Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

Once again I am faced with the fact that I have neglected my blogging. Course, I am not the only one

Work has been busier and busier, so I haven't had the opportunities that I usually do to log during lunch. I mean, if I managed my lunch hour a little bit better I could watch clips of The Daily Show, eat my sandwich and blog. Maybe I will try that tomorrow, course I still haven't quite learned to chew bubblegum and walk at the same time.

Jeremy is back in town.

He picked up a copy of Halo2 the other day at Fry's. We saw some videos on YouTube on some pretty impressive Lego Mindstorms the other day, so yesterday we went to Toy's R Us to see if they had any kits. Well, as with most sought after items Toys R Us was found to be lacking what we wanted.

Anyway, off and on over the last few days we have been playing Halo 2 after work, I have been lucky enough to beat him more often than not. However, he is getting better, while I am more or less just staying at the same skill level. However, neither of us are anywhere near being what one would probably call "Good".

I bought Stratego a few weeks back. We played a couple of games of it last night, I won them both. I hadn't played that game in probably 15 years or so.

We played a game of Scrabble after that, Jeremy beat me.

I brought my laptop home tonight and decided that I would boot up and blog a little while I am on the couch. Unfortunately, I am fairly I cannot bring myself to work on the specs that I should work tonight. I have been writing up specs for the last two days. While not overly, overly detailed specs it has taken a toll on the old mind. Especially since I have been fielding other requests here and there, interruption while writing specs or documentation tends to be more of a drain than one would usually think.

Anyway, I brought the laptop home thinking I would work a little bit, but that doesn't look like it is going to be the case.

I bought "Babylon 5: The Lost Tales" the other day. I had seen that there was a new Bablyon 5 DVD a few weeks ago and had spent the last few trips to Target and Wal-Mart looking for it. I finally found it at Best Buy, otherwise I was going to have to buy it online.

I have it on the TV right now. So far the storyline of the first lost tale is building, nothing critical has happened yet. I am not sure how the tale is going to play out just yet.

Anyway. Let me tell y'all a little bit about what happeneed this past weekend.

I dragged Gina out of the house on Saturday. (Pretty literally.)

The original idea was to drag her out of the house grab breakfast and maybe see SuperBad. However, that isn't how it played out.

We ended up going to The Salt Lick for lunch. Now, going to the Salt Lick from our place up here in Cedar Park is like an all day adventure, particularly since we didn't leave until about 10:30 almost 11:00. We had a good time at Salt Lick, we stopped on the way to pick up some Beer and Wine Coolers, since the Salt Lick is BYOB.

On the way out of the Salt Lick I saw that they had a small easel setup with these little maps to some wineries around there.

One of the little maps had something interesting on it "High Quality Olive Oil".

Gina and I have had some great olive oil from this place up north, a Spanish olive oil. (I can't spell the name of the place, but it is like Fugarelli's.)

So, we decided that we should follow the map and see where the adventure leads us. We ended up at this little ranch where they make their own olive oil, cold press, right there on the premises. They even grow most of their own olives. It is a working cattle ranch that also grows olives and grapes (for wine), they make their own wine on-site as well.

The olive oil was fantastic. I mean it is hard to describe, but as cheap as I am let me tell you I had no problem paying $19.99 for a bottle of olive oil that is probably about 1/8 the amount of olive oil that I get from CostCo for $10 or $12.

Anyway, they had some very interesting boutique type stuff too, mustards, jellies. However, the interesting thing was the balsamic vinegar, they infuse it with pears or lemons. We bought the one with pears. We also bought a couple of bottles of wine, a bottle of Sangria and a bottle of Tejanti.

It was a fun time, we made it home at about 5:30.

Well, I am getting sleepy, so best that I call it quits on the blogging for tonight.

Till tomorrow, while I blog, eat and watch The Daily Show.

Laterz

Another morning has come and thus is bringing our vacation another day closer to the end.

