Ingredients
You will need a knife to cut cheese and a small spoon to dip sauce.
Directions
Open cheese with scissors and place on serving tray. Use small knife to cut 45-degree angles on each side of one end of block shaping it like the bow of a boat. Use excess cheese to build a cabin on front of boat on about 20% of "deck". Hollow out roughly 1/2 inch of the deck leaving sides and stern intact to hold tomatoes. Use scissors to cut tomatoes in half and place them from back of cabin to stern and across it (they will help hold sauce). Fill the hollow deck but not so far the sauce runs over tomatoes. Place a tomato half where your bow light would be. Place 2 toothpicks (fishing poles) on the stern and a small American flag in middle if available.
]]>Ingredients
Combine first five ingredients, toss with No Name Original or Hot BBQ
Serve Chilled
]]>Great for leftover chicken
Ingredients
Instructions
Add the cooked chicken, red peppers, beans, chicken stock, tomatoes, No Name Sauce, chili powder, and red pepper flakes stirring to combine. Cover, heat on medium for 30 minutes stirring frequently, then simmer for 10 minutes. Remove lid, taste and adjust seasoning to taste. Cover and cook another 10 minutes. Ladle chili into bowls, top with cheddar cheese and garnish with cilantro.
]]>Brown 2 lbs hamburger meat, drain, add salt & pepper to taste, add 1 bottle of No Name Original (or Hot) BBQ Sauce. Simmer to let flavors blend, then serve on your favorite hamburger buns or BBQ bread.
Serves 6-8
]]>Alan Roberts and I were fishing on an offshore structure off Keaton Beach where, on two previous trips, I had spotted large cobia. The first time, a friend and I spotted two cobia, both about four feet long. One took my friend’s bait right beside the boat, but spit it out after a 20-foot run.On the second sighting, one big cobia bobbed my cork, spit out the live shiner, then moved just out of casting range and rolled around as I took pictures and swore vengeance.
Alan, being aware of my two previous experiences, was working his shiner and giving me a lecture on the perils of trying to work two rods. He said if one took his line, he was going to have the pole in his hand for a quick strike. I was fumbling around, trying to put out a second shiner when I heard him holler, “I got one!” I looked over and saw MY fish on his line. We sprang into action, immediately tangling every rod we had, including the ones not even in the water. I spent a precarious minute or two chasing his line around my 13-foot Lee Craft with an armload of rods, while he tried to keep the cobia busy. I’ll never know how, but I managed to free the line. The fish turned and went under the boat, and we realized we had a 4-foot cobia. Alan unhooked the anchor, which we had already rigged with a jug for easy retrieval, and we moved away from the structure.
To our disbelief, the fish didn’t make a dash for the structure, but stayed under the boat. He swung beside us on a short pass, and Alan hollered, “Gaf him! Gaf Him!” I said it was too soon to gaf him, because he wasn’t tired. He said to gaf him anyway, so I did. The fish snapped the gaf in half, then started his first of five or six runs. So, there we were, in a 13-foot boat. miles offshore, with a mad cobia, two hours of light, and no gaf.
The fish (by now named “Nate”) alternated between 100-yard runs and passes at the boat, looking for some way to get hung. Alan continued to fight Nate, using 20 pound test-line on a baitcaster while I started rigging a homemade gaf from a cobia hook and what was left of my gaf handle. After about an hour, the fish was tired and passing pretty close to the boat. Alan said to gaf the tail end, so I wouldn’t shear the line. I did, and that was a big mistake, ’cause when the fish was about one-third out of the water, he REALLY got mad. He straightened out the hook on the makeshift gaf and started another 100-yard run. We were perplexed. We thought about easing along and swimming him to shore, but the way he kept passing under our boat made us leery of putting our 15 H.P. Suzuki back in the water.
We then started looking for a boat to maybe bring us a gaf. No one was in sight! So, I started working on my second makeshift gaf. After another 15 or 20 minutes of fight, the fish began swimming alongside the boat, obviously tired. We could see where I had gaffed him on the first try, and he was bleeding. We decided our only option was to hook him in the mouth with my redesigned gaf. I put on some gloves, grabbed the gaf in one hand and the opposite side of the boat in the other, and snagged him in the mouth. Bad mistake!!! He jerked me to his side, at which time Alan fell in the same direction. and I was forced to jump out of the boat before I fell out.
At this point, things looked pretty grim. The gaf man, first mate and captain were swimming around with a large, mad, bleeding cobia. I couldn’t get back in the boat without sinking it or having Alan lean out the other side, so I started chasing the cobia around the boat. He was tired. but on the other hand, I’m no Mark Spitz. I tried holding onto the side of the boat and gilling him with the other hand, but he kept evading me.
