We have this product available in a number of themed crates:

• Dublin crate (for the Irish Whiskey fan)
• Miami crate (scotch and cigar lover)
• St. Andrews (for the golfer)

The Perfecto Cigar Case is also available in our custom crates section when you want to fully personalize your gift.

Polluted – I had originally thought this was a shot glass, but when it arrived I see that it’s a 13oz cup, really cool! Includes a recipe to make a fittingly coloured beverage with it.

Out Cold memo pad – I would have killed to have one of these back in the day. Now I’m old and likely to be the first one to pass out. As stated, they include 100 pages of SHAME!

Lit! birthday candles – We can all IMMEDIATELY think of someone that would love this, just be careful what time of night you give it to them, they might get desperate.

Winestein beer/wine mug – Wanna look fancy drinking your beer, no problem. Or maybe “that” buddy wants to try and fit in while he drinks his chardonnay during the game.

LucKey bottle opener – With summer coming up, this is the PERFECT addition to your keychain. Likely to be the most important key of all!

All of these items are in the custom crates section of site.

Born and raised around Toronto, Ontario, I haven’t had the good fortune to grow up around “real” down south BBQ. That hasn’t stopped me from growing an appreciation of meat cooked “low and slow”. I’ve purchased a number of cooking instruments over the years to aid in my education of BBQ, but for this recipe I move away from the traditional and towards the practical.

Slow cookers or Crock-Pots (a brand name) are fantastic general use kitchen appliances. You can easily cook a chili, beef stew or hearty soup in one, and they all turn out wonderfully.

Traditional pulled pork sandwiches call for slowly smoking a pork shoulder over low heat using any variety of wood chips/chunks to create a nice smoke flavour to the meat. Although some of that flavour will be missing from this recipe, you’ll find that the tenderness and sweetness of the finished product will not leave you wanting.

Pork shoulder

Pulled pork uses a pork shoulder (also known as Boston Butt, pork shoulder butt) because of the fat content within the meat. This ensures that the meat stays juicy over the long cooking period. You’re okay to go with either bone-in or bone-out, depending on what your butcher/grocer has on hand. This is usually an inexpensive cut of meat, and you’ll find you can feed a small army with a 5lb cut.

Ingredients:

• Pork shoulder/Boston butt (5lbs)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup chili powder
• 1/4 cup garlic powder
• 1/4 cup mustard powder
• salt and fresh ground black pepper
• Worcestershire sauce
• your favorite barbecue sauce

Putting it together:

Mix together the brown sugar, chili powder, garlic powder, mustard powder, and generous amounts of salt and FRESH GROUND black pepper. Now get your hands dirty you pansy and rub the mixture into the meat, ensuring that you’re getting into the crevices all over. You can do this with the meat inside of the slow cooker, just please make sure you haven’t turned it on already.

With the meat properly rubbed and the fat slab facing upwards, splash a bunch of Worcestershire sauce all over, having a small amount pool at the bottom (probably use about 1/3 cup).

After thoroughly washing your hands, turn the slow cooker on. You’ll need to cook this for 4 hours on high, or 8-10 hours on low. If you have the time, use the low method, you’ll have better results.

Once the cooking is finished, you’ll notice that the slab of fat, as well as the bone if you had it, slide extremely easily off. You know it’s done then. Using gloves, gather all meat into a big bowl and shred away. You can use two forks if you want, but I’ve always found it easier this way. Pour in your desired amount of barbecue sauce, I’m partial to Diana’s Gourmet Rib and Chicken sauce for this recipe.

Please make sure you’re using FRESH BUNS for this meal, I use a nice soft dinner roll or something.

To top your sandwich, I usually sauté (a fancy word for cooking things slowly in butter or oil) some sliced onions, green peppers and hot peppers, depending on who I’m serving.

As you can see, all this recipe requires is a little thinking ahead, as time is a factor. It’s super easy to accomplish, and your guests will keep coming back for more!

Nick pack!

Hopside down

As I was going to take my own advice (for once) and prepare to chill for tonight’s game with a cold beer, I wanted to post a review on one of the products we feature at King’s Crate called the “Hopside Down“. We have this awesome beer glass in our Oh Canada! crate, and it really is the centrepiece to the gift.

One thing to note immediately is that this glass is hand-blown, and sort of confuses the eye for a moment. People aren’t sure what to make of it at first. It fits a 350mL bottle of beer perfectly, so a beer can won’t fit.

One thing I didn’t expect was how cool it keeps your beer. Because the beer sits in the internal “funnel”, your hand is never directly palming the beer! Really cool!

Well, ends up I’ve had to open a beer about 3 hours before gametime, but it was all in the name of SCIENCE!!

That’s the byline on the TSN article about tonight’s upcoming gold medal game between Canada and the U.S., and I couldn’t agree with it more! We played each other on New Year’s Eve, and it was a hell of a thrilling game! Best of all Canada won it in the shootout, advancing us to the semi-finals.

Even with that win in such recent history, tonight will be no easy task for our juniors. An injury to a key defenceman, the fact we gave up two short handed goals last game, and the knowledge that we are both the favorite to win AND going for a historic sixth consecutive win can be daunting.

So grab a cold one (or dozen), this should be one for the ages!

The combination of these factors along with the fact that Newmarket was dumped with a massive amount of snow yesterday that led me to purchase a brand spanking new snowthrower.

Those who know me know that I can be somewhat clumsy (useless) when it comes to general maintenance. While I’m pretty adept with computers and software, things ALWAYS go wrong when I’m doing anything “handy” (there’s a pun here, wait for it).

So the story starts with me arriving home from Sears at 4:25pm, at which point my time in the sun is weening. Not to fear though, my new toy has a headlight on it! Which I will get to use when I’ve removed the beast from the box, removed the bolts, extended the handlebars, attached any extension rods, and finally attached the chute.

By the time all that is done it’s about 6:30, and I start the great machine up. It purrs like a beautiful red machine it is. I attempt to put it into reverse, but can’t move the handle. I attempt forward, still to no avail. At this point I’ve had her running for about 45 seconds. I shut her down so I can have a look around to ensure that I’ve removed all of the cable ties that were littered on the thing. This is when I bend down and put my hand on the exhaust.

Why does it always take couple of seconds before you notice that your skin is beginning to melt? As I’m reaching around with my right hand trying to see that everything is in perfect order, my left hand suddenly decides to tell my brain that it is on fire.

Although I didn’t actually have to stop, drop and roll, I was quite glad for all the snow that fell that day so I could thrust my hand into one of the piles.

Typing this entry was a little strange as 3 of my fingers are quite numb, but I did manage to get the machine working (all I had to do it seems was press the shifter down so I could move it, doh!) and the driveway is looking sweet.

**UPDATE**
haha, ok, wasn’t me, I live in Newmarket – Barrie police arrest man for drunken snowblowing