It has been great being able to sleep in and not worry about alarm clocks or deadlines to get some place. However, for most of the last week my body has been waking me up between 8 and 9 AM. I have never really been able to sleep much past 9 or 10 AM, unless recovering from a night that were tequila was readily available.

Gina got the latest Harry Potter book and is now sitting in the living room reading it, throwing out the occasional 'Oh man' and 'No way'.

She looked at my itchy torso and told me that it is probably just my 'tan', therefore I think I might have ever the slightest touch of sunburn. Which makes a bit more sense than my white shirt being the culprit, given that she did use the same detergent as I did on the darks. I have the usual forearm and leg below the knee 'farmer's tan', but this year I tried to get some sun of my chest and back, so I am definitely glad I used the SPF 45 and not a 15 or 30 on Friday.

Regardless, the BBQ is tomorrow. I will need to find out what time so that I can try to figure out when to start smoking the brisket. I normally smoke a brisket for at least 8 hours and no more than 14. It depends on the size of the brisket. The first 3 to 4 hours are spent in the smoker with plenty of mesquite loaded on the coals, ensuring that mesquite flavor has a chance to get that good smoke ring you want on a brisket.

The rest of the time is spent wrapped in tinfoil, this helps to keep the brisket from getting dried out while it cooks the rest of the way through. If you have a good broiler pan (think that is what it is called) you can even finish off your brisket (still wrapped in tinfoil) in the oven. I have done that a couple of times and it works out well, because with your oven you can keep a very even temperature and with the broiler pan you can catch the juices that might slip out of the tinfoil while it cooks.

Because, once your brisket (or other meats) are all wrapped in tinfoil and in the smoker, there is no need to keep adding mesquite (or other hardwoods like oak, hickory, etc) you just add charcoal to keep the temperature up. Meaning that the smoker is basically just an outdoor oven at that point.

Sometime today Gina and I will need to run to Meijer, pick up some Chicken breasts, Pabst Blue Ribbon and maybe see if there is any good looking sausage.

I am going to read some more of my book now. And bug Gina to see if she knows if Snape is friend or foe.

Laterz

Uggg.... my torso is all itchy.

I got to my in-laws in what honestly could be in the nick-of-time. I was scratching at myself here and there on the way back from the cottage, but on the short drive from Kelly's house to my in-laws I had started to scratch at my torso something fierce. I am not sure what the heck it is from, my best guess is my shirt. Since nothing else on me itches, which means that I didn't get into any poison ivy and it isn't some allergic reaction to all the sun-tan lotion that I slathered on today.

I will have to ask Gina what she used when she washed and dried the whites the other day. I am pretty sure I saw her use the same detergent that I used on the rest of my clothes (All Free Clear, hypoallergenic). When I took off my shirt to get ready for bed after dragging in all the luggage (while simultaneously scratching my back) I noticed that my torso was a wonderful tint of red and that I had more or less tiny hive like bumps all-over sans a few patches.

Like I said, since my torso is the only part of me that is itchy I can't imagine that it is anything I ate or what not.

I took a few chloropheniramine pills (allergy pills) in the hopes of stopping the itching. Obviously I won't be putting the shirt back on.

I am not sure exactly what all I will be doing for the next couple of days. But I know that I will be smoking a brisket, watering my Mom's plants and trying to see the Sara & Patty.

I threw together a dry rub (spice mix) earlier this afternoon and put it on the brisket, then wrapped the brisket in what could be argued as an excessive amount of plastic wrap. I am not sure if the BBQ is planned for tomorrow or Sunday.

Gina hopped out of the car at Kelly's house as they are off to go and buy copies of the 7th installment of the Harry Potter series, The Deathly Hollows.

I told Gina that she will have to give me the skinny on all the details when she is done reading it. If the book isn't too long (and she is hoping for 1000+ pages) she thinks that she will have it finished before we hop the plane back to Texas.

Ugg... still itchy.

I am going to catch up on some web comics then pass out (I hope).

Laterz

Gina's dad bought a pork roast the first day we were up here and left it in the fridge. So Gina cut some chops out of it last night and I grilled them up using some of American Spoon's Apple Cider grilling sauce. They tasted great, I did overcook them just a little.

