Guest Writter

I’d like to share with you a blog my wife posted on her Myspace page. It really touched my heart and I asked if she would mind me re-posting it. The pregnancy experience has been a wild ride and I’d like to share her perspective on it:

I am getting really close to my due date and I cant believe how fast the time has flown by. It seems like yesterday I was so sick (I still throw up every morning but I am not as sick as I was) I was having my first little back cramps which are nothing compared to my back pains now lol! I remember lying in bed every night with my shirt up to see if the baby would move! I remember the first time I saw him actually move. The movement is almost constant now but it was so exciting. I remember sitting at my desk at work and feeling him kick for the first time. I remember how I thought my test was negative because the pink line was so light! If you had told me last Christmas that I would be having a little boy next Christmas I would have laughed at you! Its funny how much a person can change in such a short amount of time. I remember when I first got my baby bump how exciting that was! Now I wish I could get off the couch without a struggle lol!
  My thoughts went from maternity clothes, to what is it?, to registry, to showers, to making a home for my baby, to wanting my family and friends close because it could come any day now! I am at the point where I am just waiting. I go into the nursery a million times a day and refold the same silly blankets and bibs. I can’t believe my life will change again in a matter of days. I think about how scary the birth is gonna be. I almost don’t think about it because it freaks me out. At the same time I want to see my son so bad I would go into labor right now if I could. The night he dropped It scared me because I totally felt it and thought I needed to go to the hospital then. But I can breathe now and I have to say that even though I have been uncomfortable for about 9 months I will miss being pregnant so much and If we can afford another in a few years I would totally do this again!
  I also think about the financial strain it could put on us. Everyone says if you wait till you can afford them you will never have them. Well we will just leave it up to God to provide for us and do the best we can. I cannot wait to see him.I think about the fact that this isn’t just any baby this is a piece of me and Matt. Which means that this baby is made and full of love. This baby is a mixture of the past 9 years. Every memory and special moment that we have shared are all apart of him. Which tells me that this isn’t just any baby but the most special baby in the whole world! I hope he knows how much his parents love each other and how much they love him. We have definitely had some hard times but they were so easy to get through because we had each other and this pregnancy has totally brought us closer and brought our already strong relationship to a higher level!
  I am so excited that he will have some little friends his age! Whose parents are very special friends of mine! I hope I can give him what I did not have and teach him right! I want to open doors in his life that where nailed shut for me. I just pray that God will give me the knowledge to do as much right as I can. To all of my pregnant friends enjoy this happy time. This has been the best year of my life. I can’t wait to be a new mom!

Idiot Of The Day

Ok, Now I am convinced this country is doomed. I was browsing the news websites today and found this jewel

In Ocala Florida a 10 year old girl was arrested and charged with a felony crime.

What did she do you ask?

The little girl had brought her lunch to school. Part of her lunch was a piece of steak, and therefore she had brought a steak knife. She didn’t threaten anyone with it, she did not use it in any inappropriate way.

However her dumb as last year’s bird nest teacher felt the need to call the cops and have her arrested for bringing a weapon to school.

I’m really starting to think terrorist aren’t are biggest concern; let’s worry about the damage we are doing to ourselves. How do we let idiots like this teach our youth?

I hope they sue the ever loving crap out of that school system.

Gun Free Zone Strikes Again

The ‘Nuge, gotta love him. I’m talking about Ted Nugent the guitar playing, gun carrying voice of the Americana I feel is slipping away. I found this article by him today, while it strikes on a lot of the same things that the last article I posted does, it also take a different angle on it. Pay attention to where he talks about how we have lost the sense of self defense. We have become so dependent as a society, God have mercy on us.

