Smoking meat will give you a hell of a raspy cough though.
No Runny Eggs, Lemur King, Cruel Wife (and kidlets) plus a starving neighbor chowed down – smoked wings, pulled pork, ribs, rolls/buns, mustard and tomato sauces, mac and potato salad, baked beans… Oh yeah.
NRE, being an incredibly laid back fella, seems to be a small-critter magnet, drawing attention from both of my offspring and Silver d’Cat.
This was a GOOD thing, as I had been cooking the pork butt (shoulder) roasts since 8pm the night before, and then the ribs since 9:30am this morning. By the time you hit the home stretch, energetic offspring make it hard to pull it all together. And I was *tired*. Not at the peak of my game yet, obviously.
Meanwhile, Cruel Wife was awesomely terrific and made up a batch of my favorite Habanero Peanut-Butter Cookies. Oh yeah. I think NRE approved… (click the pics for larger versions)
Big Betsy – she finished off the buffalo wings, kept the pork warm, and toasted all the things that don’t do well in the smoker itself.
Here is Big Betsy.
The food… Note the bark on the ribs… black as sin but lots tastier (sez me).
I ended up scarfing 2-1/2 pulled pork sandwiches, four chunks of ribs, beans, mac salad, and enough Dr. Pepper to up my chances of diabetes by roughly 2000%. I left my portion of buffalo wings to Cruel Wife since she is the one that would crawl bare-assed nekkid through turpentine and broken glass for a smoked wing – or rather – my smoked buffalo wings.
Girl-Child Unit #1 and Death-Wish Boy had a blast pestering NRE as I said before but I think they also managed to pull off “cute” at the same time, thus avoiding the humiliation of being sold to gypsies. Their faces are covered for your protection, Constant Reader, for while they may look harmless, they are pure unadulterated evil.
Tomorrow the plan is to go to the Henry Ford Museum. If you have never been there, this is a place worth making a vacation trip out of. Between the Museum and Greenfield Village (both started by Ford) you have a lot of fascinating things to see, side by side. Plan two days to see both.
Quite the spread! It all looks delicious. I had shrimp scampi at my parent’s house and it was really good too. I have to ask though – blue cheese ranch? Is that a blending of the two recipes or just throwing some blue cheese chunks into ranch?
We just chuck some blue cheese into standard bottled ranch dressing. If you have the time, adding fresh fried bacon to it is a wonderful touch.
You can buy it premixed, but they don’t (in my opinion) exactly use the best quality cheeses. I’m a cheese snob.
Scampi… oh yeah. Ooooooh… yeaaaah.
Wish you could’ve been here. Of course, I had the horrible manners to fall asleep not long after eating, but then I had a bitch-kitty of a headache, too, so it was for the best. Took a lot of pills before it died down (damn).
You would think right. Just the right amount of kick in the cookies.
hmmm.. what happened to MP? Did he cancel as well? The spread looks amazing… rain check on that for sure!!!
Well, MP was kind of iffy and wasn’t sure if he could actually make it. Flooding was pretty high on his mind, I’m sure.
Oh yeah, I’d like to do this again. I’d cook only one meal in the future though – BBQ – and the rest would be fend for yourself. If I had a commercial kitchen with large ovens, fridges, and stovetops, it’d be a snap but at home you are limited in how much you can prepare.
I see. Flooding takes precedence for sure…
And smart on the cooking/future planning front.
Sometimes – the best course (of action) – is to let others fend for themselves. But the BBQ… now THAT looked pretty tasty!
If I could borrow Enas Yorl’s trebuchet I’d chuck a BBQ sandwich your way… and maybe a smoked wing if you’re nice to me.
Tomato or mustard sauce?
No sauces baby… just meat.
I don’t need anything masking any tastes. Herbs & spices are good enough for me… and that’s about it!
Not even my famous tomato and mustard sauces?
Scooby Snacks were good for getting Scoob and Shaggy to go do stupid things. My sauces when put on Scooby Snacks would get those two jellyfish to assassinate bad guys.
Ok, so I exaggerate…