Sunday, July 12, 2015

20150712.0746

Today, I will be running the smoker again. My father-in-law gave the Mrs. and me the better part of a brisket, which had been in our freezer for a while before we took it out to thaw. Currently, it sits in the refrigerator with a rub of black pepper (less than I used when I smoked pork last), comino molido, and a little bit of garlic. Soon, I shall start my smoker setup, building a charcoal fire to get to the temperature I need and adding hickory chunks to get the flavor that I want. But running the smoker will not be the only thing I do today.

I have a freelance order that needs some attention, as is usually the case. Tending to the smoker requires frequent observation and occasional action; I will have the time to do the reading that the freelance piece obliges. That the book I will read for it is not overly long will help, but I cannot shake the feeling that I ought to have been about the work yesterday instead of doing the other reading I did and relaxing throughout the day as happened to befall. Not that academic reading is easy; I plowed through an issue of Speculum and got started on one of the South Central Review. I enjoy that kind of reading, but it is not as easily accomplished as that of the popular fiction for my freelance work.

The weather will facilitate my working with the smoker. Temperatures are expected to reach the mid- to upper 90s F (35 to 37 C, for those who operate on a more sensible system) with skies clear or nearly so. As such, I will be able to use the heat kindly offered by the sun to help keep the temperature in my smoke-box where it needs to be; summer sunlight on blackened steel makes for quite a bit of warmth, after all. I will still need the fire for the smoke and for some of the temperature, of course, but it will help to have some underlying stability in my cooking.

In the meantime, the Mrs. will take Ms. 8 to church, where our daughter will spend some time playing with other children. When they get home, I expect the girl will sleep a while; what the Mrs. will do is less certain to me. It will be to our benefit, I have no doubt, and I take strength from that certainty. My wife is a wonderful woman, mother to a most excellent daughter; how can I do but strive to be and remain worthy of them, even if it is in something so simple as cooking a cut of meat so that Sherwood Cottage not be heated more than the summer sunlight will do?

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