Teditorial: Gun Free Zones Strike Again
GUN FREE ZONE STRIKES AGAIN by Ted Nugent
Here we go again. Someone tell me why, with nearly 3000 articles written worldwide within 48 hours following the tragic slaughter at the Omaha, Nebraska Westroads Mall this week, that not a single one of them mentioned the most important fact of all. Thousands of “professional” writers converging on such an event, sharing their sleuthing in the world’s most respected publications and electronic media, yet not a single one of them saw it meaningful in their “reporting” of the crime to mention all the “no guns allowed” signs throughout the mall? Got agenda? Sig heil!

Even though Nebraska recently got a small piece of their Second Amendment back by finally allowing law abiding citizens their “God given right” to keep and bear arms, it is truly anti-American and downright bizzarro that private property and business owners can deny (as in “infringe”) this “inalienable” right bestowed upon free men by our Creator. This of course is the liberal dream known as “gun free zones.” As in Columbine, VA Tech, Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, and at every other location where the wanton slaughter of unarmed, helpless victims is a virtual guarantee.

Except of course at the Salt Lake City mall last year where an armed off duty cop properly defied that mall’s “gun free” policy, who, virtually indistinguishable for all practical purposes from an armed law abiding citizen, was able to thwart a mass shooting about to unfold, were it not for a good guy with a gun. How dense must someone be to hide from this information and fact? Denial runs deep in a growing population of “we the sheeple.” For shame.

When did a nation of rugged individuals turn into helpless whiners, crying and running in fear from danger and evil? When did we abandon our natural instinct to counterpunch and attack evil, overpowering it and neutralizing it into submission? When were we forced to dial 9-1-1, losing and wasting precious, decisive time, instead of doing the right thing and stopping bad guys ourselves? When did we trade in independence for dependency? When did we decide that we can’t handle tough situations ourselves, and we need to call big brother while we cower and hide like little, helpless children? Pathetic.

Everyday in this country, according to the Department of Justice and every study ever conducted, armed, law abiding citizens stop dangerous, violent confrontations from escalating into death and tragedy, simply by having a gun handy to provide real “equality” on the mean streets of America. Dedicated cops across America will be the first ones to tell you that they not only can’t possibly be there to protect us, but that they also have no legal requirement to do so. By the time the police show up, many innocents will likely perish at the hands of evil while good people hang around hoping and praying. Does anyone still not know this reality? Is it possible to still hide from this life and death truth? If you have no soul, apparently so.

I would highly recommend that we finally learn from all these senseless tragedies. Get real. Get rid of politicians who support gunfree slaughter zones. Get rid of Gunfree zones. Get a gun, learn to use it, and do the right thing. Bad guys should be shot dead, not Christmas shoppers.

Communicate directly with Ted Nugent at tednugent.com.

When violence looms and every second counts, recall that the police are only minutes away!

I found this article online today. I had planned on writing on this subject at some point in time, but the author of this paper (Mark Harmon) does a good enough job that I thought I’d just post his letter instead.

M.D. Harmon

December 14, 2007

Has anyone ever wondered why people with guns who have kissed sanity good-bye never take out their uncontrollable rage on the nearest police station?

Nor do they drive off to the nearest Army base, shooting range or hunting club to vent their murderous frustration.

It should only take a moment’s thought to understand why: Those places have people who have relatively easy access to weapons themselves.

It’s one thing to be homicidal and suicidal, but it’s quite another to consider that one’s murderous intent could be brought to an untimely halt through the immediate application of superior firepower.

However, there are places that draw these people like magnets, and they, too, are easy to locate: They are the places where the possession of firearms is forbidden, and that fact is widely advertised.

Some of these places even go so far as to publicly display their vulnerability to mass murder through the posting of signs that say “No Guns Permitted” or “Gun-Free Zone.”

Virginia Tech was proud of its “gun-free” status, and boasted about how safe a place it was once it posted signs forbidding firearms on campus.

Thirty-two people died there last April as the cost of that exercise in hubris and futility.

Other places where firearms are typically banned are stores, including shopping malls, government buildings, including schools, and places of worship.

We saw in the Columbine shootings how effective gun bans are for schools.

