How To Build A Brick Barbecue

Renata's Top Picks From Elmhurst Farmers Market

My best friend from college came over for dinner last week, so I decided to splurge on a few select items from Elmhurst Farmers Market, and what a treat it was!

I bought lemon parsley mafaldine (www.pappardellespasta.com) and turned it into a vegetarian pasta salad chock full of farmers market veggies. The cheese I put out (www.thecheesepeople.com) with fresh berries was a visual stunner. The blue cheese, in particular, rivaled some I had the good fortune to sample in France. If you would like to taste it, go to stall No. 7, The Cheese People, and ask for a sample. That's what I did.

“Give me the smelliest blue cheese you’ve got,” I said to a young man who was extremely knowledgable and demonstrated excellent customer service. 

Not everyone is up for this kind of aroma and flavor. I once worked with a French man in London and he was obsessed with the smelliest cheese I have ever inhaled in my life. Every 15 minutes he would get up from his desk and run across the flat to unwrap his baby blue and steal a little hunk. I realized then that in matters pertaining to cheese, follow the French with your nose.  

But my personal favorite at last week’s Farmer’s Market was the pork chops I purchased from Jakes Country Meats (www.jakescountrymeats.com) at stall No. 6. 

I purchased two medium-sized frozen pork chops for $7 per pound, and a package of Italian Sausage for $7 per package, and went home to prepare my grill. 

As the daughter of a sausage maker, all other sausages run the risk of paling in comparison. I used to watch my dad grind his pork and make his sausages daily on a brick barbecue pit that he built with his own two hands. This is a tough act to follow, so please forgive me for making the bone-in pork chops the star of the show. (The sausages were very good, too.)

Trying to decide how to prepare my pork chops for the barbecue, I recalled the words from my friend and former guest chef in Renata’s Kitchen, Meredith Hinely. 

“Every good Southern woman has a bottle of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt in her kitchen,” she told me one morning before filming.

I had purchased a bottle shortly after that. So, I decided to do nothing to the pork chops except thaw them, sprinkle on a little Lawry’s Seasoned Salt and throw them on the grill until they were cooked to 170 degrees internally.  

Those pork chops were a real show stopper. Though each of us had a little of everything, those two chops got divided up like they were the last few rations during a war.

How To Use Landscaping Bricks | Garden Flowers Plants

There are many items of decoration you should take into account when designing your landscape yard, and landscaping bricks should be one of them. Landscaping bricks are very versatile, easy to use, and most important, inexpensive. You can find them in different variations and you can buy them everywhere. That’s why landscaping bricks fit in with your landscaping design, and you can let your imagination go wild and make something that will last for ever in just a couple of days. Even if you’re a novice, you’ll get satisfying results.

You can use landscaping bricks for virtually everything, separate or border flower beds and areas in your garden, create a brick patio or even a barbecue, pathways, walls, raised flower beds, your imagination is the limit. If you plan to create a brick patio, you’ll need to use mortar to fix the bricks. You can use a basket weave design, which is easy to make and it’s very attractive. If you are thinking of using bricks in your flower garden, you can create lines and separate areas or to attract the visitors’ eyes to a certain spot.

If you are planning to build a pathway, an option would be to use crushed brick, in which case you’ll need to line the bottom with a special fabric, to avoid particles from getting lost. Or you can simply use bricks to create a pathway or sideway. In this case, you can use a basket wave design or just place them in a row, one by one.

These are just a few decorative suggestions you can use to improve your landscaping design. But in fact, you can use bricks for anything that needs to be built. And the question is:

Where can you buy the best bricks available?

There are many places you can buy bricks from. In fact, they’re so many, that you’ll need to invest some time in finding the best cost/quality relation for you. You should buy the best landscaping bricks you can afford. Remember they will last for a long time, so the better the quality the better the result.

One popular store where you can find quality landscaping bricks at a fair price is Freshfield Lane Brickworks. And the good thing is, you don’t even have to move from home, you can even order online. At their site, you can browse its extensive selection of bricks, as well as other landscaping items you can buy.

Brick Projects for the Landscape, 16 Easy-to-Build Designs

Your house, your garden, a foolproof approach to garden design

Masonry and Stonework, Includes Decorative Concrete Treatments

Guide to Concrete, Masonry & Stucco Projects

Black & Decker The Complete Guide to Masonry & Stonework, with DVD, *Poured Concrete *Brick & Block *Natural Stone *Stucco