Slow Monday

It was a muted day and the traffic was very light for the holiday. Not much news wise to go over so tonight will be more of the fun stuff.

Sunday Cookout
I did maybe my last large cook out on Sunday for friends of ours and their two boys. The youngest one (8 years old) came right in and made a bee line for the chess table and started setting up the pieces! He loves to play and luckily he is very good so it is not annoying to play with him. I squeaked out one game and maybe threw the second, I am a big softie after all!

I decided to try smoked chuck roast that would then be shredded for pulled beef. I bought two chuck roasts on Saturday. Cheap cuts of meat! They were about 4 pounds each.

I rubbed them up on Sunday with brown sugar, salt, and some rosemary leaves. I set up the Big Steel Keg for indirect cooking and aimed for a temperature of 250-275 degrees. I was having some temp control issues and could not keep the Keg from hitting 300-325 for the whole cook! Maybe the cooler air was really amping up the fire?

Here are the roasts all rubbed up:


I put them on the smoker at 9:30am with some apple wood for smoke, waited to make sure all was well, then headed out for grocery shopping. At about 12:30pm (3 hours) the internal temp was at 160 degrees. Here they are at that point:

Beef can dry out during smoking so I added a slice of bacon to the tops to drain down on the roasts. Bacon is good.

At this point I wrapped them tightly in foil and put them on the Keg for another 2 hours at 300 degrees. This step gets the meat very tender so it can be pulled easily. At 2:15 the internal temp was 200 degrees so I took them off and let them rest for a half an hour. I then pulled them apart using two forks and it was so tender it was falling apart. Here is the finished product ready for sandwiches:

A small dab of Sweet Baby Rays sauce and a hamburger roll and you are good to go! Everyone loved it and I was surprised it came out so well. The Keg must be idiot proof!

I brought a whole bunch into work for a friend of mine and her husband who loved smoked food. Enjoy guys!

Size Matters Not
Well, that's what Yoda said anyway. Where do you fall on this distribution chart?
Hee hee.

What Makes a Good Party?
You have to see this clip from Mississippi State College (I cannot embed it):
What Makes a Good Party
via Weird Universe.

For the Boxing Fans
Seems as if there are a few boxing lovers around!

From 1989.
Julian Jackson was one of the hardest punchers I have ever seen. Then the WBA junior middleweight champion he fought Terry Norris on ABC. I thought Norris would win this fight, and he had not been clipped with one of the biggest right hands of all time (skip to 4:50 mark and on) he might have:

WOW! Norris did end up becoming a world champion, but that shot was amazing.

Ha! Already interest! One more; how about Bernard Hopkins stopping Oscar De La Hoya with a killer body shot:

That hurts to watch!

Have a good night.

Saturday Soreness

I must have raked up over 1000 pounds of acorns today! Just unreal. The yard looks great but my arms and back are not happy at this point. Getting old is no fun at all.

I bought two nice chuck roasts for tomorrow's BBQ. I will slow smoke them and make pulled beef at the end. I should post some pictures tomorrow.

No real huge games in the NFL and seeing that my picks have been atrocious I am lay off making them until after week 6 when I hope I have a better read on the teams. The only game this week that is big will be the Jets and Vikings. Randy Moss will have the cover of Adrian Petersons running so I will enjoy watching him vs. Darrelle Revis once again.

Ozzy Osbourne
Reader Watchtower asks why I have not played any of the newest Ozzy songs from the latest album. To be honest I have not been a huge fan of the later Ozzy albums. Ozzmosis was the last one I really liked. I don't think Ozzy has changed too much, but his music now just does not grab me like the older stuff. I like to think of this group of men who made some of the greatest music I have ever heard:

That is Randy Rhoads, Ozzy, Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge.

Don't Go to the Bathroom
For the boxing fans.

In 1989 there was a fight between Michael Nunn and Sumbu Kalambay. It was supposed to be the IBF/WBA unification bout, but the WBA stripped Kalambay before the fight. Kalambay was a rock solid boxer who had never been knocked out. Nunn was a boxer that could not punch his way out of a paper bag. Still, it looked to be a chess match kind of fight. The prefight stuff moved fast and I was in the bathroom when the opening bell rang. I figured no big deal, long fight. I heard the crowd going nuts and when I got out, the fight was all over:

What a shot! Maybe Nunn's only real KO victory.

One more. Iran Barkley shocks the world with an upset win over Thomas Hearns as Barkley was about to be knocked out himself (skip to the 6:00 mark):

I remember seeing that fight and being totally stunned.

And for an Ozzy at the very height of his powers and armed with the songwriting genius of Randy Rhoads, here is "Tonight" as a special bonus:


ADDED
Huge News
In what can only be described as history altering news, NASA's picture of the day clearly was photoshopped to hide an alien spacecraft near the Saturn moons of Titan and Dione:

The picture on the right clearly shows a space craft with some kind of ion drive. Maybe E.T's need a bailout and heard this was THE galaxy for that?

Have a good night.