I found pork Cushion on sale and bought a couple of packages. I had planned on doing pulled pork, but decided to try doing a roast also. I put them all in the cookshack smoker at 225 degrees with hickory and cherry wood. I pulled the roast at 145 degrees, and pulled the rest at 195 degrees. Here are the end results.

Tri-tip Sliced Tri-tip One of 3 briskets Sliced Brisket Johnny Trig style baby back ribs. Smoked meat loaf. S’mores pie.

I just finished my big brisket smoke for the year. This year getting good briskets in my area was difficult. No prime and the choice were small. I did 4 briskets that equaled 52 pounds. I usually have 3 briskets that go close to 60 pounds before trimming.
I trim my briskets out so that most of the hard fat is removed and the fat cap is trimmed to ¼ to ½ inch. I pay attention to the end of the flat when I buy the brisket and when I trim out the brisket. I will trim a thin end off rather than end up with this part of the brisket getting burnt to the point you can’t use it. This is a good video by Franklin BBQ on trimming brisket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaMgt1Altys .
I get my briskets rubbed at least 2 days before I put them in the smoker. I have used mustard or Worcestershire sauce to wet the surface of the briskets before I hit them with the dry rub but don’t do it this way any more. I will say that should you use the mustard or Worcestershire sauce use just enough to wet the surface You don’t want to end up with the brisket looking like it had been dunked in a vat of mustard. When I do my dry rub now I start with the fat cap down and hit the surfaces of the brisket that are exposed with a liberal coating of dry rub. I then go do something else for 20 or 30 minutes. This lets the salt in the rub work. The salt brings out the surface moisture in the brisket and this soaks into the rub and holds it in place when I turn the brisket fat cap up. I repeat the dry rub and wait on all of the new exposed surfaces and then put the brisket into large zip lock bags. They have 2 and 2 ½ gallon zip locks now. The bagged briskets now go back into the fridge until I am ready to smoke them.
I make the rub using a recipe from “Smoke and Spice” by Cheryl and Bill Jamison. I highly recommend this book. The rub is called Wild Willy’s Number One-derful Rub. This is good basic rub and can be easily modified to suit your taste. This is the recipe I use including notes and changes I have made over the years.
Wild Willy’s Number One-derful rub
¾ cup smoked paprika
¼ cup freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup course salt, either kosher or sea salt
¼ cup sugar (I use Turbanado, or brown sugar)
2 tbls. chili powder
2 tbls. garlic powder
2 tbls. Onion powder
2 tsp. Cayenne
2 tsp. Ground Rosemary
This is a great dry rub for steaks, ribs, brisket, and pork.
I have a CookShack SM066 smoker. I have been using these smokers for going on 20 years. I say this simply to make the point that the following is what works in my smoker and may not work the same way in whatever smoker you are using. These smokers were designed and built as Brisket ovens. They are wood stingy and cook very moist. I do 4 briskets using 8 to 10 oz. of wood. I use wood chunks and will do a mix of whatever I have on hand. Hickory or Pecan mixed with apple or cherry. I figure on a 24 hour smoke time and several hours extra to let the briskets “rest”. I do not worry about the stall and I do not wrap my briskets to get them over the stall. I start out with cold briskets and a cold smoker I want to get as much smoke on the briskets as I can before they hit 160 degrees internal temp. I do my briskets fat cap up. I use a leave in probe style thermometer and set the alarm temp for 190 degrees. I set the smoker temp at 175 degrees and come in the house. I will check the smoker several times over the next couple of hours and if the smoker is not producing good smoke after a couple of hours and I haven’t hit the 160 degrees internal temp I will add another chunk of wood and turn the smoker temp up to 225 degrees. I like my sleep so just before I go to bed I turn the smoker temp down to 195 degrees and go to bed. The next morning I turn the smoker temp back up to 225 degrees and wait for the thermometer alarm to go off. I do not cook brisket by time or internal temperature but by feel. When the alarm goes off I take a toothpick or skewer out to the smoker and probe the brisket. When the probe goes into the brisket and feels like you were probing a warm stick of butter the brisket is done. I have over the years had briskets that probed done at 190 degrees. Most of them probed done at 205 degrees and some big briskets went to 215 degrees before they were done. Since I am doing several briskets they usually get done at different times. I take them out as they get done and put them into disposable aluminum pans and cover them with foil. They then go into a warmed insulated cooler. I warm the cooler with hot water in a pan when I know the briskets are getting close. I will leave the briskets in the cooler for a minimum of 2 hours and they will stay hot up to 8 hours in the cooler. I can’t prove it by any scientific method but I think the time in the cooler actually makes the briskets better. Better flavor and more tender for sure and may enhance the moistness of the meat.

