A busy weekend, but worth it

[glitchy]

When there are glitches, I’m very grateful to be fortunate enough to have options, it definitely turned something that could have tripped the temper into an oh well moment and quickly moved on.

[smokin fool]

Not bad, I spent the weekend tearing out gardens before the inevitable freeze coming up.

[HawkerXP]

Nice job!

[jpietrantone]

I can definitely relate! I get roll eyes every time I take food pics.

[fzxdoc]

Sparky to the rescue. Some days of cooking outside, even with a few glitches (see what I did there? ) are still way more pleasurable than cooking inside, especially in feast-mode. Glad it all worked out for you.

Kathryn

[Old Glory]

Always good to have a Plan B!

[DavidNorcross]

Nothing like a weekend full of cooking. Good job with or without photos!

[glitchy]

I can give a little evidence it really occurred through leftovers. I used a little of the shredded beef and queso to make some nachos tonight. I should have grabbed some pics at dinner, but didn’t feel like getting crap for taking food pics.

[Caffeine88]

No pix, but I can see it in my head! Great work.
We've only recently started having folks over again, and it is a real joy to share great food with friends.

[RonB]

I'm glad everything worked out.

[STEbbq]

Well done! It is very satisfying to make some nice meals for friends! 😃

[glitchy]

With the situation the past 18 months, we haven’t done much entertaining. However, the in-laws are migrating south for the winter next week and wanted everyone to get together before they head out. So, wife’s parents came down Friday and stayed with us, and her middle bother came down yesterday and stayed at her youngest brother’s 20 mins away. Friday I threw on a couple Mexican rubbed chuckies and made shredded beef street tacos, pickled some red onion, made Chi Chi’s copycat cornbread, Velveeta/Rotel queso dip, and some boxed Spanish rice. Son and his girlfriend made it for dinner and we had a great fiesta with her parents.

After dinner we figured out the plans for Saturday with the whole family and they wanted to do a pork butt. So I let the MAK cool off a couple hours so I could empty the fire pot and start over. About 10:30, I started the MAK, rubbed my butt down with a little secret weapon and threw it on. setup the Fireboard to babysit and it immediately starts going off. MAK is not burning. By this time, I’m cold (40ish degrees out) and I’m still in shorts, so go change and come back out. After staring at McNapper for a few minutes and listening to the auger start and stop as expected, but not hearing any pellets tink the pot I’m left to decide, tear this apart at 11:30 in the dark or fire up Sparky. So, decided Sparky with the Grill Gun gets the call. Grab a LP can and get to work. As soon as I turn the valve, hear gas out the valve…it’s late, and I’m using it anyway before this pork butt is sitting to long outside. So, the only pics of any of this you get are me taking pics waiting for an epic fail using a leaking flame thrower. Thankfully no disaster.

Sparky was up to the task and ran 11-12 hours on the first load in SnS another 1/2 load got 4 more hours with plenty to spare. Next morning, tore apart McNapper and found nothing wrong. No auger jam, fire pot about half full of pellets, etc. Emptied the pot, turned it on again and ran for 2-3 hours on Smoke, then cranked it up to 400 for a little burn off. Guess it just failed to light or snuffed out somehow when I put the butt on. I didn’t wait until it was up to temp to throw it on like I usually do and realized it never made it there at all.

Whipped up a batch of homemade sauce, pulled the butt about 3:00, wrapped and cooler and headed to the B-I-L to spend the evening with my bride’s family.

Anyway, why am I sharing this with really no pictures? Because it was a good weekend and it was nice to cook again for more than 3-4 of us. I don’t want to cook huge meals daily, but sometimes it’s a lot of fun making a fun feast and hearing lots of voices you don’t hear every day. Even us introverts need it more than we’ve gotten the past couple years. Today before everyone parted ways was carry out pizza though, I cooked enough Friday and Saturday