And in Omaha last week, eight people died in a shopping mall before the shooter, cornered by police, killed himself.

In Ogden, Utah, last February, a man killed five people in a mall before an armed off-duty police officer pinned him down until help could arrive.

And just this past weekend, a disturbed youth who had posted violent diatribes against Christians on an Internet site killed two students at a Colorado missionary center.

He later showed up at a church that had an association with the missionary group carrying multiple weapons and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

But because of the earlier shootings, the church had activated its voluntary security force, composed of members who had licenses to carry concealed weapons and the training to use them.

The gunman killed two teenage girls in the church parking lot and wounded their father before he entered the church.

But once he got inside, he was confronted by one of the church’s volunteer guards, Jeanne Assam, a former police officer armed with a pistol.

As witnesses described it, she advanced on the shooter yelling “Surrender,” and when he raised his weapon, fired several shots, bringing him to the ground. Police reported that the badly wounded gunman then shot himself to death.

Assam, dubbed “Dirty Harriet” by one writer, was credited by the church’s pastor with having saved 50 to 100 lives.

It’s almost enough to make a fair-minded, thoughtful person conclude that armed, law-abiding citizens might have saved countless more lives at places like those listed above.

But not in the view of the confiscation crowd. They point at the weapons the gunmen used and say that banning them would halt such shootings.

Problem is, there’s precious little evidence to support that view, and much to disprove it.

Different parts of this country display disparities in rates of serious crimes. But that crime rate has been falling steadily for almost 20 years. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to that trend, including tougher sentencing laws, the ability of people to defend themselves also counts.

The 40 states (including Maine) where concealed-carry permits are readily available to law-abiding people report on average a 22 percent lower violent crime rate, a 30 percent lower murder rate, a 46 percent lower robbery rate and a 12 percent lower aggravated assault rate than the 10 states where the possession of firearms by honest citizens is greatly restricted.

As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (who blogs as “Instapundit”) noted after the VT murders last spring, “People don’t stop killers. People with guns do.”

He wrote, “Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school’s vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene.”

Police, he notes, can’t be everywhere, and when they do arrive, it’s usually too late for at least some victims.

However, “one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. (But) if they’re armed, they may wind up not being victims at all.”

As the U.S. Supreme Court ponders whether the Second Amendment protects our right of self-defense with firearms, the actual case is being proved by people like Jeanne Assam.

M.D. Harmon is an editorial writer. He can be contacted at:

mharmon@pressherald.com

Elvis is Leaving the Building

Elvis is leaving the building!

Things are progressing rather quickly these days. Seems like Thanksgiving was just last week, but guess what, Christmas is just 10 days from now. Very busy time of the year with all the shopping and trying to see family and so on.

But there is something else going on in our life right now. Something that will literally change life as we know it, a baby is coming. Ya! That’s right for those that don’t know it we are pregnant with our first child, a baby boy (Reese) that will be here very, very soon. Carly had a doctor’s appointment today and was told that the baby has/is in the process of dropping. Looks like the little fella is starting to head out! We just may have ourselves a Christmas baby.

Gotta be honest with you, its a little scary knowing that in a week or so we will have a kid. Not just a kid, but OUR child, my son, our first born. Wow! I’m just so excited, nervous, anxious, proud and a whole bunch of other feelings wrapped up into one.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a father, about what a responsibility it is. I’ve been digging through my life and trying to decide if the things I find are qualities I want my child to see in his father. I’ve come up with things I need to change in my life, some things I need to continue in doing, and some that I need to be more diligent in doing.

Quinto aniversario de la boda!

Quinto aniversario de la boda! 

What?

Ya, sorry, for some strange reason I felt like titling this blog in Spanish. (who knows, maybe it will get me some traffic from those seeking wordpress in another language?)

