It's not that anything unusual happened. It's just that it's unusual to get a day off and now it looks like we're getting two days off soon. I'm not sure how I'll handle myself with that much time, but I know I'll figure it out.
Yesterday was spent running a few light errands including getting my phone back on a network. God bless the little girl who helped me last week as she got the simplest of information wrong and it caused me to be without a phone for three days. Luckily, she wasn't there because saying I was less than pleased with her is a gross understatement. However, all's well that ends well.
After a decent breakfast we headed to the store for a few things. It was already decided that we were smoking some baby backs thanks to my neighbor in the RV park who said I could use his pellet smoker while they were out of town. This was my first time using such a device and that story ends with my scorching the back of two slabs and two others that were perfect. We had promised some folks ribs so we delivered those and headed back.
In the Pulp Fiction style, we'll transport back to the early afternoon where I was making broccoli salad. Not much to say about this other than I needed a hand mixer to stir the organic sugar into my dressing. We have one that we swiped from our daughter and only recently found out that we had inadvertently lost the beaters. Arriving at the dollar store for some forgotten ingredients, I was looking for a cheap mixer to which my wife, Gina the Frugal, said we didn't need to spend the money on right now. Well, fine.
We arrived home and I knew I had to figure something out or else my forearm would be worn out by the time I got the sugar to dissolve into the mayonnaise with a whisk. I was almost certain that I had a smaller whisk in my arsenal of cooking paraphernalia and quickly located that along with my battery powered drill. If you don't know where this is going, here are the pictures.
The broccoli salad marinading in it's tastiness, it was time for beer and we were well stocked. For the next few hours, the story gets pretty boring as smoking ribs is an exercise of Hurry Up and Wait. You already know what happens when the ribs are done so we can move on to the next point of order.
A good friend (and follower here at BMAC) sent me one of his favorite meat cures and I've had a pork belly resting in it for a couple of weeks now. The whole arrangement with borrowing the pellet smoker was to smoke the bacon and that quickly elevated itself into the ribs. I mean, if you have access to a smoker, you smoke as much as you can in the time you have. After all the ribs were done, the temp in the smoker was dramatically reduced and the low and slow smoking began.
We wait as the bacon took a nice, slow smoke bath and watched the sunset which was particularly stunning, as it usually is here in South Texas, and watched as campers kept coming to our end of the park to witness the beauty of the mountains as the sun sank behind them. We sat by our newly acquired propane fire pit and drank beer until it was dark and the campers had all returned to their sites. A simple day and night to be sure but they are so rare these days that, in my mind, it was as good a day as I could have hoped as well as much needed break from the running. RV living does take a lot of work.
However, as I write this installment, I do so on the morning after and reflect on a very good day and with a belly full of home cured and smoked bacon as I wait to return to the sub shop for another closing shift. The next couple of days off are coming and they will be epic with us repeatedly stating the obvious: This Does Suck.
Have a great day!
