Brisket

One of our cats, "Mo", looked up at me from his sleeping place on a couch with an expression on his face that said, "What the heck are you doing? It's not 6:30 yet!" All the animals in our "pack" know that 6:30 am is the appointed feeding time. It is hard coded into their psyche to wake up at this time and expect food from their "human" providers. Alarm clocks are not generally needed in our house. Today, though my cell phone notified me it was time to get up and start "smokin'".

At 4:30 I was tested by my photographic ability to take a picture in almost no light. I used the flash. It was easier, and I wasn't real awake yet.

In fact it was 4:30 am and still very dark outside. I was captivated by the smells of the air on a lazy Sunday morning: The meat was drunk after spending a night bathing in a copious amount of Jack Daniels. The aroma of the alcohol was present as I put on a rub of fresh grown herbs (from our garden), salts and sugars. The smell of the oak and mulberry starting to burn in the firebox of the smoker was somehow sort of sensual.

The drunk meat is placed on the cooker after a generous application of a rub.

Then there were the sounds. The birds were starting to chirp. I wonder what they actually say to each other at this early time. The neighbor's outdoor fountain was making its usual sounds. They have a tall privacy fence. We can't see the fountain, but can hear it. An occasional car would go by on Woodlawn Ave just a couple of houses away. The neighbor's yippy dogs were asleep. No complaint about that. It was very quiet.

There is something very primitive or tribal in nature to the process of burning wood. A charcoal base is used just to get things started. All wood fuel thereafter

The sky was just barely starting to turn lighter as the sun neared the horizon. It would still be awhile before the sun made a blazing appearance. The full moon bathed the yard in a soft light as only the moon can.

Crappy attempt to get a shot of the barely light sky, but you get the idea.

Eventually, as time marched on, the dogs let me know what time it was. I had just put new wood on the fire and went back into the house to feed them. Later today it would get hot, maybe with some thunderstorms, but this morning I was enjoying the cool air and being outside in it. It could only have been better if I was out riding on this absolutely beautiful morning.

A shot toward part of the garden as the light continues to slowly invade the back yard

I went back outside. I got out the laptop and finished up a couple of scheduled posts to the blog. The sun eventually made its appearance and the newspaper arrived. I picked up a few "dog bombs" from the yard knowing that other humans were coming by today and wanted to be sure that there were no "hazards" in the yard.

Sorry Bobskoot, it's all in farenheit, but this is the ideal temperature goal for about 7 hours of cooking

The other humans were coming over today to sample some brisket that I was "cookin'". I had not done a brisket in the smoker for awhile. It is not a lot of work, but to do it right, takes a long time (at least 6 hours) at a low (225-275 F) heat. So most of the effort is just keeping the fire going and watching the temperature gauge occasionally.

The cooker in its glory. It's starting to get a bit lighter out.

About every 45 minutes or so I put a few more chunks of wood on the fire and check the temperature. Other than that, there is not much to it. There is much time available to enjoy being outside and enjoy the sights , smells and sounds of the early morning.

It bocomes time to create a "mop" for the meat to cook in after wrapping in foil. We actually didn't use the tequila in the mop. (The tequila was for later) I threw in a few spices in the mop as well, but not much, mostly pepper.

I was amazed to discover the origin of the lime juice. Conch, do you know Nellie and Joe? .

The sun started to warm the air as the smoke from the fire continued to bellow from the vent atop the smoker. I turned the meat over at about 7:30am and although it had a long way to go, it was starting to brown a bit and looked good.

The ceremonial wrapping of the brisket. A double layer of heavy duty foil with lots of the mop inside.

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To barbecue experts, the creation of a "smoke ring" in the brisket is a desired goal. A faint discoloration just inside the surface of the meat from the smoke is recognized in smoking competitions as a sign of quality cooking. It is not as easy to do as it sounds. I have had success at times, but not every time. The meat we bought came from a mennonite farm near here, not a huge industrial packing plant. No growth hormones were used and the cattle are raised on farms using time honored traditions. It is much more expensive than what would be in a grocery store, but amazingly well worth it.

A shot of the garden. Tomato plants on the right, some Anaheim peppers on the left, Cilantro, Lettuce and Spinach. We have had some awesome salads already this summer.

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I had to ask for a cut of the meat with the fat still on it, and the guy at the meat counter of the local butcher shop we like, seemed to sense immediately why I wanted it that way. They had some "in the back" he said. We smiled at each other as he put it on the scale (close to 9 lbs). He knew instinctively that I was going to smoke it and the fat would almost melt and disintegrate into the meat and provide the flavors desired by those familiar with the concept.

