Wow it’s almost July.  I am working on getting things ready at the house for the 4th of July picnic.  After that picnic I have to get into La Vigna Picnic mode.

My uncle and I are meeting on Monday for a quick breakfast and picnic planning.  We have some new ideas for this year for the kids that should make things fun and exciting.  I am looking forward to this years picnic more than usual since we have a few more people helping with the planning and work this year.  I am still going to run the 50/50 and the seed spitting contest. I love seeing my family and hanging out and just taking it easy.

In the last few weeks I have been made the committee chair of the LOPSA Education Committee.  We are in the middle of getting the training schedule and trainers together for OLF and OLFu.  I also stepped up and volunteered for one of the empty board seats on the LOPSA board.  Last night I had my first board meeting.  I have gotten the feel of how things work on the call and got some ideas that I need to flesh out to help fix some of the issues that are plaguing LOPSA.  It also looks like I will be going to a face to face board meeting in August.

As well as the picnic and LOPSA, work, LUG/IP, LOPSA-NJ and PICC I have been working on a new web site with my friend John LeMasney.  It’s going to be a food based web site that will explore the making, buying, cooking and eating of the food of Central New Jersey. We want to be the premier destination for those interested in Central New Jersey food.  I hope to go live in the next few weeks.  We are looking for writers who have a passion for food in Central New Jersey. So if you want to write for us send me an example of your writing and a little bit about yourself to wbilancio@centraljerseygoodfood.com. 

So some family news Avery is now a senior in high school and has her drivers license. This is great I don’t have to drive her all over the place to her friends and dance or back to school, the down side is I don’t get to spend as much time with my daughter.  Otherwise every thing is going great and I am looking forward to a hot humid summer.

It all started on Wednesday night at my Aunt Bea’s house with my Aunt Bea and Clora, my parents and Avery while we waited for Fran and Family to arrive from Michigan.  The food of the night was going to be Blue Fish that I got from my co worker Tim Szwedo caught on one of his fishing trips.  My dad had marinated the fish for a bit and then grilled them on the grill.  Fran and family arrived right at 6:30 in time to sit down and eat.  We sat around for a bit and talked and laughed.  Avery and I headed out around 8:30 to hit Acme and then to crash out a bit for a bit.

Thanksgiving started for me at around 8:30 in the morning while I got the smoker ready for the big bird cook.  I actually used The Minion Method for the Charcoal burn.  Using this method kept the temp at a constant of 250 degrees for the whole 5 hour cook.  The turkey had been marinating in a red wine marinade sine Monday.  It came out of the marinade a nice dark purple color.  After the smoker had leveled out to a steady temp the Turkey was put on the grate at 9:00am.  I then moved back inside to start work on the Rye Bread Stuffing.  This turned out to be a great stuffing.  After getting that in the oven, it was time to start on another new recipe for Smoked Sausage Jambalaya another recipe that was a hit for dinner.  While working on all of these new recipes I had a pot of Cranberry BBQ Sauce cooking up, which was talked about a lot last year and was requested to be made again.  Other then making gravy and un canning the canned jelled cranberry sauce onto a plate I was really done cooking by 1:30.  My cousin Tim and family showed up around 1:45 and then it was a constant flow of family arriving till about 2:15.  I took the turkey off the smoker at about 2:15 and let it rest till about 2:45 and handed it over to my dad to carve while I got the rest of the food on to the table.   We finally sat down by 3:00 and the food was passed till about 4:30 as well as the great conversation.  The turkey was perfect and moist and had a great smoke ring around it.  The last person left around 8:00 and I was finally able to sit down and relax and to start thinking about Christmas dinner.

Friday was a day of working at some side jobs and going into work for a bit……but dinner was a treat, we did another pizza off at my Aunt Bea’s house, but with a twist…we did white pies only.  We got pies from Top Road Tavern & Pizza, Fedelos Family Pizzeria, Abruzzi Pizza & Cafe, Kings Pizzarama, Palermo’s III(Ewing), Limoncello’s Pizza.  The winner for the second year in a row for the Bilancio Pizza Off was Palermo’s, it now holds the title in both the Tomato Pie division and now the White Pie Division.  It was a fun night just hanging out talking to everyone. Dean brought some beer he had just bottled that day.  It had a great taste but it will be better after it sits for a few weeks in the bottles.  It was an early night because I ate so much pizza that it just made me tired.

Saturday morning started with me heading to my Aunt Bea’s to hang out with my Uncle Fran for a bit, so since I go there early enough I got a home cooked breakfast which was nice.  We all headed our separate ways for a bit to meet back at the house for dinner.  Which consisted of leftovers brought over from my house from Thanksgiving as well ham from Bath Packing.  Dinner was great and of course the conversation was good to.

It was great seeing my uncle Fran and family since it’s rare that we see them much since they are up in Michigan..tried to talk them into coming back for Christmas but since the snow will be flying by then I doubt we will see them till the La Vigna Picnic in July.

