Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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New Term: Smoking Widow

Posted May 30, 2007 by Jeff Houck

Updated May 30, 2007 at 01:38 PM

Got a very nice message today about the smoking story I mentioned earlier:

Jeff,

You have hit the nail on the head. YOU are MY husband! I work part-time at our church and when I came into the office today I found your article on my desk with a note from a friend of mine stating, “Hi Cyndi! We though you’d enjoy this article on the front page of Flavor. Now Dave (her husband) wants a smoker and we understand your husband better! . . .”

You see, two years ago, for Father’s Day I bought him the same smoker you received. That turned into more internet research on his part for recipes and techniques, to insulating the darn thing because smoking in the ‘colder’ months was more difficult, to smoking out of a weber kettle, then to the Caldera smoker (bigger and better of course) and we had ‘parties’ for any reason under the sun to let people ‘taste test’ his new creations! (My kids thought that their birthday parties were just for them – ha!) And have you seen a bbq guru yet??

Yes – picture taking. It is all coming back to me! He would take pictures of everything! Before seasoning, during seasoning, during cooking, ‘here is what it looks like on the rack’ :-o , ‘this is what it looks like on a plate with broccoli and beans’. We actually VIDEO taped him uncrating the Caldera. It is somewhere with the video of Christmas morning I’m sure!

He got so good at it that people would call us and ‘invite’ us to their dinner parties, and by the way, ‘can you bring one of those briskets you smoke so well???’ Seriously! It was out of control! It has brought us to where we are now, at 3331 Lithia Pinecrest Road, the name is “Jaymer-que Southern BBQ”. Yes, we opened up a restaurant in December of 2006 and he is in his element! We actually are dealers for the Primo, the competitor to the Big Green Egg. We had two custom made smokers that were built for us when we first opened and with both of those we were running out of food every night. As you know, you just can’t quickly smoke a butt! So that problem led us to what we have now, a 72 square foot smoker! (We actually had baby announcements sent out about it!) All this has all culminated to our area Best of Brandon contest where we just won Best Ribs in Brandon and 1st Runner Up in BBQ & Chicken (to be announced at the end of June)! It has been a fun year and a half!

We had an article in the Brandon News before we opened that said something like ‘restaurant is extension of couples home’ and it is, we live there, we love it! I know he has more pictures somewhere, but here is a link to some off of our website. By the way, he has no idea I am writing you, he has not seen the article yet!

So I know of someone else here that can sit down and talk butt with you! And lamb, salmon, prime rib, and the list goes on!

Needless to say, I LOVED the article! Thanks for making my day!

Cyndi Holcombe
Children’s Ministry Assistant
Bell Shoals Baptist Church