For those that only read Spanish at their favorite Mexican joint, it says Fifth Wedding Anniversary. That’s right! Last night my wife and I celebrated 5 wonderful years of marriage together. We have been together almost nine years, the last five married and what a trip it has been. I can’t believe how fast time has flown by. It seems like just last month we were going to the senior prom. (Its getting scary to admit just how long ago that was!)  

My life has been so blessed by my marriage. It seems like the two of us have been through so much together that I just can’t imagine life apart. Carly, if and when you read this I am so thankful for you being in my life. You are a true blessing. 

Our celebration was simple, but that’s kinda how we like it. She got flowers, we each got cards, and we shared a wonderful meal at The Macaroni Grill. We were able to sit and chat for about 45 minutes on their patio while we waited for a table. This opportunity which would normally be considered a nuisance (who likes to wait 45 minutes for a table?) was quite the blessing.  It allowed us to sit and talk, focusing solely on each other. In those 45 minutes we were able to really connect and reflect over our relationship. Something so simple as sitting down and talking can have such an affect. And in talking I don’t mean idle chit chat, but actually conversing and sharing with each other. In today’s hurry up world we just don’t take the time for that we should. Our waitress was great, the meal out of the world and the setting very romantic.

For all my BBQ buddies that are wondering what we had: 

Drink:We each drank sweet tea, and I had a Whiskey Sour as well.  

Appetizer:Crab stuffed mushrooms- I love mushrooms and stuffed ones are even better! 

Main course:I chose the Tucson Ribeye- 16oz Choice, bone in, medium rare. Wonderful steak, cooked just right with a great flavor profile. It came with mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. I am now a big fan of the grilled asparagus as a side dish. The wife had a trio plate that came with chicken parmesan, lasagna, and something else I couldn’t pronounce. The third mystery dish was something stuffed with chicken. It was probably the best of her plate (she let me sample) had a great mixture of roasted tomatoes, garlic, cheese and something else I couldn’t identify. She was only able to eat about a 1/3 of the plate and took home the rest. 

We were too stuffed for desert. 

We headed home and enjoyed a nice evening together. Honestly this was our best anniversary yet. I think another thing that made it so special is we also got to celebrate the good news that I finally got a job I’ve been trying to get for a while and we are soon (in like less than a month) to be the proud parents of a baby boy. It was a very special night!

If you’re going through Hell, just keep going!

If you’re going through hell, just keep going!

This is a lyric from one of my favorite songs that just happen to play as I was driving into work today. The song is by Rodney Atkins and the title was inspired by two quotes: one from Winston Churchill (“If you’re going through Hell, keep going.”) and the other, an old Irish toast (“May you be in Heaven five minutes before the devil knows you’re dead”).

This song brought up so much emotion in me and some good reflection on my life that I just had to blog about it.
The last year, and more specifically the last few months have been very hard on my wife and I. Probably one of toughest of our life, and we’ve been through some tough crap. Some of it was due to poor decisions we had made, however the majority of our strife was the direct result of things we just had no control over and no hand in causing. Dealing with situations like that can be o so tiring/frustrating.

BUT and man is this is such a big BUT things have finally started to turn around, and right at the last minute. I won’t go into any details, as they are not the focus of this blog, but prayers have definitely been answered and things in our life are finally starting to fall back into place after seeming to just fall apart for so long.

Back to the title of the blog “If you’re going through hell, just keep going” this has been an anthem in my life and possibly one of life’s greatest lessons we can learn. When I heard it this morning on the radio my thoughts drifted to the kind of attitude that gets you through tough times. Some of my first thoughts were of my high-school football coaches and their attitudes about the weight room and our conditioning program.

The off-season is where you prepare and grow for the coming season. The hard work and dedication put forth in the off-season is what would eventually be evident on the field in game time performance. The old saying ‘the more we sweat in training, the less we bleed in battle’ rings ever so true.

