[Countryhb]

Seeing as how I was "promoted" to "grill manager" by Big Brother Smoke while he was away handling another gig on Saturday, I have been nominated to also report on the party. OK, actually I was bugging him to get a report done, as I was real happy with this one.

Saturday we did a party for 330 for Bellingham Marine at the Channel Islands Marina in Oxnard. It turned out that they had more in the range of 175-200, but it was a great party anyhow. I, with the awesome help of BigMista and Cliff, cedar planked 175 lbs of CoHo salmon. The salmon was prepped with a light dusting of his "chicken rub" (sorry, don't know what he's really calling it, but it's damn good on chicken!). This salmon was superb. We had several folks from Washington say it was some of the best salmon they had ever eaten.

One particular compliment that stood out came from a lady who said she and her husband had lived in Bellingham, WA for 18+ years. They have a group of Native Americans that have been cooking cedar planked salmon for them for almost all of the time they lived in the PNW. She said this salmon was easily as good, if not better, then what is prepared by the locals! Hot Dawg!!

The entire event was run Saturday by BBS's right-hand gal, Jamie. She did a fantastic job coordinating everything, and was quite happy to leave the cooking in our hands, which made this an extremely easy event. Bellingham Marine wanted to feel as if they were part of the crew, so they provided all of us with their company polos and helped out around the event. I had plenty of help from the Western Region Manager, who said he felt at home on the grill.

All in all, this was a great event. The staff had a great time, the clients were extremely pleased, the food was top-notch, and hopefully BBS can rest a little bit easier the next time he has to send his crew on a job without him!

Enjoy the pics here.