Mother's Day

Had the Barr family over for Mother's Day pot luck, Bonnie, Wayne. Dennis, Sue, Jason, Bob, Debbie, Adam, Eva, and their kids, Sean, Shawna, Me & Lynn, I think that's all, hope I didn't forget anyone

cooked up 3 chickens and everyone else brought side dishes, had a very nice Day.

didn't take many pics, here's the chicken before I cooked it



Brined it for 3 hrs, sprinkled it with my rub, smoked it for 1 1/2 hrs, the dunked in a bowl of sweet baby rays, in a foil pan covered with foil for another hr on smoker, white meat was a little dry but everything else was fall off the bone moist and juicy, as Griffin said, the sauce is in fact the boss

Here's a cake Lynn made for Bonnie for her birthday, dual purpose BBQ



A new carrot cake recipe that was very good.

We had an enjoyable day and the chicken was almost entirely devoured, Griffin ate 4 pieces, he just couldn't get enough, wants to start getting into barbecueing

The 2 weeks after mother's day BBQ is coming up, 1 week late again, still haven't decided on the menu.

Seafood

Been doing quite a bit of BBQ'in lately, just never get around to taking pics, and too lazy to post 'em here if I do.

Me and Lynn went to the Astoria Seafood and Wine Festival Sunday, love the seafood and never been to it before, so thought we'd check it out.

Well think it should be called the wine festival, as the only seafood around was a few vendors selling food, it was all winery's and people selling jewelery, sauces, and spice blends, we walked around for quite awile and sampled many different wines, then went back where the food was and got a chunk of crab bread and a bowl of chowder, the crab bread was amazing, thick cut french Bread with cheese and some kind of sauce on it, with great big chunks of crab sprinkled all over the top.

Stopped at a seafood shop in town as we were heading out, bought some prawns, fish, and smoked salmon, I saw tubs of crab spread the were selling and checked out the ingredients, this might have been the same company that was selling them at festival, but not sure, then we stopped at pier 39 and bought a couple live crabs. we'll just have our own seafood festival.

When we got home we boiled up the crabs, I grilled a couple fish fillets, I can't even remember what kinda fish it was, just bought some they had on special, not bad but pretty tasteless. but went well with the crab legs.

Here is the closet thing we saw to live seafood at the festival



Here's a couple of bottles of wine we picked up




The crabs in a box with ice, when we got them home they said they wanted a hot bath




Monday for lunch, grilled Prawns and my take on the crab bread, no loaves of french bread, so just sliced sourdough.



I love that stuff, one of my new "go to" recipes.

We had a good time and would like to get out to Astoria again and do some more exploring, but seafood and wine festival is out for me, just a bunch of people trying to empty me wallet

The Big Cook

Aubree & Hazen home for the weekend and I haven't cooked any food for them on the smoker yet, trying to think of something different to do, had a ham in the freezer so lets give that a try.

cut the skin off ham and diagonally slashed the fat, injected with Pineapple & Apple Juice, soy & worcestershire sauce.



then rubbed it down with my favorite rub




Spatchcocked a couple chickens (cut the backbone out and broke breastbone so they lay flat) and brined overnight, sprinkled 'em with Tony C's




Mixed up a pot of beans, made a couple fatty's with my homemade sausage & 20 ABT's (jalapenos sliced lengthwise, filled with cream cheese and a little smokie in about 1/2 of em, wrapped with bacon) next time gonna chop the little smokies up and mix em with the cream cheese,

Here's everything happily cooking along



everything turned out very good, The Ham was dry around the outside but juicy inside, next time will wrap in foil after about 4 hrs, had a great flavor, my 1st time making ABT's and gonna be on the grill whenever I fire it up from now on, they were great, especially about midnight after many beers, when me and Ryan finished the leftovers, fatty's were amazing as always, chicken was moist with nice smokey flavor,


Aubree & Hazen, Heather & Ryan, Shawna & Spud, Mom, Dawn & Lumpy, Lynn & I were here, Bonnie & Wayne stopped by but had to leave before dinner, they did get to try the fatty, we had a great time and plenty of good food and fun, hope everyone enjoyed themselves, I did.

