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| My yard in the springtime |
I feel Amish right now. If the Amish drank coffee and did P90X; I don’t think they do either. I have a feeling they are against caffeine and intense muscle-building exercise regimes. On this day I’m having my family over for our annual Mother’s Day celebration. May eighth 2011, a slightly overcast spring morning in Deer Lick, California, my quaint (meaning slightly ghetto yet rustic) rural mountain town. A cool breeze is blowing through my backyard, seedlings of Larkspur, Hollyhocks and young Columbine’s are just emerging from the soil and the smell of smoke is in the air. No, not wildfire but a nice hickory smell, making my stomach start to rumble. Its coming from my smoker I bought on the Internet last month. It sounded like a good idea at the time.
Lets start from the beginning of this road down smoker highway; I love to fish. There is nothing I love more then sitting on the shores of nearby Big Bear Lake with a fishing pole in one hand and an ice-cold Alaskan Summer Ale in the other. Unfortunately, I don’t really love trout. Trout and catfish are what we catch most at Big Bear Lake. I’ve tried multiple recipes and trout just doesn’t do it for me. I spend about fifty dollars every year on a fishing license plus all the extra fishing gear that I end up buying every time I step into a Sport Chalet so it seems like I should actually get my money out of this sport and enjoy what I catch, right? My friend Alicia asked me, on one of our marathon eleven mile hikes
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| Mother’s Day Meal, BBQ Smoked Pulled Pork |
“Have you ever tried smoked trout?”
Actually I have and it is really good. So, in order to “save money” by actually eating the trout I catch I decided to spend some money on a mail order meat smoker. Its a cute little thing. It fits right on my porch and I can smoke all kinds of things besides meats; potatoes, almonds, cheese even eggs for a great smokey egg salad.
I have run into a problem with the smoker, unfortunately. It uses up all the electricity in my little house. I mean all of it. I guess 90 percent of this house is run off of one circuit and whenever I run the smoker I have to shut off absolutely every other appliance in the house. No watching horse racing, no charging the laptop, I can’t even turn on the lights or plug in my camera to charge! Its a little annoying. Whats more annoying is when I forget and accidentally turn the lights on, then I have to run up the hill next to my house, probably still in my pajamas (Yeah, I know its 11 A.M.) pop the breaker and run back inside before any of the neighborhood kids waiting at the bus stop see me dressed in my bath robe.
I accidentally pop the circuit alot. Especially on a day like today when it is only about 45 degrees outside and optical smoking conditions are a temperature of at least 55 degrees. We could be waiting for lunch for awhile. I would love to smoke a turkey for Thanksgiving one year (Smoked turkey is unbelievable) but for one thing, a small turkey takes up to 15 hours to smoke. On a cold November morning, that’s probably more like 20. That means using candles and flash lights at night. Yeah, probably not going to happen. I might try smoking some turkey wings in the fall when they are available. Wish me luck, what with the cold spring day, that it doesn’t take me six hours to smoke today’s meal of BBQ Pulled Pork!
