Actually, I have to start out with a photo taken Friday night, after Michael and I spent the day having so much fun tinkering with and breaking in our new “Big Green Egg.” Yes, it’s really a thing. An amazing thing. It’s a grill/smoker/baker that allows you to finesse the temperature at which your food cooks down to 5 degrees. So we played with the two air vents to get the temperature just right (250 – 270 for about 7 hours), and plopped on the grate a 24-hour-rubbed down Boston Butt, better known as bone-in pork shoulder to you lay-people who aren’t familiar with the lingo. Here’s what it looked like hot off the grill at about 9:15:
and here’s what it looked like going down the gullet:
We were so excited to have it finished that we ate like greedy little piggies (paradox) standing up at the counter.
Various combinations of vinegar and two different barbecue sauces (plus the cole slaw, of course. I am from the south, after all) went sliding down our throats to various exclamations of joy and grunts (again) of satisfaction; much laughing as well. Then I looked down at the resulting carnage and there were 5 more pounds! I froze half and luckily left more out, because Michael woke up with “the fever.” Consumed 3 more sammies by lunchtime.
Anyway, I have gotten the garden to the state that it only took 45 minutes to weed the whole thing today. Yay! That, I can keep up. Still on the food, livin’ on the prairie front, cured 4 pounds of flank steak in 3 different rubs to make jerky tomorrow:
and we put up a batch of refrigerator pickles:
which is my first step into the mysterious world of canning and preserving. There’s a whole closet waiting to be filled up and from today’s experience, that’s not going to be a problem because there’s nothing in the refrigerator that Michael won’t throw into a pickle jar.
Also chased down some cottonwood puffballs as they were blowing across the patio and planted them in dirt. The man making plans to help me fortify the creek-bank and facilitate growth of natural flora on all parts of suwarrow suggested growing some seedlings that I could plant and help the process. And to think they were nothing but a nuisance when swimming in the Levin pool on the weekends so long ago!
‘Nuff said – more reports from the valley as events unfold.