Man I’m struggling to remember what we did Friday. Seems like we did something, but maybe not. Guess I’ll have to skip that day. Too bad, it might have been something really fun. Sigh. Then again, I might have been tired and just gone to bed. My newly implemented weekday schedule starts off at 5:00 in the morning, so I don’t stay up too late. This all centers around the puppy, see: Get up at 5:00, feed the dog, and head out on a walk by 5:40. This puts us in Brookside by 6:00, which is conveniently what time the coffee shop opens. Get a coffee, read the paper, and by the time we get back home, voila’, it’s time to go to work. This effectively gives the pup an extra hour before his daily kennelling, which seems to be working out well.
Saturday, I was rudely awoken at the unholy hour of 7:30 with a little work event, which drug on painfully into the afternoon. During the time I was on the phone, however, I managed to get everything ready for an afternoon of bbq’ing. It was the inaugural lighting of the smoker this season, and baby back ribs were on the menu. Looking back over the span of my memory, (approximately 4 hours,) I don’t think I’ve ever done baby backs. I really don’t like them as much as spares, but they were on sale at the grocery and for some reason they didn’t have any spares… So that pretty much made the choice. I used my co-worker Ken’s recommended 3-2-1 method, and they came out rather famously if I do say so myself. (I’d link to the recipe, but I just noticed it has a key typo in it… c’mon Ken, how about some proofing.) The basic idea is that you give the ribs 3 hours of smoke, wrap them for 2 hours, then 1 more hour unwrapped. I did one slab with sauce, and one without. Believe it or not, the sauced ones were quite a bit better. I say “believe it or not” because I like my ribs dry, but the sauced slab was definitely better. That last hour crusted the sauce quite nicely, so they weren’t really sloppy or anything. So, take a cut of meat I don’t generally like, put sauce on it which I don’t generally like, and it comes out great… What can ya’ do. I guess that’s what experimenting is for. I’m aiming to try again next weekend, mostly because I had some horrible heat issues with the smoker that I have to figure out. Anyway… After eating all that food and being out in the sun all day we were worn out, so we watched “Ron Burgundy” and called it a night.
Sunday turned into kind of a “lazy day” despite all the plans I had laid out. It happens. I did get the lawn mowed, so there’s 40 minutes I don’t have to account for. After that we went on a little outing, mostly on a mission to find a light for the TV room. Failing on that mission, we instead went down and checked out the Pet Expo for a few hours. That was a fine time; We bought several toys for the dog and cat, and talked to our MPR friends for quite a while. That pretty much sums up the week I guess. Come on over next Sunday if you want to stare at some ribs cooking. Weather and interest providing, of course.