A shot of the herb garden. Basil, thyme, rosemary, oregano and lavender all fight for space in this little barrel. The oregano and basil are winning so far.

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My smoker is almost perfect for this purpose. There are many more revered types of smokers out there on the market but this one does just fine for us. The firebox sits to the side of the cooking area providing indirect heat and smoke to the cooking area.

After 7 hours I check the temperature with a meat thermoneter. I was aimimg for 160F. Turned out to be 190F. Very nicely done and very moist with the use of the mop.

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After close to 3 hours, with my hope for a smoke ring firmly in place, I wrap the brisket in foil and pour a mop of various fluids on top. Some experts don't wrap the brisket, but wrapping helps speed up an already very slow cooking process. After all, I don't have all day to do this. Humans are coming by between 12:00 and 1:00 pm and like the dogs at the 6:30 am feeding, they will demand to eat what by then will smell fantastic.

The first couple of slices are made. I am ecstatic. The smoke ring is almost perfect.

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We had a brief rainshower at about 10:30 am. It managed to make the air very humid. With a high temperature today expected to be in the upper 80's and a possibility for thunderstorms, this was bound to be a very sticky day. The sun came out with a vengeance after the rain making the air feel very heavy compared to what it was like at 4:30am.

Madeline, our Shepherd/Husky is always curious as to the droppings of liquids as they come out of the cooker. The little coffee can is supposed to catch them all, but a few drops were found to the benefit of the dog.

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I placed the last bits of wood on the fire at about 12:15pm. Except for a brief period of time during the rain when the cooking temperature dropped a little below 200, I was able today to keep the temperature between 225 and 275 most of the time. Aiming for a prescribed temperature with a wood smoker isn't always successful. Some woods burn hotter than others. It takes some experience with your equipment. I was happy just to stay close today.

More slicing ensues. It's hard not to eat it all right there, but others will be angry if we ate it all.

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I hadn't even opened up the oven portion of the cooker since I wrapped up the brisket at about 8:30am. You have to fight the curiosity to open it up and look at it. Opening it up can drop the temperature quite a bit and cause more cooking time. I placed my faith in the Barbecue Gods that all would turn out well in the end and a special nirvana would be created within the confines of the foil surrounding the beef.

Let the feast begin.

Ockham's Razor

If two hypotheses are equally accurate and neither appears more probable than the other, the simple one is to be preferred over the complicated one, because simplicity is practical. Where the hell am I going with this? Let me explain. Just soon after some warranty work was performed on my scooter recently, I began experiencing a starting problem. Not enough juice from the battery to engage the starter even though the lights and accessories all seemed to work properly (and yes, no blown fuses). I was so mad at the repair shop that did the warranty work that I began to suspect that maybe they did something wrong. Was there still some sort of short somewhere? Did they cause this? My early suspicion was the wiring to the horn which was the subject of a maintenance bulletin. It had caused a blown fuse about a year ago.

The horn next to the coolant overflow reservoir. The wires to the horn originally ran underneath the radiator, sometimes causing a short. They have been moved now.

It was also suggested by a good friend that maybe I just had a bad battery. I took the battery out and took it to a local battery store. They said it was pretty dead, but at no charge they said they would attempt to charge it up, test it and see if it was good or not. They did charge it up and test the battery and pronounced the battery to be healthy. Two days later, the scooter didn't start again. Hmmmmm I had been working with my good friend who helped me do some of the maintenance work I needed to get done on Max. The morning after we had worked on Max I noticed this box by my garage. A new battery was in there along with a trickle charger. A note said to try this battery out and see if that fixed the starting problem. If it didn't, then we would have to look further into some sort of electrical problem.

A box containing a battery, a charger and some extra coolant. A good friend is invaluable.

In trying to diagnose what my problem was, there seemed to be two possibilities: 1) I had a weak battery, pretty simple to fix. Or 2) There was a short somewhere causing a drain to the system. Would be potentially hard to track down and difficult to isolate. The timing of the starting problem closely coincided with the time that my scooter was in the repair shop. I didn't like those guys anyway. And the battery store said the battery was good and should maybe last 5 years or so (it was only 2 years old). So it was easy to assume I had a problem that might be tricky to solve.