At times a player would be tired or just not feeling well. I remember being in that situation plenty of times and the coaches’ response was always the same: “Matt, right now is when you need to go in and workout the hardest.” “But, coach I don’t feel like it, shouldn’t I lay down and take it easy until I feel better?” “NO! Right now is when you will benefit the most from going in there and lifting those extra reps, running those last sprints.” And then I would begrudgingly go in and workout.

I didn’t understand then, but I do now just what the coaches were trying to do. (another reason I’m a big fan of our young participating in athletics) Those coaches were trying to teach me lessons I would carry for the rest of my life. When life gets hard, you just have to keep going. It would be so easy to lay down, to blame others and be negative; but that’s not how you get through things. You must for lack of better words, soldier on.

In boot-camp I learned to push myself physically to do things I never thought I’d be able to do. I learned the true point of physical exhaustion and how to push yourself past that point to achieve your goal. Learning that physical toughness taught me emotional strength. Emotional strength is what carries you past physical limits. Its what tells you deep down inside your soul, you can get through this, you will succeed.

Most importantly in my life I’ve learned to rely on God. I serve a savior that will never leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5). A God that has told us to cast our burdens on Him, that He will sustain us (Psalms 55:22, Matthew 11:28-30). God has told us that with Him and through Him there isn’t anything we can’t do (Romans 8:37, Philippians 4:13). The Lord is my rock, and without Him I wouldn’t be here.

I wanted this blog to be an encouragement to those that might be going through a tough time in their life. Just keep going! Keep pushing, keep working your butt off and most importantly keep praying and keep God first. Things will work out, maybe sooner, and more honestly maybe later but they will work out.

I want to leave you with a quote from the last Rocky movie. A lot of folks will think its cheesy, and they may be right, but I like it:

“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you!”

Update!

Hey folks, its been a while! I’ve been soo busy lately I haven’t been able to blog at all. However, I will be spending a lot of time in front of the computer today and have a lot on my mind, and I mean A LOT. I decided to try and post several shorter blogs instead of a singular, very long one.  Check in throughout the day and see what I’m up to, by close of business today there should be several blogs to read. 

Gobble Gobble

I know its been a while since i’ve posted, just been really busy with life in general. I hope to be a little more frequent with my posts in the future. I’ve also noticed that my topics lately have been strickly food oriented, I’m going to try and find some stuff to blog about that isn’t food centered.

BUT, its Thanksgiving week and I would be remiss if I didn’t have a Turkey Day Blog. I’m so thankfull for the good things in my life. Specifically God and His Grace and my wonderful wife. We are blessed with a little boy on the way, due Jan 6th, but the way things are going we think he may come a little sooner. The wife and I both have some crazy extended family issues going on right now, it been so nice to have each other to hold when our families make us want to pull our hair out.

Now to jump track and move to something food related again. Sorry, I can’t help it. Smoked Turkey. Last Christmas I wanted to make a smoked turkey for my family’s Christmas dinner. I lucked up and created a really good recipe that really pleased everyone at the table and it has become my go to play when its time to cook up Big Bird.

It starts out with a 24 hour brine. What is a brine? Well, thank you i’m glad you asked. Basically a brine is a saline solution. Its a specific mixture of water (or juice), salts and sugars that is chemicaly designed to open the cells of the meat to absorb the water (or juice). Think of it as a marinade on ‘roids, it makes the finished product much, much juicer. I won’t go in to the full ingredient list ( can’t reviel all the tricks you know) but my recipe has pinaples, brown sugar and apple juice for starters.

The turkeys (we cooked 4 yesterday) sat in the brine for 24hrs and then were pulled out, rinised off and Inected. We use an injection that is very sweet and has just a little spice to it. For the spice part we use YardBird Rub a great poultry seasoning made by my friend Todd at PlowBoys’ BBQ. Once Jeff Had them injected I rubbed the outside of the birds down with a good coat of the YardBird Rub.

