Gremlin Grill

So this morning, like every morning, the cardinals living in the lilac bush outside the bedroom window woke at about 5:15. Loudly. They're assholes. When they wake, the dogs wake. This morning, unlike most mornings, Sara let them out. So I thought, good. I can sleep in. 6:30 is sleeping in for me, but still. Snooze, baby.

Then I remembered: I gots meat to smoke. So I slept in until about 5:45. And in the three hours since, I drank the better part of a pot of coffee, I cussed at the cardinals, I cussed at the Royals, I kissed Millie square on the lips (several times), I ate seven saltines, I did some dishes, I did some laundry, I watched a couple hundred runners in the KC Mito-What? 5k run discover the hills that surround Lake Waukomis are beautiful and unforgiving, and I threw 30 pounds of pork on the Weber Smokey Mountain. The meat is destined for the crews and guests of Jay Robinson Racing at the Kentucky NASCAR Nationwide race. Also, I'm all sweaty and gross, so I'm going to shower now. And maybe write more later. If you're lucky.

I'd post pictures, but the camera's dead. Too many cat pictures, apparenly.

Posted by Pat at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our bowling team – the Northland Bowl 2007-2008 USBC Men’s Invitational League Champions, you’ll recall (we’re a pretty big deal), has a motto: it’s better to be lucky than good. This is nothing less than a truism when it comes to barbecue contests. If you’re lucky, you can take a fine rack of perfect, meaty baby backs and cook them down to a pile of bitter, carbonized mush, make it look purty and finish in the top ten. Likewise, you can produce spectacular barbecue; slow smoked food of the gods, as good as anyone on the planet has ever made, but have the luck of the ’69 Cubs and have the judges hate it.

At Basswood Resort this year, we were the latter.

Continue reading "If you want to win big, you have to lose big. So we lost big." »

Posted by Pat at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There’s some kind of cosmic force out there that decides when and what we win. Well, it might not be cosmic. I don’t claim to understand how things like luck, fate, karma, providence or two-stroke boat motors work. But something is deciding that when we think we’ve produced an excellent hunka meat, we need to be knocked down a peg. Likewise, when we turn in barbecue that we think is sub par at best; unfit for humanoid consumption at worst, some mysterious force decides to toss some ribbons at us.

That was HyVee 2009. And that’s why I like a good barbecue contest: it rarely goes as expected, it seldom makes sense, and there’s always beer.

Continue reading "Predictably unpredictable" »

Posted by Pat at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)