This Friday is the home opener for The Detroit City Football Club. Solid Dudes Kitchen are sponsors and we’ll be there passing out DCFC rally towels to the first 300 fans in the supporters section.

SPOILER ALERT: Maybe we’re filming an episode?

In anticipation of Cinco De Mayo, our friends at Le Detroit thought it would be funny to get us to eat as many tacos as possible in 4 hours. This is one of those times where it’s only funny if it’s not you.

Or your colon.

Chris Arace – Photo Credit

I would like to thank my wife Michele and her rich cultural heritage for making this episode possible. I would also like to thank her genitalia and lack of self-respect for making our children possible.

Remember: Thailand isn’t just that place you see in movies about Vietnam; it’s that country portrayed in movies that were actually filmed in the Philippines.

Solid Dudes

Keeping it real since forever.

Many of the people in my group of friends have moved away. Being that I’m friends with a bunch of scumbag musicians, this makes sense. Michigan doesn’t offer much to our kind…its geographically fucked for touring, there’s only 2-3 good places to play shows, and nobody much gives a damn about bands here. So they move to greener pastures: LA, Seattle, San Francisco, Texas, etc. I’m not mad at them, not everybody can hang with this place, some stay just because they are tied to a house that’s worth $3,000 and a Slurpee after they paid $125k for it.

I’m cool with the fact that I stayed. I don’t lie awake at night wondering what my life would be if I had moved to NYC when I was 23. I don’t hate the cold winters and the humid summers. I like Michigan, despite all of its flaws. What makes it so attractive? Water. We have fresh water. Millions of gallons of it. I’m pouring a glass of it on the floor right now just because I can. There’s a tribe in Africa right now that would slit my throat for this glass because they have to walk a mile each day just to get a handful of water that is half hippo piss.

Do you have any idea how screwed the rest of the country is? The population is going up, and the fresh water supply is dwindling. I’m not a doomsday guy, its just a fact. We, in Michigan, are sitting on the largest deposit of fresh water in the world. Where is the zombie apocalypse going to go down? Right here. Be prepared. Everybody is going to get real tired of drinking salt water in the future and re-filtering their own pee (see Kevin Costner’s Waterworld) to make Kool-Aid. They are going to come gunning for us. In light of this fact, this Thanksgiving, I give thanks for fresh water.

To further exploit my wealth of water, I made some flavored salt water to soak my turkey in overnight…because I can. That’s right, Africa, I have Turkey and fresh water…jealous? If your Mom’s turkey is dry, buy her a Home Depot bucket, some Kosher Salt, some brown sugar, and whisper a little dirty talk and that bird will moisten right up.

Recipe:

• 64 oz. bottle of apple juice
• 64 oz. of water
• 1 cup kosher salt
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 6 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 2 bay leaves
• whatever else you feel like putting in there (not late-term abortion parts)

Mix all of this in a Home Depot Bucket. Stick a turkey in the bucket and refrigerate for 12 hours. Take out turkey, rinse it, pat it dry, then cook turkey the way that turkey is cooked. It makes turkey not terrible.

Mark Paul/ Solid Dude

Smoker, Joker, Writer, Biter

I am about to turn 33 years old. I say this not for pity or for a comment on my Facebook page consisting of a picture of kitten covered in birthday cake, I say it because I’m having a hard time believing it. I don’t remember growing up…mostly because I never thought I would. Up until a few years ago, I lived in a shitty house with three other adulthood-challenged dudes and we all spent the majority of our time trying to trick each other into looking at our exposed dicks…real high-level shit.

Along with now going to bed before midnight and increased aches and pains, new words have crept into my vocabulary in the past 3 years: Mortgage, 401k, responsibility, and leftovers. The last one is a real bastard…I hate leftovers, always have. No real explanation but once a meal has gone down, I’m done with it like a Thai prostitute…I pretend I don’t speak the language and throw my money on the table. Sure, sometimes I’ll bring home a to-go container and let it hang out in the fridge until it threatens to walk back to the restaurant but rarely does it ever get the honor of a re-tap from me.

Worse than restaurant leftovers are homemade ones…again, not sure why, probably some weird psychological thing that makes me feel like a poor kid and hate myself. My usual routine when I make too much food is to freeze it for about a year, until I feel like I gave it a solid chance, then throw it away. Since I started smoking meat, I had a bit of a change of heart when it comes to leftovers as this food can be re-purposed in ways not considered when I first made it, and I’m not talking about making a sick ass casserole, blarf. My new way of thinking all basically amounts to what should be the golden rule of cooking: To make something better, add a shit ton of pork to it.

I had leftover smoked pork shoulder (I refuse to call it pork butt despite my card carrying status as an Ass Man) and wanted to make it into something more luxurious (like jewels) than pulled pork sandwiches or tacos…then it hit me: BAM!!! FULL THROTTLE!!! KICK IT UP A NOTCH!!! The power of Guy Fieri flowed through me. I went to CVS bought some blonde hair dye, some asshole sunglasses for the back of my head, spray painted the words “57 Chevy” on the side of my Equinox, went to Gibraltar trade Center for a shirt with flames on it and then started finding small Mexican children to punch because that’s what Guy Fieri does.

After all that, I came home and started making Red Beans & Rice in the crock pot. To make the dish “money”, I tossed in the aforementioned hunk of pork I had. The end result was goddamn delicious. It was so good, I even froze the leftovers and I fully intend to eat them…making it a 2nd generation leftover which completely blows my mind.

Red Beans and Rice with a Shit Ton of Smoked Pork

• 1 lb. bag of red beans
• 1 lb. smoked sausage
• 1 lb. smoked pork, preferably shoulder
• 1 onion (chopped) (gross, I hate onions)
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 stalk celery, chopped (gross pt. 2)
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 1 tablespoon parsley
• 1 lg. bay leaf
• Rice, cooked
• salt to taste
• pepper to taste
• 2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• Cajun seasoning to taste
• Corn starch, to thicken

Put beans in pot of water and rinse. Remove the bad beans that float to top. Drain water off and put beans in deep pot with 8-9 cups water, stick them in the fridge and let them sit overnight. In the morning, before anyone else is awake, saute the the vegetables and spices in the olive oil until the onions are clear and your house thoroughly stinks like garlic. This will wake everyone up and totally bum them out. Drain and rinse the beans then put them and the sauteed mess into a crock pot. Add enough water so that there is about an inch of water above the bean line. I just made that up: bean line. Throw in your pork and turn that bastard on low. Come home from a hard days work, fry the sausage until its nice and brown then cut it up and throw it in to cook for another half hour. Cook some rice, I like brown because I care about the environment and racial equality. Add a little cornstarch to a cup of water and whisk into the crock pot madness to give it a gravy thickness. Spoon it onto your plate of rice, season to taste with Cajun seasoning. Try not to get too many beans on your plate (they get in the way of the pork.) Go Tigers.

Mark Paul/ Solid Dude

Smoker, Joker, Writer, Biter