The turkeys were then put into the smoker and cooked at 250-300 degrees for about 6 and half hours. We used nothing but apple wood in this cook and the sweet aroma it let out was unmatched by any wood I’ve smoked with before. Once cooked the birds were double wrapped in foil, placed in a cool and covered with ice to be delievered Wednesday morning at my office. I’ve enclosed some picturs of the cook, I hope you enjoy! And again, click on the picture for the full size, worpress seems to want to cut off the right half of all my pictures.

Man I’m still Tired!

Ok, a few days ago I posted that Jeff and I were about to embark on our first legit catering job. This weekend we had the pleasure of cooking 24 Boston butts, all for paying customers and man what a wild ride it was. We learned a lot this weekend, we tried a lot of new things out, some we will stick with in the future and some we will Never Never do again!

Lets see… Where to start? How about buying the raw products, shouldn’t be a problem right? Ya that’s what we thought too!

All the tools, spices, and charcoal were picked up without any problem throughout last week with anticipation of buying the meat Friday afternoon, storing it in our massive coolers and starting the cook early Saturday morning.

Fast forward to Friday afternoon. We went to the local Sam’s to pick up our meat. Incase you’re not familiar with Sam’s, they are basically the place to go when you need something, anything in bulk. Need 15 gallons of ketchup? Check, they got that. How about 1000 plastic Dixie cups? Sure not a problem. They also sell meat in bulk and offer a pretty good discount when you buy it that way. We never assumed buying our Boston butts would be a problem. Well you know that funny saying about assuming right?

We got back to the meat section found one of the attendants, and informed him of our needs. He quickly shot us a “are you kidding me look” and went back behind the wizard of oz meat door to see what he could do. After a brief stay in the magical meat locker he came back to inform us that they only had two cases of Boston butts, that is only 16 butts.

WHAT? This is Sam’s, you running out of meat is like Al Gore running out of stuff to say about global warming. The same store that has toilet paper in 100 roll packages only has 16 Boston butts? Give me a break!

Well we had to figure something out and chose to send Jeff to the next closest Sam’s to pick up the remaining 8 butts and I would head to Wal-Mart to pickup a few last minute things we needed.

About the time I got into Wal-Mart I received a call on my cell phone from Jeff.
Jeff: ‘Hey man, you in Wal-Mart yet?’
Me: “Ya, what’s up?’
Jeff: ‘Ohm… you’re not going to believe this…., but this Sam’s only has 6 Boston butts, you’re gonna half to pick up two more at Wal-Mart.’

Long pause..

Me: “Allrightythen!”

How does this happen? It just doesn’t make sense to have two Sam’s Clubs that between themselves can’t muster up 3 cases of Boston butts?

Well some good came out of it at least. The last Sam’s club that Jeff went to messed up the pricing on the butts and sold them to us for 54 cents per pound (they were like $1.04 per lb at the other Sam’s) We got a great deal on those last 6 butts for sure.

We got all the butts loaded into coolers and put on ice for the next day’s cook. Boy our fun was just about to begin!

I woke up at 5:00 am Saturday morning to start getting ready for the day’s big cook. I got a shower, got dressed and spent a while on the internet browsing BBQ websites and making sure I had the recipe correct for the new injection we were going to try.

At about 6am I began mixing up the injection and getting the ingredients for the rub mixed up. I went outside pulled the smoker into the driveway and starting to set everything up. I started a good fire in the smoker and inhaled the sweet aromas as she gradually warmed up to cooking temperatures.

Jeff arrived around 6:45 and we began setting up our production line. We were about to inject, slather, and rub 24 8 pound butts, we needed to be as efficient as possible to save time. We created a system where I would take two butts, place them in a large foil pan and inject both butts. Once injected the butts and pan would be handed to Jeff, who in return would hand me a new pan and begin to rub the butts down with our new butt rub. I would take the new pan put two butts in it and start injecting beginning the process all over again.

After we had about 8 butts prepped, the smoker was up to temp and we decided to put them on. Here is where the fun started!

