June 2009 Archives

First, I'm thankful for all the good friends I've been lucky to have in my life... it's truly a blessing. The bbq went beautifully today, but I need to stop cooking for 50 unless I actually have 50 confirmed attendees :) Everything turned out well -- the turkey was a big hit, and even though I thought the brisket was a little overcooked, I was able to trim it up nicely.

Pictures are here. Someday the house will be completely clean, but we're not quite there yet. Still it wasn't horrible :)

The final menu was:

Appetizers:
Onion dip with potato chips
Jalapeno popper dip with corn chips
Cheese tray with breads
Veggie tray with ranch dip

Mains:
Pulled pork (pecan smoke) with a wide variety of BBQ sauces
Brisket (Jim Beam/oak smoke)
Turkey breast (brief marinade in Williams Sonoma turkey brine with orange juice, then a maple smoke)

Sides:
Macaroni salad
Potato salad
Cole slaw
Corn Salad -- this went over really well
Cheesy potatoes
Cinnamon apple slices

Desserts:
Strawberry Jello Pretzel Salad
Texas sheet cake -- didn't like the recipe or execution, turned out like pecan fudge with a weird spongy base
White chocolate macadamia nut bar cookies
M&M bar cookies

Way too much food, but it's nice to have people fed and happy :)

Well, the meats are all smoked and tucked safely in the fridge. White chocolate macadamia nut bars, M&M bars, and strawberrry pretzel jello salad is stowed in the fridge. Tomorrow morning it's Texas sheet cake, jalapeno popper dip, and corn salad left to prep. Everything else will be washing and drying salad greens, chopping veggies, and blocking drinks in ice. I'm thoroughly exhausted, but today also brought news from my biopsy... the cancer is gone :) We're still doing another three months of treatment (minimum) but if I clear the biopsy in three months, then we get sent over to the fertility doc.

Wiggle your big toe...

Despite my inability to actually publish my blog post last night when I wrote it, today has been good! I got up at 5am to take the rubbed butts out of the fridge to warm up. Around 6am I went out and fired up the smoker, and joy and success! It actually got hot this time! Since the 12lb butt was actually two pieces of meat, one about 5lbs and the other 7lbs, I put them on separate racks and popped them in. This time since we're having so many different smoked meats, I decided I wanted to keep it simple and just do one wood per meat. The pulled pork got pecan wood, which I just love. It's not quite as strong as a hickory or a mesquite, but it gives a good flavor.

I started this so early because I was afraid it was going to take 18 hours to cook. It was mostly hands off -- I did have to change the drip pan around 1:30ish, but other than that, not much to do. The temp held steady, and even went a little on the hot side -- I was aiming for 220ish, but it got up to 250 at times, probably because it was 95 degrees outside. I decided to poke around with instant read thermometer around 5pm. Clearly getting readings up to 200, so it's done! I pulled both of the butts out and they were falling apart. I snuck a taste, and it's wonderful, and moist. Big success!

Tomorrow I'll smoke the two 5 to 6lb briskets that I got. They are currently marinating in an absolutely delicious mix of apple cider vinegar, worcestershire, garlic, paprika, pepper, salt, brown sugar and olive oil. I picked up some Jim Beam oak barrel smoker pucks today at Bass ProShops, and I think that will complement the brisket quite nicely.

Saturday, I'll smoke the turkey that I've yet to procure. That will be brined tonight and be ready to go by Saturday morning. Tomorrow I'll cook the desserts: scotcheroos and a few other things. Saturday morning I'll finish up the dessert offerings and make the corn salad and prep veggies. Then some artful arranging of spaces and a quick shower... then magic!

Sooooo, I'm really hoping a lot of folks show up to the bbq. Why? 12 pounds of brisket, 12 lbs of pork shoulder, and that's before the turkey shows up. We got the smoker fixed tonight, and I've got brisket marinating, and the pork shoulder is sitting with a rub in the fridge. Tomorrow, I'll be smoking the pork shoulder all day.. and that will magically become pulled pork. Friday the brisket will be smoked, and Saturday, the turkey or turkey breast will get its turn in the smoker.

I went to Costco tonight and grabbed some hotdogs and some frozen burger patties -- we used to love those at Globalcenter bbqs. Picked up some Tillamook for the burgers, some chips, lemons and limes and some other stuff.

In brief, the megace is having some effect on the cancer cells, as of the 3/17 biopsy. Today's biopsy did not go so well -- don't go into an endometrial biopsy with a full bladder, a helpful tip from me to you. The doctor wasn't sure she got enough of a sample for pathology to read this time, and holy hell, it hurt like a bitch. The bad news is my doctor is packing up and heading back east at the end of July. The good news is that we'll do a D&C and implant a Mirena IUD to dose localized progesterone, so that we can cut down on my oral dosage of megace... since I'm still packing on pounds :) I'm trying more behavior modification on that front, so hopefully we can actually kick this crap to the curb.

I'm not terribly happy about losing my doc, but hopefully I'll still be in good hands. Fertility-wise, we're going to see how this continues to react to the drug treatment. If I can get rid of the cancer cells and get my weight down, we can skip the whole surrogate process and I can just pop out my own puppies, though not plus 8 style please. Despite being quite sore, I'm pretty happy that we're seeing some progress.

