Woot! Lots of stuff to update today. First, Jenny and I went to Linn Run state park a few weeks ago, and we had a great time. It was cold outside, but we ate our picnic lunch anyway and went on a short hike. We had initially intended to head up to a trail up the mountain a bit, but a young couple had slipped and perished at the bottom of a long drop earlier in the day there. We didn’t know that until we got close and a ranger turned us away, of course. We decided instead to hike a shorter loop trail in the park itself that was supposed to lead to a small waterfall. As you might be able to see here, we found it. 
We took a bunch of pictures while there, too.
In other news, I bought a real live smoker. I decided to try an experiment last summer, and I started to learn how to smoke food. I have a Weber kettle grill as our normal grill at home. With a little bit of work, one can smoke pretty well in one of these. I decided to give it a shot. I did a pork butt first, and it turned out pretty good. Actually, it turned out tasting great, but there were a few prep steps that would have made it better, and it would have been better if I could have cooked it more slowly. It took eight hours as it was, but it probably would have done well with 10. The result was meat that was still a shade tougher than I wanted, but it tasted great. The next experiment was at a party with my friend Nick, where I smoked a pork shoulder. This turned out better, as I had a better idea for what I was doing. Then, for thanksgiving, I smoked one of the turkey breasts for dinner at my parents’ house. That turned out great. All this time, I have been wanting a real smoker. The kettle grill did pretty well, but food configurations and fuel run times were somewhat limited by its size.
Enter the Weber Smokey Mountain cooker, a purpose-built smoker with two food grates to handle a lot of food, and a giant charcoal chamber that can supply low and slow heat for 12+ hours. This is such a popular and nearly fool-proof unit that it has its own fan site with lots of good recipes and cooking information: The Virtual Weber Bullet.
With the shower fast approaching, and with it the need for me to smoke a lot of chicken, I finally had good reason to go ahead and make the jump. Shown here are some of the parts that go into the WSM.
Now, to the right, you can see the unit assembled with its lid. It has a ton of space in it. I should be able to do eight chicken halves at once in here. I need to do about 18 chicken halves, so this should make that go pretty quickly. I could even do two more at a time on the regular grill, but I think I’m going to avoid that for consistency’s sake.
I’m excited to try this out before the shower. I think I might do a beef brisket at some point–maybe next weekend. That’s a 10+ hour cook, usually, so I’ll plan to start it one evening and let it cook all through the night. Worst-case scenario is that I’ll be ordering pizza for both of us the next day.
jonathan
