Easter Weekend 2007

OK... I'm getting my first weekend 'off' in I don't know how long. Honestly, it's been years since I didn't have one single event scheduled over a weekend.

Ahhh.... It feels good just to sit in front of the lap top and catch up on blogging. I'm normally rushing from one event, lesson, meeting, or appointment to another. It's just been insane.

But yesterday (Friday, April 6) I slept in until about 7 AM, was mowing the yard by 9 AM and by 11:30 AM Connor and I were headed out to Houston for a fun day of watching a professional tennis tournament.

Yesterday evening the family relaxed watching television together. Today, I got up at 6 AM to start my favorite holiday past time... That's right... Texas Bar B Que...!

On the menu for lunch today is... Smoked Pork Ribs... Then I'm going to put on a Brisket a little later this morning... The brisket will be ready in the evening...

Unfortunately, the weather is not too nice today. It's cold and breezy. That's kinda strange for this time of year. Not the breezy part, but the 'cool' part....! Also, not surprisingly, it's supposed to rain today as well. I'm just glad I'm not running the coke open tennis tournament this year.

So, getting back to my bar b que... The ribs have been on for over an hour, but the grill temperature has only been optimum for about 30 minutes. So in another 15 minutes or so I'll flip the ribs and try to maintain a consistent grill temp of about 225 degrees for another 4 hours or so...

I was going to use my favorite 3-2-1 method... 3 hours of smoking on a low heat, two hours of cooking the ribs wrapped tightly in foil, and then one more hour of smoking out of the foil to dry the ribs out a bit. This method usually produces excellent, tender, fall off the bone ribs.

However, these particular ribs were not as fatty as I would have liked. I'm afraid that if I cook them for the full six hours that I will dry them out too much... Plus, I want to accelerate the process so we'll be eating between 12 noon and 1 PM. Mmmmm..... I love ribs...!

So, I plan to cook and blog most of the morning. Sometime this afternoon I want to thoroughly clean out my closet. There's a mountain of clothes laying on the floor. Monica's given up on trying to figure out what's going on in there...

I need to just get rid of a bunch of stuff. I'm going to be relentless. Yes, before the end of the day you will be able to see the floor of my closet!

If it doesn't start to rain, I'll try to work in the back yard a little too. We are in dire need of some picking up and landscaping... Of course, I'm looking forward to hanging out with the family, playing with Elijah, and sipping a cool refreshing beverage...!

Well, that's my morning update... I'd better go check those ribs... more later... SC