Pastrami

Safeway had corned beef on sale for St. Patrick's day, had read about people smoking 'em so you know I gotta try it, that's what Pastrami is, smoked corned beef, but I think there's a few more steps, I'm making backyard pastrami, just picked up a 4 Lb'er, at $1.49 a LB shoulda grabbed a couple more, soaked it in water overnight to take some of the salt out, then ground up the seasoning packet that came with it in the bullet, added some extra pepper, rubbed it down, wrapped it and let it sit in fridge overnight





Fired up the pit and threw 'er on Sun morning, smoked for about 5 hrs. then I notice temp dropping on the remote thermometer, went and checked, pellet hopper empty, first time I done that, I must not have filled it as full as normal, it usually lasts 6 to 7 hrs before adding more, instead of restarting it just took in house and put in oven, it should have taken enough smoke already, just sit back and wait til it got up to temp.




doesn't look like Pastrami, but tastes good, Rueben Time




got the fixin's together, I found this marble Rye bread at fred meyer, Kit Carson uses it and really liked the Rueben they make, threw 'em together and grilled 'em up




very tastey if I do say so myself, next year gotta remember the St Patrick's corned beef sale and pick up a few, will definately do this again

Chili Dogs

Ok, so it's not Barbecue, it's my blog though I can do whatever I want, I have just recently discovered the wonder that is the Chili Dog, never even tried 'em before, they just didn't sound good, Boy was I wrong, I was making some taco meat a couple weeks ago and wound up with something that tasted like chili dog sauce so got me thinking about trying to make one, the weather is so nasty outside anyway, not good 'cue weather.

well got out the cast iron dutch oven, threw in 1 1/2 lbs hamburger, 1 1/2 lbs ground pork, and started seasoning it up, covered and let it simmer for about 4 hrs stirring occasionally, probably didn't need that much time, but not doing anything today so just let it stew, well wasn't to happy with the taste, threw some more stuff in and simmer a little longer, much better

















Mustard up a couple buns.


















Boil hot dogs for 4 minutes, all the chilli dog research I have done says this is the perfect time, people get ridiculous, they're just hot dogs, get 'em warm and throw 'em on the buns



















Dump on some chilli sauce, sprinkle on some grated cheddar and enjoy

















Gonna freeze the leftover and whenever I get the chili dog craving got the cure ready

I made the mistake of missing out on this culinary masterpiece my whole life til now, if you too ignore the noble chili dog, just give him a chance, he won't disappoint

more sausage

We tried our hand at stuffing sausage, found a recipe for Texas Hot Links I wanted to try, got some hog casing and off to work, well to make a long story short, bad recipe, they looked good, but really tasted bad. I really can't explain it.
















smoked a few up with some beans, at least the bean recipe was good, I invited Gene and Linda down for dinner because I thought they were gonna be so good, what an embarrassment. I poured some BBQ sauce on em and helped a little, but definitely not trying this recipe again. but we played cribbage til wee in the morning and had a good time.

















that was a couple weeks ago, tried again last weekend, figured we'd try some brat's instead, no pics but would just look the same anyway, Heather came down Sun. smoked a 10Lb pork butt and had pulled pork sandwiches, and some mac 'n cheese to die for, if anyone wants a good mac 'n cheese, try this,
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/guy-fieri/mac-daddy-mac-n-cheese-recipe/index.html

doesn't re-heat well though, so have some people around to eat it down.

then about 8:00 PM we were getting hungry again, so smoked up some brats, they turned out very good, smoking didn't seem to help em a lot, so just probably grill em next time.

Superbowl

We go to Gene's house every year to watch the superbowl, he's been promising it's gonna be in high def for about 4 yrs now, he finally came through, high definition on his new 52" LCD, game looked great, lots of good food, Linda always makes a ton of food, this year she made some kind of chicken wings, never asked what she called 'em, but they were good, she made these little pizza cup things, flattened out biscuits in a muffin pan, they were good, chips, dips, veggies, fruit, a bread that she always makes called beer bread, it's really good, I know there was something else, but can't think of it.

We always bring something to eat when we go, Gene had been hinting around that I need to bring ribs, so I did.

Here I'm pulling the membrane from the bone side, very important for tender ribs


















put a rub on 'em

















wrap em up and in the fridge overnight
















got up early Sun. morning and got the pit going, here's a few hours later
















they turned out really good, I should just left 'em dry, but Gene likes sauce on his ribs, I was out of sweet baby rays, had a big jug of kc masterpiece, figured it would work, last time I do that, there's just no substitute for SBR's, everyone enjoyed 'em though, made a lot of ribs and didn't bring that many back home.

hot links coming next, will be making 'em later today, but who knows when I'll get 'em on here