Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Finishing up the chicken tinga for a repeat of yesterday's dinner. Margaritas will be the dinner beverage.

I have to start thinking about Wednesday night dinner. Very possible that power will be out with tropical weather headed our way. I might go out and fill a propane tank to fire up a Ducane grill that I haven't used in years. I could move it to our front porch which is under cover but open to the air. Too heavy to move my KJ up there.

 

Tonight are thin pork chops with figs, cream and balsamic vinegar. Using black mission figs that are now in season. We used to have a brown turkey fig tree but it was old and a hard freeze killed it a while back. I had to wake up REALLY early to harvest the ripe figs before the birds got them.

I had friends that grew sweet corn in Illinois and they knew when the corn was ripe because the racoons would shake the stalks trying to get them. They would shoo them away and go out with flashlights to pick the ripe corn.

 

Get the beans as a side. The best thing they make.

 

Not a huge impact from the hurricane at our house in Gainesville. Major impact was disrupting my dog/puppy (10 months old) walking schedule.

Tonight will be chili dogs.

 

Tonight will be Thai food from Wah-Ha-Ha. Really good Thai food. It is my SIL's birthday that lives in town and she is sick so we are getting her Thai food.

Bought food for a couple of days. Pork shoulders were on deep sale at $1.99 per pound so I bought a 3.5 pound one for pulled pork this weekend. Actually I would have liked a slightly bigger one for leftovers but this will work.

 

Tonight dinner will be late. It was pouring rain all afternoon so I went to start the KJ for grilled chicken thighs a bit later than I wanted. Turned out that my Bernzomatic gas cylinder was empty (I start my coals with a torch) so I had to go to Lowes to get a new cylinder. And they moved where they were and it took finding two employees to find one for a delay I did not want. Then my Bic stick lighter ran out of juice. ARGH! Another delay.

But the good news is that my wife found two bottles of Pat's Ho-Made BBQ sauce at Hitchcock's in Alachua. I love using that on grilled chicken.

 

Tonight is pork tenderloin with rice and stir fried broccoli. I was going to say "wokked" but it is too close to "woked" and didn't want this to get sent to "Too Hot". LOL.

Normally I would use Soy Vay sesame teriyaki sauce as the marinade but for some reason my Publix didn't have it. Crud. Trying Lawrey's teriyaki marinade and I will add some sesame seeds.

 

I picked up this tip from @74nole. Works really well and if you are in a bit of a hurry a small piece of dry hardwood (I usually have apple or cherry) can be easily lit and speed things up. If you are in a HUGE hurry you shouldn't be cooking on a kamado style grill but if you need a lot of fire quickly once you get it started a hair dryer works really well. I haven't used that trick for years.

 

Made a crap ton of grilled chicken thighs yesterday finished with Pat's and gave five away today. Our friends that we often have dinner with thought that they had covid a while ago and didn't and now they do and the mom has it. It was brought back to their house from school.

The big packages were on deep sale and I should have bought another one for jerk chicken. Thighs are the best for that.

 

Smoking a smallish pork shoulder (a tad over 2 1/2 pounds) for pulled pork. It has been stuck on the plateau for longer than I expected. Sometimes these things have a mind of their own. I have had some big ones be done hours before I expected them to be done. Anyway I will bump the temps up a bit from 260 F and make sure that I spray with diluted apple juice more often.

Also made Carolina vinegar slaw. I don't make it as sweet as many folks up there like it and I double up on the celery seed.

 

OK. I had a pork shoulder/butt at just a touch over 2.5 pounds on my KJ at 260 to 270 F for five hours and it wasn't anywhere near done. I bumped up the temps to 300 to 310 F and after another hour and a quarter most of my temperature probes were high enough but a few were still a little low. I am hoping that a short 30 minute rest will even things out.

BTW the bark is spectacular. I think that the high temps at the end did some magic. I also use a lot of brown sugar in my pulled pork rub.

 

Tonight is a Thai red curry with pork tenderloin and a spicey cucumber salad with peanuts.

 

My son has been buying small bottles of various things to try. He liked Maker's Mark.