A 4th to Remember

Well we did it. We survived the 4th. In spite of all the packing and cleaning, we still managed to have a great day where I was able to smoke some ribs, drink a little whiskey, play with my grandkids, spend some time with old friends, and then go back to packing and cleaning

Today I made some bourbon barbecue ribs with my normal ‘make it up as I go along’ rub. The barbecue sauce was amazing, thanks to the generous use of Costco’s 7 year old bourbon. With that and lots of brown sugar, the barbecue sauce will be awesome. Though to be honest, when I first made it, I thought it was way too sweet. Fortunately a little extra salt and cayenne solved the problem and by barbecue time the sauce came out just right.

I always kid Helen about how Greek she is and prepares enough food for twice as many people as are attending. And then I turn around and prepare six racks of ribs for just 11 people. Needless to say we had plenty of leftover ribs. I smoked them using a combination of Cherry and Apple wood chunks and an occasional piece of red oak (to keep the heat up) for about 3 1/2 hours. And this provided the final proof that my current smoker is a disaster and the review of it that begins with “Please God, don’t let him buy this…” was 100% correct. While most of the ribs were incredible, there were a small percentage that were insufficiently cooked and this was solely due to the thin walls of the smoker.

Oh well guess I’ll just have to force my self to buy a new one. Poor me…

Later we all walked down to the coast to watch the bottom half of the Pismo Beach fireworks. And when I say bottom half, I mean we saw the whole show, but due to the marine layer, half of the fire works were to high in the sky to be seen through it. So at the very least I can attest that they were sufficiently loud.

Overall it w’s better than nothing.