I found something of Tony’s this weekend that I had searched for extensively in the year after he died.

When he first started smoking a lot of BBQ, I bought him a small leather journal. He spent so many weekends practicing; different recipes, cook times, and temperatures. Smoke, taste test, rinse and repeat. (Almost 20 years later, I still don’t really want to eat BBQ chicken thighs.)

The journal helped him track what he’d cooked and the results. It evolved over time and included his recipes for homemade BBQ sauces, meat injections and his BBQ baked beans.

But when I went to find the journal after he passed and I was getting ready to try my hand a using the smokers, I couldn’t find it anywhere. It wasn’t with the jacquard in the cabinet he first kept it in. I looked through our old shelf of cookbooks and didn’t find it. In the garage, he had toolboxes that he kept his BBQ competition supplies in, neither of those contained the journal.

I was stumped on where it could be hiding. Eventually, I stopped looking and figured I’d come across it someday. Deep down, I knew it was in this house, but I would drive myself mad looking.

Then almost 5 and half years after he dies, I find it. The small black journal was tucked in among the cookbooks. They were falling over in the cabinet and as I straightened them up, I finally saw it. Hiding in one of the places I already looked.

I am so happy I found it. He was way more diligent about keeping track of how he cooked things in the beginning, but this journal is so full of him. I don’t have a lot of things with his handwriting. We never kept cards and weren’t the type to exchange love letters. Even though some of the recipes are outdated, this is a keepsake worth saving. Although it does have his heavily guarded BBQ Baked Bean and his Red Mistress BBQ Sauce recipes.

His Mom was my first phone call and she’s already planning to make the beans next weekend. Sorry Tony, your secret recipe is out of the bag.