We knew our new smoker wouldn’t hold all 24 butts, but we weren’t sure just what it’s capacity was. They guy we had bought it from told us he had cooked 17 butts at one time on it without using all the cooking area. I would LOVE to see how it did that. We were able to place only 15 butts total in the new smoker. Lucky for us, we had both of our other cookers on hand. We were able to fit 4 butts on Jeff’s WSM ( A wonderful set it and forget it smoker. That thing holds temps like fat kids hold on to Twinkies. ) And we put the remaining 5 butts onto my old smaller offset. That cooker is about 15 years old but keeps turning out great ‘que. We were at 100% capacity on each of our three smokers, what a first order!

By 8:30 all the meat was on the cookers and we started to clean up the mess we had made prepping everything and relaxed for a little while. At this time in the cook process a lot of the work is done, you are basically coasting until the meat is done. With the new cooker we have to add a log about every 45 – 60 minutes to maintain the correct cooking temperature. Its a labor of love that’s for sure. When smoking Boston butts at around 225-250 degrees you can generally plan on the meat taking about 1.5 hours per pound to cook. That is an 8 pound butt should take about 12 hours. Sometimes they cook quicker, sometimes it takes a little longer; but 12 hours is normally a good estimate.

Using that math we figured on the meat being cooked at 8:30pm. Then the plan would be to wrap in aluminum foil and rest for an hour in a cooler. This ‘resting’ process allows all the juices in the meat to redistribute and the meat will actually cook a few more degrees internal temperature.

After this hour’s rest the butts would be taken out one at a time and placed into aluminum pans and shredded/pulled. Once pulled they would be vacuum sealed and put in an ice bath to expedite the cooling down process. After about 30 minutes in the ice bath they would be transferred into our deep freezer where they would freeze and await delivery Monday morning. All of our work should have been done by 10pm Saturday night at the latest.

The butts that cooked on Jeff’s WSM and on my smoker finished in a normal time period and they were rested/pulled/vac sealed/cooled/ and froze just as the last paragraphs described.

However those 15 butts on the large cooker were some of the most stubborn butts I’d ever dealt with. They just wouldn’t cook fast enough, but as the great BBQ guru’s will tell ya: ‘its done when its done’.

About 4 or 5 in the morning those last 15 reached the desired temp and tenderness and were processed. At about 7:30 Sunday morning Jeff and I were done. What should have been over with at 10 Saturday night turned into a 24hour BBQ marathon. I was as exhausted as I’d been in a very very long time. Its not just the being up and working for 24 hours, but inhaling all that smoke for that long really does a number on your body. (Infact, no matter how much I shower, that smoke smell will be seeping out of my pores for the next 3 days after a long cook like that.) We got everything cleaned up, Jeff went home and I hit the shower! Carly (my wife) fixed me some grilled cheese sandwiches and at 8 am I went to bed. I woke up at 5:00 pm that afternoon, starving! We grabbed some Chinese food and headed back to the house. By 8pm I was back in bed, still smelling like hickory smoke.

Monday morning I got all 24 orders delivered and got back to my regular schedule of work and life. Man did we learn some stuff this weekend.
1. We came up with a great rub for the butts, we really hadn’t been happy with what we were using, this new recipe should be a winner.
2. We found an injection that just needs a little tweaking to be just right.
3. We learned to call ahead to Sam’s.
4. We learned that when fully loaded our cooker takes on a new personality and we need to plan for it.
5. We found some great new tools to help in shredding/pulling apart the cooked butts: we used the little hand sized garden rakes. (pics to follow)

Even though the cook took twice as long as we had planed and ruined both our Sundays we got a lot out of it both financially and in experience. With the money from this cook we will be able to pay our insurance for a whole year.

Here are some pictures we took along the way. I’ll try and post them in chronological order. I hope I haven’t bored you too bad!

Edit: I had some trouble uploading the pictures, click on them for a full sized view.