We just got back from doing a craft show. On Canada Day. It was madness. We didn’t make enough money to even cover the table fee, and it got up to 48 degrees (humidex). So, I spent money to travel for 30 minutes and stand in the sun (well, under a tent that I had the foresight to bring) for 5 hours in the sweltering heat. Oh, and the loading and unloading of heavy things to the car, to the sight, back to the car, and eventually back to the basement.
I also had the sense to make a HUGE bowl of cold noodles with bbq pork and some cucumber and red onion with sesame last night with this in mind. It is delicious. I am smart.
We did a nice “Chicken and Sun Dried Tomatos” in the crock pot yesterday… Dinner and 2-3 lunch servings. (Not sure how to count $Wife who saved about a third of her dinner to take as lunch one day. Also not going to giver her a hard time for showing self control and not hoovering up the entire plate of food like I did.)
I Googled it - there was an issue with some disease related to sheep’s lungs, so now sheep’s lungs are not allowed as a food product.
I’m kind of totally OK with that for myself, as well as not eating anything’s lungs, really. Lungs, heart, brain - all on my “Oh HELL no” list.
@Woodman how did those smoked chicken breasts that you led off the thread with turn out? I just put together my Weber Smoky Mountain and I’m looking to smoke something Saturday.
Awesome, but since then I’ve done whole chicken quarters, legs and thighs, and those were even better. When possible, and it makes sense, smoke chicken with the bone in in my opinion.
I don’t use the smoker as much as I’d like, but it’s still worth the cost. I need to plan more smoker days, especially since I’m home most of the time now.
I dunno… maybe I had a bad batch, but the single time I attended a Burn’s Night banquet and a haggis was feted,it smelled like an old pair of canvas gym shoes left wet in the bottom of the closet for a week.
And the taste was pretty much spot on that smell.
So… Americanized? Bad batch? No idea… but I’m pretty well sworn off the stuff.
In Mass Effect 2 there are two engineers on your ship, Kenneth and Gabriela. Kenneth is from Scotland and he’s talking derogatorily about the main villain and says “That scunner wouldn’t know a good haggis if it was staring him right in the face.”
To which Gabriela replies “But doesn’t all haggis taste like ass anyway?”
And Kenneth says “Aye, but in the right hands it can taste like mighty fine ass.”
First run with the smoker was not a disaster. Smoker got way too hot before I put the food on, so I closed off the vents trying to cool it down. It ended up going way too low and I couldn’t get it back over 220. Until I took the food off (moved to the gas grill for a couple minutes to finish it off, turns out it may not have needed it) and left the lid open for a few minutes, at which point it got super-hot again.
So…more experimentation and learning is required here. Got a month until I need to do brisket for 13 and I’ll be feeling judgement if I fail.
Remote temp probes are worth the investment. Especially if the smoker doesn’t have auto temp control. And with a brisket you’ve got plenty of time to correct errors since it takes two days to cook.
I’m sick of people around here (where they should know better!) being used to buying a precooked brisket (just needs to be reheated), and thinking it is so easy to cook, then they buy a real brisket, crank the gas grill up to “blast furnace”, and think it will be done in two or three hours. Um, no. Just no. So much no.
