I’m almost embarrassed to talk about how I nearly missed this performance.

I’m a huge Alton Brown fan. Since his show Good Eats debuted in 1999, he has brought food science and geekery to the masses. Before the days of TiVo and DVRs, I’d make a point to watch the show weekly. Now that I can record the shows, I catch episodes whenever I can.

I’ve cooked dozens of his classic recipes — most of which are successful, although I’ve had some trouble with some of the recipes and techniques as well. Our sons have grown to love the show over the years, as well.

May I recommend the episodes from the first and second seasons, which cover the absolute basics: how to chop an onion, cook an egg, cook a steak in a cast iron skillet, cook pasta, bake a cake. He also covers useful (and useless) kitchen appliances and tools.

So Alton Brown had been on tour for much of Fall 2013. I saw some Twitter traffic on his feed about someone being excited about AB coming to Denver in February.

I started looking for tickets to the Denver show.

Because I’m a moron.

The day after the Denver show, AB was performing in Colorado Springs. Duh! I found this all out about a week beforehand.

I zipped down to the Pikes Peak Center box office as soon as I could and got the family four tickets to the show. We were near the back of the theater, but we could still see pretty well thanks to the Jumbotron on the stage.

Yes, the show started at 7:30pm and yes, the show was on a Tuesday…and school night**. But my sons love Good Eats as much as I do and I knew they would learn something.

I do wish I had more time to plan for this because members of the press could meet AB for an hour before the show. I inquired about this with my GeekMom.com credentials, but it was too late. The meet and greet was full. But I know now for next time.

**During the show we had a text message that school had been canceled the following day due to cold weather. The temperature dipped below zero that night.

You can’t take a lot of pictures…well, you aren’t supposed to take any pictures at all during the show…but I got a few. And the one I took during the show was done with express permission by AB.

What’s cool about an Alton Brown live show is that he makes it clear that he can do things that Food Network wouldn’t allow. He played with fire, fire extinguishers, and he could speak freely about some rather controversial topics about healthy eating.

The highlights of the show included:

• Ten things he’s sure of about food. This was a list of food facts that apparently evolved constantly. Brown claimed that one of the items was brand new as of that week (but I can’t remember which one). The most memorable items on that list was “Chickens don’t have fingers” and “Trout shouldn’t be an ice cream flavor.”
• “Jet Cream”: Using fire extinguishers to instantaneously freeze cream to make ice cream. An audience member was brought up to assist in making some ice cream.
• The “Mega Bake”. After a song about Alton wanting an Easy Bake oven as a child, he unveiled a huge contraption that claimed to have 54,000 Watts of energy and could heat to 650 degrees F. An audience member was brought up to help AB make pizzas and run them through the oven. The oven worked!

• The music. AB had a suite of guitars and some other instruments on the left side of the stage. Throughout the show he — and his Edible Inevitable Trio which included two musicians who were regulars on Good Eats — would sing songs about food. He said the singing and guitar was something he wished he could have done more on the show, but he had other priorities. There was also some saxophone playing, which was fantastic! He sang about airport shrimp cocktail (which had made him very sick on a flight…and reminded me of the Ivar’s Clam Chowder that made me very sick on a Seattle-Orlando flight in 2004). He also sang about the things he’d teach his daughter about cooking…which could be counted on 5, no 8, no 12 fingers. He wrote a love song about caffeine, which was full of chemistry goodness. “Pork Chop Blues” told the tale of his soon-to-be-mother-in-law’s cooking. The songs were humorous, well-performed, and many of them were educational. If you want a glimpse of his songs, check out this YouTube compilation.

If you missed this batch of shows, don’t fret because The Edible Inevitable Tour will resume this fall.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND!