Who won the Rib Burn-Off?

Give up a chunk of a holiday Monday to help raise money for wounded soldiers? Yes, I can absolutely do that. I was one of four judges who stopped by the Patriot Festival at SouthPark's Symphony Park to lend eating expertise to the first Rib Burn-Off competition. My compatriots: Taylor Mathis of the food blog www.taylortakesataste.com, Richard Gruica of Meetup's Good Eats & Meets and Charles Jenkins of South Charlotte Weekly and WBT-AM.

Yes, kids, it was very hot out there. Luckily, I carry a folding fan wherever I go. I believe the boys were envious of my ability to accessorize. Also, my ability to eat pork ribs in the heat.

Since this was the first time for the competition, we ended up with only six competitors. But they were worthy adversaries. Always amazing how many different types of ribs can come off grills. Dry ribs, wet ribs, smoky ribs, chewy ribs.

After we chewed them over and our scores were tallied, the rib winner was the team Brothers In Barbecue, led by Joe Pelone of Spicy Sunshine Catering & Deli, 5304 Sunset Road. For sauce, the winner was Bobby Rayfield of Indianland with the team Bobby's Joe's. The People's Choice award went to Jim & Nick's.

And I headed off immediately for a stop at YoFro. Frozen yogurt -- stat.

Eat and Tell: Ribs Day on Monday

What are you cooking on the grill Monday?

I will be eating ribs. But I won't be cooking them (not that day, anyway). I'll be judging ribs, at the Rib Burnoff at the Patriot Festival at Symphony Park at SouthPark.

The festival raises money for wounded members of the military and their families. It's 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and includes music, big trucks like firetrucks and Humvees, miltary maneuvers, a 5K, a Scout and service club challenge, and ribs. Tickets to the festival are $10 at the gate and $8 in advance at Harris Teeters with a VIC card. Children 5 and younger get in free, while military with ID are $5. Details: www.patriotcharities.org.

The Burn Off is a contest for restaurants and backyard cooks, beginning at 11 a.m. We of the judging team will give out awards for best rib and best sauce, while you of the eating team will get to name a People's Choice Award. If you're there and you spot me, say hey. Pardon me in advance if my mouth is full.

If you're not going to the festival, I'd love to hear what you end up cooking on Monday. Drop me a comment here and let me know.

Summer survival: The best iced coffee

Hot weather and I have a special relationship. I hate it. It hates me.

That's what happens when you grow up in a sub-tropical zone like South Florida without air conditioning. Yes, without air conditioning. Didn't have it in my parents' house. Didn't have it in the cheap apartments I could afford when I moved out on my own.

Remember that scene in "Body Heat," where Kathleen Turner and William Hurt loll in a bathtub floating with ice cubes? Been there (truly -- I lived in Lake Worth, where it was filmed) and done that. The ice cubes in the bathtub part, not the William Hurt part.

I learned a lot of ways to survive in those days: Always keep the vodka bottle in the freezer. Hold a plastic bag of ice cubes on your neck if you get really desperate.

And iced coffee. Learn to love iced coffee. I still have a passion for the stuff.

Sadly, though, good iced coffee can be hard to find. Hot-brewed coffee that sits out until it's cold doesn't cut it. It's bitter, or it sits on the burner too long and gets that rank old-coffee taste. Iced coffee deserves more respect.

Last year, the Internet world popped a new one up for me: Cold-brewed coffee, based on a recipe that started several years ago in the New York Times Sunday magazine. It's coffee that is specifically made for iced coffee. Not bitter, not watered-down.

It's easy to make enough to last several days, it takes practically no work -- and it's a whole lot cheaper than daily coffeeshop stops. Sweetening it might be a problem, since sugar doesn't dissolve well in cold water. Since I drink all coffee unsweetened, I can't really say. If you keep simple syrup around, that would probably do the trick.

I discovered it late last summer, too late to share here. Now that warm water has returned with such a vengeance, it's time. You're going to need it.

Cold-Brewed Iced Coffee

With thanks to the New York Times and a bunch of web sites.

2/3 cup ground coffee
3 cups cold water, plus more for finishing
Ice cubes
Whatever you take in your coffee

Place the ground coffee in a pitcher or bowl. Cover with 3 cups water. Let stand at room temperature for 12 hours or overnight.
Using a fine-mesh sieve, strain the coffee into a small bottle or pitcher. (Here is where I split with the other sources. Some suggest a double-straining method, using a sieve and then a coffee filter or cheesecloth to get the last bits of ground coffee. A single straining works fine for me, because any ground coffee left in the mix will settle to the bottom and can be avoided. Up to you.)
Refrigerate the mix until you need it. To use it, pour equal amounts coffee and water over ice. (Use less water if you like, but remember that the coffee mixture is very strong.) If you really want to get fancy, you could also make a batch of ice cubes out of it, but that's more trouble than I can handle in summer.
Add whatever you need (while I usually drink coffee black, I do like a little skim milk in iced coffee).
Drink. Feel cooler.

The best thing you can do with a Pringles can

It's hard to convey just how goofy -- and weirdly delightful -- the Pringles Can Speaker is.

