“-----Thanks for that link, although I had trouble understanding the parts!!---“ Lars, I don’t have a BGE, but based on what I know about this kind of things, the following is my analysis: All grills, gas, wood, charcoal or electric, have issues with temperature control. That is just the physics of how things work. It makes no difference how much money you paid for the appliance. The gadget Jessyf linked, IMHO, is a very useful device. It seems to me that it incorporates a computer type of cooling blower, which is driven by a brushless DC motor. This type of motors run very efficiently and is practically noiseless. They are normally rated with service life of 50,000 hours. However, those types of motors are mostly 12VDC or 5VDC motors. The Party Q model uses 4 AA batteries, that makes it 6VDC. Also, brushless motors are somewhat sensitive to heat. In my experience, if the operating environment is near 130F, and voltage at 6VDC, the motor life can be much shorter. But I don’t think this will be too much of a problem. The blower is controlled by digital electronics controller using a typical Type K thermocouple temperature sensor. The controller should have no problem to keep temperature to within one degree range. I will not go into PID controllers at this point, which is capable of figuring out the characteristics of the combustion and the thermal insulating quality of your appliance. The controller determines how much air to feed the fire to keep the accurate temperature setting and that allows you to grill at a significantly lower temperature, if that is what you prefer. You will also save fuel because there will be less wasted heat. You will be able to reach higher grilling temperature much quicker. However, it will not be able to give you a much better temperature distribution within the appliance. The will remain more or less the same. dcarch

We went to a couple of barbeque places today and ending up buying the extra large Big Green Egg, and I think we will be very happy with it. Kevin thinks it will be great for parties, and now it will be even easier for us to cook for a crowd. Since we now have three charcoal grills, we can use separate grills for separate dishes which will make it easier for us to make multiple dishes at once, even if they require different temperatures. We also have the electric smoker, and I have to say that we get a more intense smoke flavor from that than we do from the charcoal - or at least it permeates the meat more. For smoking chilies, only the charcoal will do the job the way I want it. The BGE that we bought also has a pizza stone and can be used for grilling pizza - something that I've been wanting to do since first visiting the pizza making forum. We bought some outdoor lights for our pergola, and I think they will provide way more light than we required, but at least we can lower the wattage when we want to. I haven't bought anything for lighting the fountain yet because I want to have that installed by an electrician on an exterior wall of the house. I'm hoping to light much of the back yard that way and have it on a dimmer. I don't really want underwater lights in my fountain at this point but will talk with the electrician about that. I'm thinking that I will get my yard lit in stages and start off with getting some outdoor outlets installed at strategic points so that lights could be hooked up later. We went out for dinner this evening because I wanted sushi! We haven't assembled the Big Green Egg yet. Lars

eliza_824 wrote: "Well, pictures from our little humble home are going to look pretty contrasting compared to...." I say DITTO. Eliza, You have wonderful color and beautifully laid out! But I'm going to steal your words quoted above after seeing all these spectacular gardens....obviously created with pride and lots of love. Here I thought I had some colorful surroundings, some not-so-average ideas and ....then I saw all these pictures, drooled, and then had second thoughts about sharing pics of my little piece of Humble Haven. I THANK EVERY ONE OF YOU who have shared pics/links of your beautiful surroundings, your pics....each one...have inspired me, left me jaw-dropped, made me smile with their color and given me more ideas! I'm in Southern California so most of the pics were taken within the last week...except for the "before" pics in the album linked below. All pics in album have explanations. Here is a link that might be useful: More Back Yard Pics

Sounds good. Do you remember any of the other ingredients? Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,shitake_mushroom,FF.html