The American Spoon store in Charlevoix was the first stop we made on our adventure yesterday. They had some great tasting samples out, different jams, jellies, spreads and grilling sauces. I sampled a number of them. Gina and I had spent a bit of time being couch potatoes watching TopChef yesterday and one of the winning dishes were these pork chops with an apple cider reduction sauce. So the idea of an apple grilling sauce with the pork chops sounded just too tasty to pass up.

They also had some other wonderful stuff. Gina talked me into tasting the Chili-Lime grilling sauce as well, it was excellent. The clerk suggested that we try it out with chicken. I think I will save the Chli-Lime until we get back to Texas.

It looks like today is going to be another beautiful day. I had been using this spray-on SPF-30 stuff, it was nice applied easy wasn't really greasy, but the whole bottle seemed to run out pretty quickly. While we were out we bought some more sun screen, I am going to try an SPF-45 and see if that still lets me get some sun.

As we walked out on the pier that extends just beyond where the Pine river meets Lake Michigan, I enjoyed some tasty taffy that we had bought from a candy store on the main drag of shops in Charlevoix. Oh yeah, we had stopped and had a really good lunch at Scovie's a little deli and pie shop on the drag, we had the apple crumb pie after lunch. It was just sweet enough, but I think it could have used a little bit more cinnamon.

Well, I need to go and grab some breakfast and get ready to sit out on the dock.

Laterz

After having spent two fabulous days in the sun at the end of the dock Gina and I are ready for a break from sun worship and are going to be heading out for a little adventure. We are going to find out what Charlevoix has to offer.



Last night we had dinner at Pearl's, a very tasty Cajun joint that happens to be hidden away up here in Elk Rapids. I had the Etouffette with the crawfish and blackened shrimp, it was excellent. We shared the red bean cake appetizer. Gina had the sirloin and a side of cheese grits. Their cornbread was spicy and excellent.

We rented a couple of movies from 'The Corner Store' that is over near (or in) Central Lake. The first movie we watched 'The Fountain' was horrible. I mean seriously, I sort of knew what the movie was supposed to be about given that I had seen the previews before, but I figured the previews were so disconnected because of the fact that they were previews. By which I mean, the storyline in the previews jumps around, I thought they did that to keep you interested in the story.

Nope, the whole movie is that way. In my opinion it was a beautifully shot movie, good cast, but the storyline presented in the movie was horrible and extremely hard to follow. Both Gina and I agreed that the movie was bad.

The second movie was excellent, Miss Potter. Which was about the author who wrote Peter Rabbit and a variety of other children's books.

I popped popcorn on the stove, it turned out OK, but not as good as usual. Not sure if that is because of the popcorn, or if it was because maybe I put too much in. I am sure that I will be doing more popcorn before we leave, so I will figure it out, by putting in 1/4 less the next time. Not to mention that we had plenty of extra popcorn.

It appears that one of the neighbors up here has finally gotten broadband with wifi, there is a network up here called HagoodNet. It is open, but our connection is low. I am sticking with dial-up to complete my blogging for today, but tomorrow I might try out the connection.

I will be grilling pork loin tonight and corn, not sure what else we are going to be having for dinner. Gina's dad bought a brisket for me and while we were at Meijer's in Traverse I found some Mesquite chunks. So sometime before the week is out, I will be smoking a brisket.

We will need to pickup some sausages and I think I would like to smoke some chicken while I am at it. No pork this time. Next year.

Laterz

We sample the pork last night for dinner.

As per usual I was late getting the smoker started, by about an hour and a half.

Needless to say an hour difference, even after 7 hours of cooking means quite a bit. The pork we ate last night was definitely tasty, but the texture wasn't quite right. It wasn't just falling apart like it should, the meat was still more steak like and less pulled pork like.

Luckily, the big pork shoulder I bought came in two pieces. I had left the other piece in the oven to finish cooking for an hour and change. At first I was just going to let it sit in there for another 30 minutes or so. However, after cutting into the first one I decided it was better to leave it in a little longer.

