Reflecting on My barbecue adventure
Cooking Barbecue
The story of barbecue is the story of America: Settlers arrive on great unspoiled continent, discover wondrous riches, set them on fire and eat them. ~Vince Staten
The pork shoulder was half price, and we have not had barbecue in a while, so I bought it thinking I would slow cook it.
I took no pictures, because it turns out, the bargain roast was ¾ of a pound larger than what our slow cooker can handle. Who needs to preserve this mistake in estimating? But, after some finagling, I got the lid on the cooker, and figured cooking overnight would further reduce its size.
That it did.
I know because I couldn’t sleep for the reason that I worried:
First, that the old trusty companion the slow cooker is, would finally give up the ghost in the middle of the night and set the kitchen on fire;
Second, that all the juices the roast would produce would then flood out of the cooker and across the counter, and onto the floor. Then, Doug would slip on all the grease the next morning making coffee.
So, I kept waking myself up wondering if everything was OK.
At 3:00 AM I tiptoed across an icy floor to skim off the juices; juices that had in fact bubbled up to the very top! Fifteen minutes more, and who knows?
At 5:48 AM, I just unplugged everything and went back to bed until nine.
The meat is tasty – and made wonderful barbecue thanks to the sauce Aldi’s sells. It wouldn’t impress Texans– but on a cold wintry night, Doug liked it.
Can I Sleep Now?
Oh, I hope I can sleep tonight. I will if I don’t lie awake worrying about the coming ice storm and what will happen if we lose power. What will I do with all that shredded pork?
If I had my life to live over, I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I’d have fewer imaginary ones. ~Don Herold in I’d Have Picked More Daises
P.S. A tip for the indoor [autumn’s] gardener from Peg Bracken, on a cold, rotten day:
Now doth the harried houseperson put plastic sacks over the sick-looking house plants to humidify their individual atmospheres, for this doth bring the invalid back to green-growing health but not always.
“We’ve got to accept the idea that plants just up and die for no apparent reason.”~ Lynn and Joel Rapp, authored Mother Earth’s Hassle-Free Indoor Plant Book (The I Hate to Cook Almanack , page 15)