incorporated in subsequent meals at Inspiration Cafe.

Speaking of pork, here's a picture of my WSM loaded, actually overloaded, with 60-lbs of pork butt and topped with a few links of Italian Sausage, which I had for lunch. There are 4 pork butts on the top rack and 4 additional pork butts below on the second rack.

WSM with 8 pork butts.


WSM a couple of hours into the cook.


Additional picture may be found Here

Enjoy,
Gary

Gary’s pictures tell the whole story. What a warm bunch of folks who smile as much as they jest! What a welcome, what wonderful food, and what a feeling it was to hear—repeatedly—how happy our dinner guests were. (Gary’s unpublished pictures tell a different story, unfortunately, complete with stuffed faces and hairnets. Thanks for withholding.)

As well as arranging the event and bringing the much beloved Barbara Ann’s treats, YourPalWill also took the time to provide many of us with a good history of the Inspiration Café, the various services they offer and their future direction. It was informative and exciting—thank you.

All in all, it was a perfect first LTH event for me. I was truly sated (don’t worry Ann, I managed to try ALL of the desserts) and extremely proud to be associated with all those there.

Shanti

Well, though it may have been the worthier cause, the Inspiration Cafe dinner was not the only LTHForum-spinoff civic-minded event to take place on Sunday:



Cathy2 was recruited to judge pies at the McHenry County Heritage Fair in Union, Illinois, and in turn recruited Stevez and myself to form the troika of out-of-town pie afficionados passing judgement over the pies of the good ladies (and, as it turned out, at least one gentleman) of McHenry County.

Ever the organizer, Cathy brought scoring sheets from some pie competition in Nebraska, which we quickly adapted to our purposes so they would produce a numeric score for each pie which, if not definitive, would at least enable us to narrow the field down.



The competition was held in the old school house, one of the historical exhibits at the local museum, which was a little distracting since people kept wandering in and out and asking us what we were doing-- including at least one woman who clearly was a competitor and ready to argue the validity of our scoring system, aesthetic judgements, taste in crust ingredients and everything else. Cathy chased her off firmly and we went back to tasting little bits of the pies (we were encouraged to keep our bites small as they were selling the rest) while an audience of about 15 or 20 people watched us eat, as unriveting as that must have been. A group of Girl Scouts also got to taste and judge on their own. I think the idea was that they would get to contribute to our vote but having driven an hour for this, and feeling that the competitors were entitled to our full professionalism, and also noticing that one of the Girl Scouts had helped make one of the cherry pies, we determined that we alone would make the choice and the Girl Scouts, well, they got free pie.



Overall the good folks of McHenry County know their pies. There were some misbegotten attempts at pies with sugar substitutes, at pies with crumbly tops that were too sweet and greasy, but overall the piemakers' craft seemed in very capable hands, and many of the pies (like the peach one in the center of the picture above) were pretty enough to be in a magazine.



We gave three ribbons in each of three categories plus a grand prize. As it turned out there was really kind of a heartwarming moment at the end. A woman named Lois Glave won grand prize in the apple competition; the last group was "other" and in fact accounted for most of the pies on the table, ranging from blueberry and peach to pear, raisin and strawberry rhubarb. Talking it over we agreed among ourselves that the strawberry rhubarb had been not only the best in that bunch but probably the best pie on the whole table, just exactly right in every department, balanced flavors, perfectly flaky crust, the whole thing. Even though we all agreed that strawberry rhubarb wasn't our favorite kind of pie, this pie stood out as a textbook example of the art. (It's just to the right of the peach pie in the picture above.) So we turned over the name tag and as you've probably guessed... it too was by Lois Glave. A mild-mannered, white-haired housewife of about 60, probably never quite the center of attention in her whole life, she seemed genuinely touched to suddenly have our recognition as the champion, the master, the Tiger Woods of McHenry County piemakers. We just went to judge pie, but it looks like we did a good deed, too.