And from the looks of it when I was packing it up into bags to put into the fridge, it definitely was falling apart. Perfect.

Oh yeah, I changed up the way I was cooking it.

I did about 4 hours in the smoker. Then I wrapped the meat in foil and moved it to the oven, I set the oven for about 275 degrees. The first hunk of meat came out of the oven after about 3 hours. The second hunk of meat came out after about 5.

Why did I do this?

1. With the temperature being about 50 F out, it is harder to keep the smoker at a consistent temperature.

2. With it drizzling (light sprinkling) it is even harder to keep the smoker at a consistent temperature.

3. After you wrap the meat in foil, the burning of wood and coal is really just a heat source, your not gaining any benefit of the smoke it produces. It is effectively an outdoor oven. And since it is cold out, using the oven in the kitchen actually warms up the house to a normal level. Whereas in the summer, using the oven in the kitchen makes the house uncomfortably warm.

I would have to say that it turned out pretty good. John enjoyed it, as did Gina. If they could have held out for another hour (or had I been able to wake up an hour earlier) the first hunk of meat out of the oven would have been magnificently perfect vs pretty good.

I think I might start trying to work on a good brisket next.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

At the NetworkIP's xmas party there is a raffle with fabulous prizes. It is called the Angle Tree raffle. You buy tickets and give the money goes to help needy families in Longview. A good cause. I try to buy about $100 in tickets every year. The more tickets I buy the better chance of Gina and I winning a prize right?

Well, This year the Angel tree prizes were pretty good. However, the big prize on the Angel Tree was a stainless steel grill (we already have one, thanks to my Pops, as a wedding gift), needless to say not something we need. One year it was a Lazy Boy, now that is something I can use.

The CEO and Managing Partner also tend to help out the 4H kids, by purchasing livestock at the annual auction. One year they did cows and another it was cows and chickens I think. This year, Pete, CEO, decided to go with a "Grand Champion Hog". And in doing so, he had lots of extra meat. So as a bit of a gag prize, you could win 50 lbs of pork. Roasts, Ribs, Sausage and Chops.

Well, I won 50 lbs of pork on the Angel Tree. Given that the average price of pork is about $2. I broke even on the raffle. Well, I got some good looking chops and Pete was kind enough to throw into my bundle 2 racks of ribs (they feel like baby back ribs) and quite a number of chops. So all in all I likely got about $120 worth of meat.

However, the raffle isn't all about the fabulous prizes. Course, it sucks to win nothing at all. That has happened. But in the end I still get that wonderful feeling of giving money to a good cause.

We also "won" $150 in toys r' us gift cards. However, we don't have much of a use for those really. So we traded them and some cash to a co-worker who had a $500 home depot gift card. Which, obviously we can always use.

The game last year was sort of like "White Elephant" which is where you get a gift, but you can then play the game and take the gift of the person before you or keep yours. This year, it was "Deal or no Deal". It looked fun. However, it took quite a while for a game to be played.

Back to the point of this post. The Pork!

Word got out that I won some meat. I had plans already to smoke some of it this weekend for dinner for Gina, John and I. However, since word got out and Eryn (graphic artist) had enjoyed it when I smoked pork for the Dallas office, for the Jaduka Launch, she asked if I was going to bring some in.

This request sort of snowballed from left overs into a potluck luncheon.

Unfortunately, I didn't take the pork out of the deep freeze in time for it to thaw out. This meant a trip to Cost Co. I am sort of kicking myself though, I should have checked the ads. HEB had pork shoulder (Also known as Boston Butt) on sale. I could have saved $0.20/lb. Which would have been about $3.50 or so. None the less.

The smoking is just about done. I am going to wrap it in foil and put it into the oven in a few minutes. The temp outside is making it a little bit more troublesome to keep the smoker at a constant temperature. I might have to revive the plan to build a brick smoker. Be easier to trap the heat in a brick one vs a metal one.