If you send in the original receipt from any four Super Stack cans of Pringles, you get a round speaker that snaps into the top of the empty can and plugs into any personal MP3 player, including iPods. Go to www.pringles.com to get details and a free-speaker-redemption form

The long, hollow can acts as an amplifier, adding a little depth to the sound.

The coolest things about this from my hour or so of playing with it?

1. It's a speaker that fits in a cup holder. Those of us who haven't got car stereos with iPod jacks can finally listen to Wilco on the way to work.

2. You get interesting reactions when you walk around waving a Pringles can that is playing music.

3. Finally, while the fidelity isn't real Bose, Pringles aren't real potato chips, either.

Playing music with the can beats having to eat the nasty things.

Food trucks are ready to roll

Has the food truck phenomenon finally rolled in to Charlotte? You can check it out tonight at 5, in the parking lot on 7th Street across from Seventh Street Station, at the Chow Down Uptown Food Truck Rally. At least eight trucks are signed up to be there, but that may grow.

I wish I could be there, but I already had a tight schedule between the end of the work day and the start of the Neko Case concert in Knight Theatre. I’ve also had my share of food truck experiences lately.

Last year, when I was in New York for the James Beard Awards in May, I had gotten a bead on a food truck rally at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. Fellow food soldier Andrea Weigl and I set out nice and early. But the Web site was unclear about the actual address – happens a lot in N.Y. social media, I’ve learned. By the time we found the right spot, the rally was well underway and the lines were stretching roughly from the Hudson River to Long Island. We stood in line for 40 minutes just for the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. It was worth the wait for a Salty Pimp (chocolate and caramel and soft-serve ice cream sprinkled with sea salt) and a Bea Arthur (hard to explain but it involves very tall soft-serve and crushed vanilla wafers). But that was all we had time to try.

This year, I was in the same place at about the same time. And now the Hell’s Kitchen Food Truck Rally is happening every other Sunday through the summer. This time, fellow food soldier Debbie Moose and I set out early with very good directions. We were almost too early: The trucks were still pulling in. But that meant we only had short waits to gather a full picnic.

Big Gay wasn’t there, tragically. They’re getting ready to open their own bricks-and-mortar store, the true food truck measure of success. But there were plenty of others: I counted Rickshaw Dumpling, Luke’s Lobster, Gorilla Cheese (grilled cheese sandwiches and deep-fried macaroni and cheese balls), Lloyd’s Carrot Cake, Kimchi Taco, Cinnamon Snail vegan food, and Kelvin Natural Slush.

Debbie grabbed a spot in the line at Gorilla Cheese and I fanned out to hunt and gather from the trucks that didn’t have lines. We met up at the curb and sat in the shade, spreading out a picnic while a street musician with a portable keyboard played jazz. New York food came to find us for a change. We had pork and chive dumplings, carrot cake, grilled muenster with proscuitto on challah, a big lobster roll ($15, but big enough to split), and spicy ginger slushies. My favorite thing was the deep-fried mac and cheese bites, which were crunchy and hot and tasted particularly good with a sweet onion dipping sauce.

If you’re in New York this summer and you're interested in something different, check www.hellskitchenfleamarket.com to see if it’s a food truck Sunday. Don’t get confused by the addresses – you want the flea market at 39th and 9th Avenue. And you need to get there by 10:30 if you want to miss the worst of the lines.

And if you’re at the Charlotte food truck rally tonight, drop me a line, kpurvis@charlotteobserver.com, and let me know how it went. If you send me a jpeg, I’ll try to post it here next week. Have fun, kids.

N.C. rare burger ban gets AOL Weird News attention

My recent column on the myths surrounding North Carolina's rule against cooking burgers to less than 155 degrees has gotten some attention this morning. Ben Muessig of AOL Weird News interviewed me last week for his own column on the issue.

Ben's column was then followed up Ben Chapman of the N.C. Cooperative Extension, with his own column on Barf Blog, a Web site where food safety experts weigh in. Chapman points out that the video AOL-WN posts, showing how to grill a burger, is itself sprinkled with food safety violations, particularly handling raw meat and then handling other things in the kitchen and out at the grill.

It's always a little strange being interviewed by a fellow journalist, and there are a couple of facts I'd quibble with in the final piece (for one, I wasn't the first journalist to write about, my esteemed colleague Helen Schwab has covered it too). But then, people quibble with my articles too. It's part of the writing world.

Still, AOL Weird News? Gee, that's quite a morning.

Need a market? We got 'em

On www.charlotteobserver.com/food today:

• Don't miss 0ur searchable database of farmers markets. We paired with Raleigh N&O, so we have the details on markets from Morganton to Louisburg. And if the weather ever clears up and warms up, we also have the list of pick-your-own farms up, too.
  
• Need to know how to cook what you find at the markets? Andrea Weigl followed chef Andy Schaumann on a shopping expedition and into the kitchen.
• My column: There's so much local food out there, the Charlotte Regional Farmers Market can't hold it all.
• Tom Hanchett brings you sandwiches, Jerusalem-style.
• Robin Hall Domeier gets lunch at City Deli & Bagel.
• Peter St. Onge really likes Hop Sun from Southern Tier Brewing.