The SYM has a 4 valve engine. Intake valves on top, exhaust below. There are 2 valve covers (the top shown here) held on the engine by 3 bolts. Two bolts are easily accessible, the third is under the bracket that holds the seat. Had to get that one from the other side. Oh well, if it was easy everybody would do it.

But, as you can maybe surmise by now, the simple solution turned out to be right and I made the whole affair seem more complicated and difficult than it really turned out to be. The new battery did the trick and the starting problem went away.

The exposed valve tappets on the bottom of the engine. We thought we might have to disassemble all of the body panels off the scooter to get at them, but turned out it wasn't that bad. Just a little inconvenient. We did have to take part of the floor off. A repair stand would help at this point but a little garage floor dust never hurt anybody.

Why is it that we sometimes assume the worst? Is it human nature? Is it because I had such a bad experience at that repair shop? But anyway, Max is now back to being his old dependable self. All is well with the universe. I have now learned a lot about Max with the help of my good friend. I have changed the engine oil, changed the gear oil, flushed and refilled the coolant, changed the spark plug, replaced an air filter and even inspected the valve clearances. The valves were all spot on and didn't need adjusting. I know how to do all these tasks now. And I replaced the battery.

The old and new air filters.

I still haven't re-set the clock though.

Maybe someday I'll tackle that too.

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Many thanks to my friend for kindly "showing me the ropes".

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Still Crazy

After all these years. Just like Paul Simon said. From a docked I-Pod came music from the 70's. Deep Purple, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Electric Light Orchestra, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills and Nash and other similar vintage music. Disco music was not to be tolerated. A couple of propane space heaters helped warm the cool evening, the glow of the heating elements providing a reddish tinge to the otherwise white lights in the garage.

From left to right, Jim (the blog author), Jim, Terry, Greg and Mark

Lawn chairs and coolers were arranged in a circle to enable conversation. I wanted to ride to Lawrence (direct route by slab about 155 miles) but because of rainy weather I took the famous Canadian Subaru up to Lawrence to meet up with some friends that were fraternity brothers of mine in college. We met at Terry's house and congregated in his "Man Cave" for beer, burgers and remembrances of older times. I hadn't seen a couple of these people in over ten years. Most of them I had not run into except for a very few times in the last 30 years. We kept in a somewhat loose contact with each other over the years, but rarely got together. With kids growing up, family and work commitments, it was always difficult to arrange get togethers with more than 2 or 3 of us. Most of us now are "empty-nesters" and it became a bit easier this year to arrange a date. Facebook became a way to communicate with each other for the planning of the event. We jokingly argued about who was friends with who on Facebook and why or why not.

A view of the "Man Cave" from the driveway.

We all looked a bit older, much shorter hair, some with gray hair, etc., but we were still the same crazy people in many respects. We recalled various events and spent a lot of time asking each other things like "Do you know where so and so is now?" or "Who was that guy that did that crazy thing that day at the lake".

One fun thing we did is tell each other about our kids, what our experiences were like in raising children, etc. There were some good (and some maybe not so good) stories told about our kids. We made the Catholic couple amongst us go last because we knew it would take awhile. It did. They have 5 kids, most of the rest of us, just 2. But we are all very proud of our offspring. There were supposed to be 6 of us there along with some of the wives. One guy didn't make it to the party, and we spent some time telling tales about him to his detriment. His loss. In the group I ran around with, there were 3 of us named Jim (one being the guy that didn't show up) and that got sort of confusing at the time. So the 3 Jim's were known by their last names instead. My nickname was "Roger" then.

The unbelievably organized north wall of the "Man Cave". There was some discussion of the usefulness of some of the equipment, particularly the small shovel toward the left. It was eventually determined to be a "good" by the group.

One is an attorney, a couple are self employed, another is a corporate exec. It's a wonder how we survived those years, but we all remain good friends and we had a great time reminiscing. We gave Terry a lot of ribbing about his "Man Cave". In his garage there is a TV, a fridge full of various types of beer, and a collection of rather unique bottle openers. His wife said that there were only 2 stores that Terry frequented, Home Depot and the liquor store. He also has become a serious bicyclist. There is a display of number tags from a series of annual MS tours (usually about 150 miles) he has rode on in honor of a childhood friend of his from his hometown (who was also a frat brother) and had died years ago from Multiple Sclerosis. A great guy that just went too soon. The level of storage sophistication with pegboard and hooks was amazing. We marveled at the shelf containing cleaning fluids and lawn chemicals, all neatly arranged and easily found. Terry said that nothing pisses him off more than not being able to find something. Rest assured that my garage is not near as organized.

