Happy Father’s Day

This is my first – is it? I am spending some of it cleaning up from a party we had last night for Erica. As she is Atlanta now, we don’t get to see much of her. Tyler and Brea (sp?) were also here with their twins – if I can remember how I did that MPEG last year maybe I’ll post a video of the twins eating hobo stew.

BJ came up from Springfield and brought his sister Brit and his brother-in-law Aaron. Aaron has written a book about his year in the Balkans as a stop-loss soldier that he wants me to edit – I’ve read the first half of it and I think it’s promising. As long as he can wait until next summer for the edit, I think I’m game. My original plan for part of this summer was to write a family memoir about our time in New Guinea. When we’re in Wisconsin later this summer I hope to crib the notes that will evolve into it. My father has been arranging his slides into a visual outline – we’re taking our scanner up with a special slide attachment to preserve them and allow for editorial flexibility. We certainly are into taking on a lot all at once.

My food posts seem popular – so here’s one:

I put the smoker through its paces yesterday. At our last BBQ I used it more as a grill. For the meal last night I did pork rib tip in a 50/50 mixture of Stubs and Open Pit BBQ sauce on the lower rack, and on the upper rack I did beef ribs with a simple rub – ½ Tbsp Salt, 1 Tbsp Sugar, ½ Tbsp Cumin, ½ Tbsp black Pepper, ½ Tbsp Chili Powder, 1 Tbsp Paprika. I bought a metal smoking tray – it’s like a small metal drawer with holes along the bottom that you might make in a shop class. I put three cups of water logged hickory chips in the tray, wrapped it in foil, poked a few holes in the foil with an ice pick, and threw it in with the coals to smoke. I got a good two and a half hours of smoke out of the hickory. At round four-thirty I swapped out the tray for my Dutch oven loaded with hobo stew.

It’s fun to be cooking at three levels in one grill. I am feeling my way through times and temps with the smoker, but a meat thermometer and a coal count helped – thirty bricks to start and five new every half-hour or so – the main thing is to keep the temp in the smoker below three-hundred degrees.

I would write more, but I need to pack as I am off to KC later today for a summer class I am taking this coming week. One of Jes’ cousins is coming up from Arkansas to stay here, so they can play while I am away. The class I am taking is through Truman’s education program and the tuition is being paid for me by a grant from the Eisenhower Foundation – thanks Ike! Your 1,300 is most welcome.

Jason and Tiff are putting me up – or putting up with me – however, that’s phrased. I guess I’ll take them the leftovers for the BBQ as pork rib tip isn’t exactly Jes’ thing. At any rate, I am off...