Now, that just leaves me 3 days to clean house and get a big-assed BBQ together. Definitely looking forward to having people out here -- I just hope it's not blisteringly hot or rainy.

Another busy week as we lead up to Nanog, and start hitting stride with summer. We sent out an invite for a larger gathering in two weeks. So far a tepid response, but I know that summer weekends fill up fast, so I'm not personally offended :) Hopefully we'll be doing this on a fairly regular basis throughout the summer so no biggie if people miss this one. I'm looking forward to a new menu, and new challenges with additional folks.

The rest of the week was just planning and organizing for the trip to Philadelphia. Since my crocheting sucks, I've decided to try my hand at quilting again. Luckily Philly has a fair amount of fabric shops and quilt shops... which means I'm packing light and bringing an extra suitcase for any fabric finds.

I'm happy to report that the first BBQ was a success. Good friends and good times (hopefully) were had by all. Per usual, I made way way too much food, but most leftovers either freeze well, or are easy to repurpose. The Jalapeno Popper Dip from Big Red Kitchen was a hit. My only modification there was using 4 ounces of mild jalapeno rings in place of the green chiles. Plenty of heat from the 4 ounces of hot jalapeno rings though, so it was yummy and spicy. To save all of our waistlines, I did trash the leftovers on that one, but I'd definitely make it again for a party. Other items included pulled pork from the broken smoker; various marinated chicken parts (and I apologize for still not quite knowing how to cook chicken well on the Weber :), green salad, potato salad, coleslaw, and au gratin potatoes. Desserts were chocolate chip bars, white chocolate macadamia bars, scotcheroos, and a black forest trifle. I made tea and limeade, and we had a bunch of other drinks. Ron was wise enough to bring a Sam Adams variety pack (who knew they had such things!) which was perfect for those who do beer. I pre-made enough things that I was actually able to relax and enjoy the party and the company, yay! Clean up was also a breeze, so I went to bed happy.

Still a couple things to take care of tonight, but I'm happy to say that I'm mostly ready for tomorrow. I didn't publish a menu because I always overplan, but then revise downward once I get into the time/fridge space management aspect of things. The hard part tomorrow will be the actual grilling, but since the pulled pork is done and ready to hit a crockpot, there's less pressure to force the chicken. I got these new mini/slider buns today, so people can even do appetizer portions of the pulled pork and not get too full.

Lots to do tomorrow, but it is what it is :)

I smell like a gigantic piece of jerky at the moment. I've been smoking meat since 8am, and let me tell you, I think that Bradley Smoker I got is defective. I'm going to try to fire it up again tonight with nothing in it to see if the element actually glows red or not. If it doesn't, then it's RMA time with Bradley. Starting out this morning, I finally did the seasoning process. It took forever to get up to 150, then it went up to 180 and wouldn't come back down. Not too much of a problem. Once the seasoning was done (twice as long as the book said it should), I put my lovely rub-marinated pork butt in the smoker. And the temp went down to 150... and stayed there. I turned the temp slide up to maximum. And the temp stayed at 150. It got up to around 175, but it refused to budge up to the 220 to 250 range that I needed to actually break anything down. At first I thought, well maybe the ambient temperature of the wind is affecting it. So I waited til the afternoon, sun beating down on the smoker and me, and the temp was.... 175. Alrighty, it's clear that butt's never breaking down. I took the butt off the smoker, brought it into the house, and threw it in an oven bag and tossed it in a 225 convection bake oven. It should be done in several hours. Then fridge overnight, pick the fat and yucky stuff off, and it will be ready for Sunday afternoon and several saucing options.

I also did some cleaning and organizing today, in between bouts of figuring out what to serve and what I needed to get to make that happen. Tonight will be bar cookies, which will be enough to take off my plate as far as prep is concerned, yay!

12:03 AM Update: Two pans of bar cookies are done and cooling; 60 dates are stuffed with cheese and in the fridge along with the pork butt. Cleaning is going well, and I'm looking forward to Sunday.

Well, we had a wonderful week of visiting with my sister and brother-in-law, and I was sad to see them go on Wednesday afternoon. Dad's apparently recuperating quite well at home, and everyone's doing well. So, what does Richard suggest after the houseguests have left? Let's have a barbecue! On Sunday! This Sunday! Since it was such short notice, we limited the guest list to the smaller company division. If all goes well, we'll have a bigger shindig on the 20th. Right now I'm still learning how to use the grill, and tomorrow I'll try out the smoker for the first time. I'm less concerned about the smoker since it's electric, and theoretically will control its own heat. But the grill has been an experience :) I did some jerk chicken on Sunday, and I didn't quite have the hang of making the charcoal hot... so we grilled the chicken at around 250 for about 3 hours. It turned out great, but obviously that's not going to work for more than 4 people. Today I built a bigger fire and got it up to 550 -- cooked some pork tenderloins, and they came out great. Tomorrow I'm going to cook some test chicken and we'll see how that goes.

It's always difficult to invite people from the city out here. To them, it really feels like Oregon Trail -- they need to stock up on wagon wheels, and the typhoid is rampant. We're 35 miles from downtown Chicago, and a lot of people don't have cars. But we try to make it worth the trip. Lots of good food, a relaxing atmosphere, and good times.

More tomorrow!