Are your screwdrivers and hammers this organized?

The stories were many and too lengthy to describe here. The laughter was raucous, the food fantastic and the fellowship even better.

Oh well, maybe I'll tell one story.

Warning! This story, very true, is not for those that are faint of heart.

One time the frat rented a school bus and took maybe about 50 of us to a Kansas City Royals baseball game. The Royals had a fairly new stadium and were somewhat competitive in those days. George Brett and Frank White were a couple of the stars on the team.

We sat in the cheap seats just beyond right field

It was a hot August day. We all had our shirts off and basked in the warm August sunshine. Of course there was a fair amount of beer consumption. We all sat together in the cheap seats in right field. We had fun heckling whoever was the right fielder for the opposing team right in front of us.

In the bottom of the 9th inning, the score was close, but the Royals were down a run. There was a runner on base. Two outs and George Brett came to the plate. Now, George was a left handed batter, a great hitter (notorious for the "pine tar" incident) and when he hit the ball he generally pulled the ball to right field where we were conveniently sitting. Thoughts of "Mighty Casey at the bat" and saving the day crossed our minds as he sauntered up to the plate. Plus, wouldn't it be cool for one of us to catch a walk off home run ball that won the game?

The celebrated hero of the day, George Brett. (Note the trace of pine tar on the bat)

The crowd was excited, tension was high. A couple of pitches later George took a swing. The ball took off like a rocket, a hard line drive seemingly headed to the right of us toward center field. The ball looked like it was long enough to be a home run. Could it be that George would save the day?

But as the ball approached, we could see a lot of spin to the hit and the ball started curving toward us. Cries of "Oh Shit" were uttered as we all stood up, hurriedly put down our beers, stretched out our arms and hands in a vain effort, in our somewhat inebriated state, to try and catch the ball.

But as you can imagine, the possibility of catching the curving and speedy missile was going to be difficult. Our reaction times were not good and the ball eventually hit a guy very close to me in the chest, bounced off a seat and was captured by a fan many rows away. The ball actually left a little imprint of the laces on his chest. It had to hurt!

But at the time we were not concerned for his health, we were just mad that he didn't catch it potentially preserving another little trophy for the frathouse. Turns out he was okay, but he had a pretty nice bruise for his paltry effort.

We laughed like crazy as the crowd roared in celebration of the victory.

But that wasn't all that happened that day.............

A fine example of a concession stand dispenser.

As we left the stadium, one of the guys that had a well deserved reputation for being certifiably insane, thought it would be fun to "borrow" one of the large mustard dispensers from one of the concession stands. It was bright yellow, shaped like a small barrel with a pump on the top. It contained a copious amount of mustard (at least a gallon).

Beats me how he got it out of the stadium without being seen, but he succeeded. Now you need to know that the pump on this "weapon" was about 4 inches long and was powerful enough to squirt the pungent fluid at least 10 feet or so if handled properly. You can only imagine that no good was going to come from this.

In short order many of us had been "shot" with warm mustard. Yecch!

The result of being shot by the "weapon" Rumor has it that certain "Axis of Evil" countries were considering this weapon for their armies. They weren't able to make it work effectively. We did!

Not only that, but our assassin friend started to turn the weapon on other unsuspecting patrons of the game as we left the confines of the stadium. Most were not at all amused. We were lucky that a fight didn't start. We all pretended that we didn't know the guy, but we were laughing so hard that it was pretty obvious he was with us.

Various vehicles left the stadium through multiple lanes of traffic. I am sure it was accidental, but more than a few times streams of mustard were seen emanating from inside the windows of the bus. The shots landed at times on hoods and windshields of cars that had the bad luck of just being in close proximity to this bus of destruction and carnage.

The natural reaction of drivers that had just had their windshield sprayed with mustard was to instinctively turn on their windshield wipers. But this feeble attempt at improving their visibility only resulted in smears of mustard across the entire windshield.

With the "weapon" on the bus an even bigger mess was made. I'd hate to have been the person responsible for cleaning up the bus after us, but somebody would have had to spend a great deal of time with lots of paper towels and cleaning fluids. The bus probably smelled like stale mustard for months thereafter.

None of us escaped without having at least some yellow substance on us that day.

They could have written the "Animal House" movie about us. We had all the characters.