My inspiration for outdoor cooking began in the 90s with Chris Schlesinger - a Boston based 'celeb-chef' back before such a term was really in vogue. He wrote several cookbooks, one of which I still turn to for ideas,
Let the Flames Begin.
As an apartment dweller / renter for years, I kept to smaller gassers and mostly to 'grilled' food. Upgraded to bigger Weber gassers as I grew older, and used the wrapped dampened wood chips technique to try and produce smoke and cooked at lower temp as an 'offset'.
Finally got the smoking bug a few years ago, started searching the Internet for what I might want, and ended up here, the number 1, undisputed champion of Barbecue Communities in the world.
Andrew - the old caretaker of the amazing PBC thread, was instrumental in me ending up with a PBC as my first smoker, as I ended up in that thread and soaked in the hundreds of pages of info contained therein. All you other brethren who know how you are and are significant contributors to that thread played a huge role as well.
Ended up with the Blackstone Pizza Oven a few years ago, also thanks to the brethren, after being a home pizza aficionado for many years.
I have come
this close a couple of times recently in getting a new cooker.. an offset or a pellet, but not yet.
I have been an outdoor cooking lover for many years before finding my way to this community, but there is nothing in my life that pushed my cooking forward more than all the wonderful people that post here.