Thermoworks sent me a recipe for doing Corned beef. I didn’t have time to actually corn the beef like they did so I used a couple of store bought corned beef. My wife had picked up 2 of these from Costco. They were very well trimmed. I think they were actually too well trimmed as they didn’t have any fat on them. I put them in the smoker with hickory and cherry wood and set the smoker for 225 degrees. When they reached 160 degrees internal temp I pulled them out and put them in a pan with a little water and covered them with foil. They went back in the smoker until they hit 190 degrees internal temp. I really didn’t like the look of them, they sort of looked like 2 lumps of chocolate. I fired up the grill and when it was hot I did a reverse sear on them. They really turned out good with great texture and concentrated flavor.

I picked up a cheese slicer at a local auction and got a good deal on it. The working surface is 12"x 17"

I know, this isn’t chili because it doesn’t have beef and/or it has beans. None the less this is a good way to use leftover turkey/chicken and although I haven’t tried it yet I think the spices would work well with pork.

Timothy’s White Chili

Serving Size: 8

1 lb. Dried white beans
6 cups Chicken broth
2 Cloves garlic
2 Medium onions, chopped
1 Tbs Oil
9 oz Canned green chilies
2 tsp. Ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp. Oregano
1/4 tsp. Ground cloves
1/4 tsp. Cayenne pepper
4 cups Diced cooked chicken breast
3 cups Grated Monterey jack cheese
Salsa
Sour cream

1. Combine beans, broth, garlic & 1/2 the onions in a large pot. Bring to a
   boil, reduce & simmer till beans are soft - 2 hrs or more - adding broth if
   necessary.

2. Sauté remaining onions in oil till tender. Add chilies & seasonings &
   mix thoroughly. Add to bean mixture. Add chicken & simmer 1hr.

3. Serve topped with grated cheese, salsa & sour cream.

bocephus We do dressing. This is basically stuffing cooked in a pan. The good thing is that you get more dressing than what you can cram into a turkey. I fill the turkey cavity with fresh herbs, onions, celery, and apples or oranges. This is one I did with a rosemary, thym, and sage compound butter. Some of the butter went under the skin and some went over the skin. !

The smokers were busy over the weekend. Smoke roasted garlic and smoked chicken on Saturday and cold smoked cherries to make jam, and smoked pork loin for dinner.

Smoked Meat Loaf.
3 lbs mild Italian Sausage (loose, extracted sausage from casings)
3 lbs ground beef-93% lean (lean cause of sausage)
1 large red onion (coarsely chopped)
2 Tbsp garlic powder
4 eggs
2 Tbsp Canadian Steak seasoning I am sure that any steak seasoning you like will work for this.
4 oz ketchup
4 Tbsp Memphis rub (This is a dry rub, any good dry rub you like should work)
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
8 oz Italian 4 cheese mix
4 oz Big Bob Gibson’s Red Sauce (This is BBQ sauce. Use what you like).

Mix all of the ingredients except the BBQ sauce) thoroughly, form into 2 loaves, and place them on a single broiler/cookie type sheet (Pam or such is a good idea here) with holes in it so the smoke can get to the underside of the meatloaf and fat drippings can escape.
Throw the sheets with the loaves into a 210* preheated smoker (2 oz hickory, 2 oz white oak or your choice) until internal temp hits 150*.
Let the meat loaf rest for 20 minutes and coat the top/sides of the meat loaves with Big Bob Gibson’s Red (or sauce of your choice).
Then throw them into a 250* preheated smoker for apprx. 20 minutes to set the outside of the meatloaves. Let them rest for 10 minutes and slice.

Jonathon Jon: Just some advice from someone that has been there and done that. Please find a shooting range with good instructors and different firearms that they will either let the students shoot or rent for your wife. This will let your wife learn to shoot from people that are able to see and quickly identify problems and correct them before they become habits. Your wife will also get to shoot a number of different firearms in different configurations. That little Glock 43 might turn into something completely different by the end of the class.

My Loving and long suffering wife and my 2 daughters are shooters. My Eldest was the Women’s National Collegiate air pistol champion and a 2 time All American in women’s air pistol and a 2 time All American in Women’s Sport Pistol. Her name is the first to appear on the Melaragno Trophy https://competitions.nra.org/media/8193/tro-170-melaragno.pdf . I did not teach any of the 3 to shoot. I found instructors for them.

