Rough Weekend

We had a good start to last weekend - ran some errands Saturday morning, followed by grabbing dinner with Dave before meeting up with Randy, Larry, one of Larry's sons, and Larry's ex-wife's son to see Aliens Vs Monsters in 3D. Ok, sure, it was priiiiiicey, but it was a ton of fun! I really liked it!

Before we left, I set up a whole chicken's worth of parts in a zip-lock bag with a marinade of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, oregano, and some salt and pepper whizzed in the blender. I had a 10-lb beef brisket that also needed to get marinating, but I was running short on time... here's the big slab-o-meat...


And here's the marinade, which I whizzed up just before going out the door. There's an onion or two, some smoked salt I made awhile back, chipotles in adobo sauce, leftover frozen super-hot salsa from Chipotle's, some "Dallas Dandy rub", and more in here! (And there's more to the "more" - all this got combined with a couple cans of beer in the marinating bag!)


After our fun night out we got home, I finished making the marinade, wrestling the brisket (cut in two) into a giant zip-lock bag, pouring in the marinade, doing the dishes, and went to bed.

The next morning Brett woke me up. He'd already been up awhile with the critters - which is normal for the weekend mornings. He's nice enough to let me sleep in while he entertains the beasts and catches up on American Idol or whatever other shows I've cut out to regain some time in my life... Only this time there was probably very little tv watching. Instead he spent the morning trying to plunge the clogged kitchen sinks, run draino down 'em, wipe up the water all over the floor, check the dripping down into the basement, etc.

Fun, hunh?

I figured it was my turn to take over, and I'd sorta helped dad rig up the piping under the sink when we replaced the construction grade sink with something much nicer after moving in. This meant taking apart the pipes (AFTER ensuring there was a tub underneath to catch the water!), and feeling around for clogs. Oh, and trust me, the water in these situations doesn't just drain out gracefully - it sprays! So I got wet, the floor got wet, etc...and there was definitely draino in the mix.

Again - not fun.

So we made a trip to Lowes to buy our first ever auger/snake, choosing one that had the option to hook up a powered drill - only $20, so not bad. After grabbing some lunch we came back home to work on the sink more.



This is so much fun. You know how it goes in situations like these - suddenly you have dirty dishes piling up, things are pulled out from under the sink, etc. Even stuff that should've been clean (like what was running in the dishwasher) is now "contaminated" and will need to be washed again.

I'm glad we found some gloves for me to put on during all of this...



At one of the points I'd hoped the clog was cleared out by the snake, I was re-assembling the PVC pipes and cracked a compression screw-ring (hey, I don't know my own strength!) - now the water was coming out of the pipe BEFORE it could even confirm whether or not I had the clog conquered. This would mean another trip to Lowes for a replacement part.

Oh, and remember that meat that was marinating and needed to be smoked? Yeah, so did I! So by about 1 or 2, the chicken and brisket were thrown on the smoker, and awhile later I was back out to Lowes getting the replacement parts. Several more attempts with the snake (I used all 25'!), some sucking with the wet-vac, annnd more plunging, and the the clog was finally cleared. I got the kitchen mostly cleaned up, and it was time to check the meat!

The chicken turned out REEEEEALLY good:


(Yeah, just ignore that one gnawed on wing - that was me taste-testing!) ;-)

I also realized I forgot to top the brisket with more rub before putting it on the smoker. So I mixed up a fresh batch of Dallas Dandy Rub (I think that's what it's called) from the smoker book - 2T each smoked salt, chili powder, black pepper, paprika, and you can barely see it at the top, but brown sugar's also in there. I dumped all this into a bowl, shook it up, applied some to the brisket (which had already been smoking a few hours by this point!), and saved the rest for later grilling/smoking.


Brett also thawed out some sausages to add to the smoker. We had some spicey cheddar sausage and some andouille sausage - both were GREEEEAT after about an hour!


I was changing the smoking wood every hour or so, and kept doing so til sunset, and finally gave up. I brought the briskets in - they weren't done - wrapped them in foil, threw 'em in the dutch oven, and popped that in the oven at 250 for a couple hours, shut the oven off, and went to bed. The meat was cooked, but it hadn't hit that magical stage where it just falls apart, so I left it in the oven oven night (yes, I know - you're freaking), and the next morning (which I took off from work due to all the Sunday craziness and wanting to clean more) I baked it longer.


It never did quite hit that fall-apart stage throughout. Since it was just a big piece of meat, I think it had a couple different cuts/muscles to it? Some were a bit dryer and firm, while others were still riddled with a mesh of fat, which gave the chew a little bounce. Oh well - sure tasted good!!!!

Let's hope this weekend's less eventful than last!