Whoa, that was a short weekend. I think I’ve been cheated. Let’s see… Friday we went down to the Brooksider for a little after-work winding down. We left early and went to Hen House to buy a few briskets, and so ended Friday.
Saturday, Doni went up North to her parents house to try and get rid of some of our stuff in a garage sale. She had some limited success; dumped a few things but no “big ticket” items went. Namely, my old hunting bow and my golf clubs. Oh well, back to the the basement for them. Meanwhile, I was home working on my “practice” briskets, getting ready for the big BBQ contest next weekend. Honestly we’re not too concerned with the competition itself, but we want some good grub for the party Friday night. As long as we don’t come in dead last I’ll be content. I’ve got my sights set on the top 75%, but that might be a bit too aggressive for first-timers. Anyway, I did two briskets; one was about 10 lbs, and the other was 14+ lbs. Tried out a new dry rub, and it was darn awesome. Another new thing I tried was putting the briskets in a heavy styrofoam cooler after I pulled them off the smoker. That worked out well, but I think I left them in the cooler too long. They came out well, but they’re entirely too tender. Personally I like my brisket fall-apart tender, but supposedly it needs just a little bit of “stretch” to it for the competition. Freaks.
Sunday was kind of an “impromptu” party over at Joe F’s house. Joe went to the Chiefs game and kindly left the house open so Todd and Bob could practice their secret recipes for the contest. And, of course, being “head chef” and all, I had to go supervise. And, of course, Doni wanted to come too. Then Ed didn’t have anything going on, so he came over too. All in all, we had a nice little fiesta in his absence. We did an 8 lb. pork butt and 3 chickens, and all came out pretty well. And, we watched the game on Joe’s nice big Sony while the smoker was doing it’s thing. The game stunk of course, but we had fun. The Martin’s came over after the football game, so we hung around and ate some of the product and played some cards. I thoroughly enjoyed the day, but sure didn’t get much done. I still have a bunch of wood to cut up, and clean my smoker, and put together my other “supplies.” Gonna be a busy week.
Oh by the way, a few links to generic “stuff”:
I put up some pictures from the Katy Trail Ride.
And here is a link to an article in the KC Star about my Fantasy Football team. They came to our party last week and did a little write-up, and took some pictures.