Anyway.

The x-mas party was a great time. I enjoyed meeting a few new people and seeing some coworkers that I don't see as often these days. The drive to Longview is a bit of a pain, but getting together for some food and fun is always a good thing.

Laterz.

But I will admit and even proclaim myself as a night owl.

Gina and I had dinner last night @ FireBowl, a great asian diner/cafe place. They have some chinese, japanese, thai. They make a great "Spicy Coconut Soup" it comes with chicken, rice and shitaki mushrooms. They also make some great "Soft Thai Summer Rolls". Those being my two favorites.

We were going to see "Little Miss Sunshine" at the movie theatre next door. However, the heatre nextdoor was PACKED. So we headed over to the Lake Creek Alamo Draft House as they were showing that same movie, but in 45 minutes.

The movie was FANTASTIC. Honestly, one of the funniest and most original movies that I have seen. The characters were great, the plot of absurdly original and it had some subtle social commentary that made fun of all those folks that love to stick their kids in pageants.

So we hit HEB on the way back to the house to pick up some charcoal. I made up the brine for the pork after we got home. I stuck to the known success, Salt, water, garlic and a few spices. I will experiment next time.

I finished cleaning up around 2am and headed to bed.

I woke up at 8:30. I had wanted to wake up around 6. Of course, setting an alarm clock would probably have helped with the waking up part. I got up and went about preparing the smoker and seasoning the meat (after removing it from the zip lock bags I was brining in).

This time around I decided that I wanted to change up the "fire box" in my smoker works. I have a vertical smoker.

Here is a diagram of how the old smoker looks.



This is basically the setup that they recommend in the manual. The only exception is that they say you should use water in your drip pan. This recommended because of the fact that the BBQ is supposed to be indirect heat. And with a vertical smoker design you definitely get good heat flow, but the meat is more exposed to the flame. The drip pan collects the fat that drips out of the meat as it cooks.

By filling it with water this obviously keeps the fat drippings from bonding with the bowl (or catching fire). However, it creates a HUGE mess. Not to mention that the water evaporates while it cooks, so you have to keep refilling it. I found this to be a pain in the ass. There is another side effect of all of the "steam" in the smoker. It does help to cook the food. However, everytime you open the door to add fuel (wood/coal) or water you lose ALL of the steam.

This mean that the temperature in the smoker drops severely and must rebuild.

A few years back when scouring the net for BBQ tips and tricks I read about using sand rather than water. You cover the sand with tinfoil to collect the drippings. This has two benefits. The first is that obviously you don't have to refill the sand, it doesn't evaporate. This means that you will only open the door to add fuel.

The second benefit is that the sand retains the heat. It means that the smoker doesn't lose as much heat when you open the door. This makes controlling the temperature easier and keeps a more constant temp while cooking.




The following diagram is basically how I set the smoker up this morning. The "Fire box" bowl that comes with most of your lower end model smokers is a fine if your only going to be cooking over it for a couple of hours. Which is really never the case when smoking meat. I would say you should be looking at 6 hours minimum, unless your only doing ribs and sausage, then your about 4 hours for the ribs and 1 hour for the sausage. Anyway, the reason it is only good for a few hours is the build up of the ash. There is only a small hole in the bottom of the fire bowl for the ash to get out of. The second thing is that the placement of the bowl is in a bad spot for the air vents. The fire had a hard time getting air. Thus, I took it out of the holder and placed the bowl on bricks.

This still however, left me with the ash problem. In looking at the smoker last time I realized that there was enough room in the smoker (without the bowl) for me to put small mesquite logs in. (The last time I smoked I used only mesquite wood, but it was in chunks. Still hard to fit in the bowl.)

When we were cleaning out the garage I found a bag of mesquite wood, but not chunks, more like split logs. This meant that I needed to be able to put them in there. The bowl had to go. Gina bought me a little charcoal grill a few years back. In it there is this flat, square metal plate that has a grate on it.