Well time to go and see about Christmas dinner now….

To see all the photos from the weekend head over to here.

So we are into August already and it seems like Avery just got out of school for the summer and now she has only a few weeks till she goes back. Anyway things have been crazy through the last part of July and the beginning of August.

The end of July always has the La Vigna Family picnic and that always means a lot of work for most of my family, getting the games together for the kids and getting the property cleaned up and ready. This year was no different…well yea it was…it rained most of the week before the picnic so most of the work was compressed into Friday. Thursday was the worst of the rain and of course that was the night most of my cousins and I went to see a concert at the Blueclaws Stadium in Lakewood, NJ.

Tim Montague, Ira Bilancio and William Bilancio

The bill consisted of Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan. It was an interesting show. My cousins Tim & his wife Meghan, Henry and Ira all enjoyed the show in the rain. Henry, Ira and I spent all of the night down on the field just talking through Willie Nelsons set and then rocked through John Mellencamp. Bob Dylan came out and totally confused me. The band he has is great and sounded tight, but then Bob starts singing and I couldn’t understand a word he said, but that is the mystery that is Bob Dylan. We enjoyed the whole night rain and all. It was good to be at a concert with my cousin Ira who we don’t see enough of and when we do it’s not long enough.

The day of the picnic turned out great even though it was a little bit hot, but the people that made it had a good time. I shared the announcing and running the games with my 2 uncles, Dean and Fran. It was fun running the water balloon toss and of course the watermelon seed spitting contest. We raised some good money selling this years calendar and Dean and I caused some controversy in the family with the 50/50 this year. So I say that the 2009 La Vigna Picnic was a success and we are already planing the 2010.

Carolyn has had the surgery on her foot so they could get some samples of the bone to see if there is any infection in the bone. We haven’t heard yet back about the lab reports. We have been back to the doctors many times so they can change the dressing. So we hope to get a negative report back about the infections so they can close up the wound and we can move on to the fall without any more foot issues.

Avery is driving now…..with a licensed driver in the car of course. She is getting better each time we go out, so I think if we keep her schlepping Carolyn all over the place while she is not allowed to drive.

Well that’s it for now…not much going on with me other then work and more work and Karma.

Yesterday Carolyn had an appointment with another doctor. This time an infectious disease doctor to take a look at her foot and determine the course of action to take about the bone infection. She told us though that she can’t do anything about it for 2 weeks. The reason for this is that Carolyn has been on antibiotics for 4 weeks and any test that are done on the bone infection will be masked and they won’t know what kind of infection it is.

So after 2 weeks Carolyn has to go to another Podiatrist to have a biopsy on the bone and then the culture will be sent to the infectious disease doctor and then she will determine the course of intravenous antibiotics to prescribe. The good news is that they will be doing this on an out patient bases so she will be doing the intravenous stuff at home and not in the hospital.

So that’s what’s going on here in at the Bilancio house hold. Avery does her driving thing next week so by picnic week she will be driving us nuts wanting to drive. Thank goodness I have a manual transmision and she won’t be learning that for a while.

So the WhiteTrashBBQ blog was running a contest called the MUG® Root Beer Father’s Day Brew-B-Q kit give away. All you had to do was write a story about Dad and his grill and why you or your dad deserve the kit. So I sent in a two part story of the times my dad destroyed the meat and vegetables he was grilling. So I won I got the fathers day Brew-B-Q kit, the kit included a Mug® themed cooler, apron and all the ingredients to make the MUG® Root Beer Southern Specialty Brew-B-Q Sauce as well as the recipe it self. So here is the story I sent in. Sorry dad had to throw you under the bus for this one.

The making of my Dad’s Montauk burger

One summer my parents and I went with 6 other couples to spend a week in Montauk. Well on the night that watching the kids fell to my parents my dad had decided to make burgers for all of us. So he went out and bought an hibachi grill and the makings for the burgers. He also stopped and got a bottle of jug wine some Carlo Rossi paisano to be exact . After getting back to the house he got the fire started and a glass of wine in his hand. Then he started getting the burgers made and had another glass or 2 of wine. When the fire was ready he headed out with the burgers and put them on the grill and proceeded to have a few more glasses of wine. So when he finally came with the burgers and served them up one side was as hard as a Charcoal Briquet and the other side was raw…thus we now make sure when dad is going to make burgers for us he isn’t going to make Montauk burgers.

Last year he was working the grill at his nephews wedding and wandered away to talk to family….while he was away the vegetables he was grilling ignited in to a nice blaze of glory. Luckily I was near by and put out the fire….I ended up doing the rest of the grill cooking that night.

Now don’t get me wrong when my dad is focused on the grilling at hand he does a great job it’s when he has had a few to many glasses of wine or there is a distraction such as his brother or other family members that he doesn’t see all the time that things go wrong.