I haven’t been doing much with curing things. I have made bacon a number of times using the EQ method of curing. I did some reading before I started making bacon. One of the things I noticed is that one of the recipes is calling for Cure #2, and one is calling for cure #1. They are different and used for different purposes. I would think that you would want to use the cure #1 for jerky. The cure calculator that I use starts with the weight of the meat and then calculates out the amount of water, sugar, salt and cure #1. You can change the percentages of the water, salt and sugar, but the cure #1 is locked at .25% of the total weight of the water and meat. For 4 pounds of meat the calculator calls for 4.54 grams of cure #1 that is around 1.3 teaspoons. What am I missing about this?

I found pork Cushion on sale and bought a couple of packages. I had planned on doing pulled pork, but decided to try doing a roast also. I put them all in the cookshack smoker at 225 degrees with hickory and cherry wood. I pulled the roast at 145 degrees, and pulled the rest at 195 degrees. Here are the end results.

Spidey We have a local company that sells commercial kitchen equipment. They also run auctions of restaurants that are going out of business. This slicer was listed as “New”. Turned out that it was new but old. I don’t think that it was ever unboxed, it was still in the original plastic wrap and had the “instructions” inside the wrap. When I say instructions, this is a half page of typed instructions that basically says place cheese against the apron, lower cutting wire and pull handle toward you.

zbigjeff This is indeed a different type of equipment. I really didn’t need something this big. I have two smaller kitchen type cheese slicers but they are just not big enough to break down even the baby brick size blocks of cheese. The cutting wire runs underneath the cutting deck and around a grooved wheel that runs on an axle attached to two springs. It will handle some big blocks of cheese.

I picked up a cheese slicer at a local auction and got a good deal on it. The working surface is 12"x 17"

Jonathon: I did some searching online and found several skunk odor removers for dogs. The one in the link gets the best reviews. https://www.petsmart.com/dog/cleaning-supplies/stain-and-odor-removers/natures-miracle-lavender-skunk-odor-remover-5323491.html?gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIluj70eOQ-wIVcRnnCh23ewRfEAQYASABEgKB5PD_BwE

Jonathon: I am a retired Firefighter, and before I retired worked 24 hour shifts with 8 other guys. This was before anyone had ever heard of or worried about Toxic masculinity. One of the crew ran a trap line during the winter and made his own scent hider to put on the traps and spray around the area. The main ingredient was skunk scent. He gathered this from the scent glands of skunks. We all grew mustaches, but this guy had a MUSTACHE. One day he found a freshly deceased skunk and was in the process of gathering the ingredients for his scent hider. Something went way wrong and he got a blast of full strength skunk straight to the mustache. He said that he learned first hand why skunk sprayed dogs froth at the mouth and rub their heads in the grass. After this encounter his wife made him keep a supply of tomato juice in the garage and his pickup. The tomato juice did make him tolerable at the Station, but for a long time after this you wanted to be up wind from him if he got his mustache wet.

I use the equilibrium dry curing method and for a half belly I add 1/4 cup of ground coffee to the cure. This turns out really good. I also do some with a sweet heat type dry rub. Just remember that the dry rubs usually have salt and or sugar and will alter your cure. For the most part you will get a very mild shift in the flavor no matter what other flavoring you use.

There are a lot of reasons for the price increase in Idaho spuds. We have had a couple of bad water years here, and I am sure that some farmers decided against planting spuds because they take a lot of water to grow. This year we had a very late spring that set everything back 2 to 3 weeks. Once summer hit, it was HOT. We set a new record for days over 100 degrees, and records for hottest days. The farmers are only allowed so much water per acre, so they either had to take water from 1 crop to put on the spuds, or let the spuds go dry. Farming spuds requires a lot of tractor and truck time and that means burning a lot of expensive fuel. This was sort of a perfect storm for spud farmers and consumers between the weather, water, and fuel prices.

cdavis Show your daughter this article on Kim Rhode: https://www.teamusa.org/usa-shooting/athletes/kimberly-rhode . Kim and my Eldest are friends. My daughter shot air pistol and women’s sport pistol. She won the National Collegiate Woman’s air pistol championship. Her name is the first to appear on the Melaragno Trophy. She was also a 2 time All American in Women’s Air Pistol, and a 2 time All American in Women’s Sport Pistol.