As it turns out this was a perfect fit. I could place it on the bricks and it was the perfect hieght for good airflow and to allow me to place the mesquite logs on the fire. I still wanted to use the charcoal, only because after the first 3 hours of cooking in the smoker, the meat gets wrapped in tinfoil. Thus, no need for smoke just heat.

To wrap this post up. Since I didn't get the meat into the smoker until 10:30. This means that I can expect to leave around 8pm rather than 6pm.

From the first hour and a half of cooking, I think the change in the setup is definitely working.

More laterz

... because of the way your eyes burn.

I have on occasion used other woods when smoking bbq. But when it comes right down to it, none of them give the meat that great smokey taste like mesquite.

The draw back of it is that it burns my eyes. I mean I have never been pepper sprayed, but I imagine it is about 10 times worse than getting a face full of mesquite smoke. Oh yeah, and then there is the smelling like mesquite for days on end afterwards. But it is a labor of love, so I'm not bitching just giving my 2 cents.

I would like to think that Amanda from the office read my blog and got the idea of making a casserole for lunch next week. However, I doubt it. She is just that way, she loves to cook for people.

In the spirit of that sharing nature, I offered to smoke some pork shoulder for Monday. Providing the Jaduka group with some hopefully tasty pulled-pork sandwhiches. Gina and I hit CostCo on the way home yesterday. And to my suprise they had some pork shoulder this time. The times we have been shopping before, they have never had it.

So I bought about 15 pounds of pork and a small beef roast. I am going to brine them overnight and smoke them tomorrow. They should be finished by the time I need to head out for Dallas.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Amanda is going to arrange for some potato salad, coleslaw and buns to eat the pork on.

Who knows maybe I will have to break out into song during the week.

I should have posted this last night. But I had already shutdown and put away the laptop for the night.

The pork shoulder turned out absolutely perfect. I am however already plotting for the next time. I did about a 7 pound shoulder this time. I think I will do two about the 8 pound range.

The first one I think I am going to try to make a little sweeter. Im going to boil some apples in with the brine. As I was eating some pork last night I thought that a little hint of apple would make it all the better.

The other one I am going to try to spice it up some more. The garlic flavor definitely sunk into the meat. However, I think I want to get some crushed red pepper or some hot sauce. I don't want to kill it, just make it a little spicier.

I will probably do beef again. Maybe not a brisket, maybe just a roast. My Smoker is a decent size but isn't really big enough to put a whole brisket in there. So I end up having to cut the brisket in half. The roasts at HEB tend to be the perfect size.

Oh yeah, the rain did stay away all day. However, shortly after I pulled everything out of the smoker it started to sprinkle. Then during dinner it started to rain very HARD.

Talk about perfect timing.

The "Mission Accomplished" headline is more so related to the fact that we just dropped off the Achieva at Champion Toyota. It made it all the way down there and didn't dump the anti-freeze on the way. That issue is now Champion's problem.

Gina says that they will most likely auction it off, after cleaning it up just a little. Again, not our problem.

The sales guy, Jack was very helpful. Gina pointed out a few tiny paint defects (dings, a couple of scratches) that she was hoping they could touch-up for us. Jack spoke with their touch-up guy who was there today and he said that he already knew about it. Apparently it was on his list of cars to touch-up, but we bought it before he could.

I must say I am almost looking forward to the cross-country trip in this car. The passenger seat area is roomier. The car gets better gas mileage. The driver side is definitely much roomier. There is overall more cargo space than the Achieva (the cargo area + roof rack). And most importantly, the gas tank is about 2 gallons smaller. "Why is this a good thing?" you ask. Because now we will have to stop that much sooner.

And you know me, I love to stop and smell the roses. I mean what else are you going to do on a 1200+ mile trip.

Speaking of... my sister, Rachel is driving cross-country to Portland Oregon, right now. I need to get an update from her on where they are. They are going to be stopping at Mt. Rushmore and one of the national parks around there on the way. I am quite envious. There are not any reall attraction sites on the way too and from Michigan and Texas.

I will post up what I think her route is later today.

laterz