At this point, the guy holding the rod was making references to my family as well as the fish’s, so I decided desperate times called for desperate measures. I snuck around the bow and met Nate head-on, eyeball to eyeball. I grabbed him with both hands around his gill plates and thrust him out of the water. I sank…..and he didn’t clear the side of the boat. While standing on the bottom with a 57 1/2 pound cobia in your hands, you wonder if all this is really sport. I bobbed up for air, still clutching the fish. Alan hollered that he’d lean over, and maybe I could get the fish over the side. So, I went back to the bottom, sprang up, and sure enough, he cleared the side and went aboard…..along with about 50 gallons of water. Alan picked up a club and put the fish in a deep sleep. We whooped and hollered, took a few pictures, then headed back out about a mile and picked up our anchor. We speculated how much a video of all this might be worth and what the title might be. We figure “priceless” and “Abbot and Costello Go Fishing” would be about right. But, in spite of ourselves, we’re having fried cobia along with a few laughs this week, while we plan our next trip.
By the way, where can I get a good gaf?
]]>Ingredients
Instructions
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Season the fish with salt and pepper, to taste. Cook the fish for 3 minutes; then turn and cook until just opaque, about 3 to 4 minutes more. Transfer the fillets to individual plates. Place the bacon in the skillet, cook to your liking. Remove bacon and place on paper towel to cool.
Spread “What’s It” sauce onto toasted bread. Add Mahi Mahi, tomato, lettuce, and bacon. ENJOY!
]]>Legend has it that my love for all things culinary began before I could walk. My family loves to tell how I would crawl to the old metal step stool, then stand up and push it across the kitchen floor and stop next to mamma who was trying to bake scratch cakes. I’d climb up on the stool and start cracking eggs.
I later would spend a lot of time with my dad while he grilled. We would also go on excursions to our hunting camp where we would try and live off the game we killed. We weren’t great hunters so we had to be creative cooks. Invariably someone would show up with some chicken or ribs and the feedbag was on!
Then fast forward to 1987 and my dad and I built a convenience store with a full-scale deli. I did a lot of research before we bought our deli equipment and when we were done we were selling fried chicken, ribs, hamburgers and fresh vegetables.
In ’93 my dad retired and I started buying old stores and upgrading them also with full-scale delis. We wound up with 4 stores and I set up a commissary at our original location where I could consolidate some of the cooking. I would come in at 4 am and start boiling 4 bushels of green peanuts in our Army surplus double boiler. Then I’d marinate several cases of chicken and ribs. When that process was done I’d put them in the smoker.
After that, it would be around 7 am and I’d go to the office and start my desk job.
At 10 am I’d go back to the commissary, load all my cooked meat and peanuts into coolers and deliver to the stores. Our stores were called the Gas and Grill and our sales were steadily climbing.
For the next 20 years, I worked on different recipes using different sauces. I came across a recipe I thought was delicious, but it was hard to make and expensive, so I never used it commercially. All the while I continued to piddle with it changing ingredients, specifications, and amounts. I wound up locking the recipe in my safe and forgot about it.
In 2007 I had a chance to sell out and even though I wouldn’t make any money on the sale, I’d be able to pay off 3.5 Million in debt. Through the years I had bought and sold real estate, always putting my profit back into more real estate. That was my retirement. I remember my attorney slapped me on the back after the sale and said, “you’ll never have to work another day in your life.”
Six months later the real estate market crashed and I’ve been working my butt off ever since.
I wound up at an environmental company as a petroleum cleanup specialist. One year I took my homemade sauce to our Christmas party. My boss George liked it so much he had me make a batch to give to our customers. After that George convinced me to let him be a partner in a sauce company. I had the recipe, loads of food sales experience and he had the money.
I continued with my day job for another year while researching the condiment industry and getting our ducks in a row for our upstart sauce company. The bad news came in 2012, the rules that the state of Florida used for environmental work changed and eliminated my job and nearly put George out of business.
So here I was, out of work, unskilled, and flat broke! All I had was a sauce recipe and a wife and family who loved me. I decided to take a leap of faith and continue with the dream of bringing a product to market that not only tasted great, but was made of all natural ingredients.
It’s definitely been a challenge from day one and on many occasions, it looked like we would not make it. But I never considered giving up and it seemed as though something would happen and we’d get the boost we needed at a critical time. Prayers were obviously answered!
One of our biggest challenges was to come up with a name. Everyone agreed it was a fantastic sauce, but no one could peg a proper name. My wife and I got into a somewhat “tense” discussion over a couple of names, and she looked at me with a somewhat “stern” look and said, “well just don’t name it then!” I said, “That’s It. No Name!” And our slogan will be “Sauce so good it needs No Name.” “It’s the one name you can’t forget,” and the rest is history.
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