other dog

Nope, just make it and give it away.

I cooked up another batch of hot sauce this morning. Got a lot made already, this is the 3rd. or 4th. batch of the year, plus I've made a lot of cowboy candy, that's the candied jalapenos. I made some sauce out of just jalapenos today, that's the green sauce. Tasted pretty good, I might make some more of that, there's still a lot of peppers left in the garden.

I was standing there and two other guys were talking about it. One was wondering how much it cost, and the other one said he didn't know but just a body like that was around $150,000. I don't know what they did with it either, if it was a dump body, walking floor, or spreader. It would hold enough shavings for 14 chicken houses, or enough sand and salt to go from here to Cleveland before they had to reload. 🤣

Strange things can happen. I was coming back from somewhere around the Philadelphia area after I'd delivered one of those big air conditioner units that go on top of a building. I was empty, it was only a few days before Christmas. It was snowing and the road was pretty much covered. I was sitting at the red light right there where 896 ran into rt. 40. I was on 896, going to keep straight and take rt. 301. This girl in a car, going way too fast, came up to the light and when she hit the brakes she did about 3 complete 360's and ended up perfectly straight in the left turn lane behind several other cars just like she had driven there. Never touched a thing.

happy birthday!

Here's what I got. there wasn't that many trucks there this year, so I took 100 pictures of the same truck. https://www.flickr.com/photos/28526133@N04/albums/72177720329348252

Final results.

I took the expired kielbasa, the extra piece I cut off a rack of ribs, and the chicken thighs off, they're done. Gonna leave the ribs on a while, they don't pass the bone test yet.

I put that kielbasa on there too because Zina was going to throw it away. The expiration date was July 31. I said "that's only 2 months, that kielbasa is fine!" Smelled ok, and you know what they say.

I just put the ribs on. I'm cooking a rack for us, one for Donnie and Deborah across the road, and one for Rocky and Rebecca. They live over there- I used the folding grate because I'm going to put 2 chicken thighs on the other side that Zina wanted me to cook.

We used to haul crushed cars sometimes, and I'd always look them over hoping to find a suitcase full of cash in the trunk. I never did.

Wow, I just looked at that Pit Barrel Cooker website. Like everything else, they're much more expensiver than when I bought mine. I'm thinking they were like $299 then. But if they do have them at Lowe's or Tractor supply they'll probably be putting them on sale this time of year. Or it wouldn't be too hard to make one, with the barrel and rebar, then you could probably get grates that fit at Walmart or Amazon.

My favorite grill is a home made unit. It's made out of some kind of water tank, I think it was in a tire shop and they checked inner tubes for leaks with it. I had a machine shop just up the road from here put the lid on it. They put the offset firebox on it too, but it's all wrong and I never use it. It was the hardest thing to move from Gladys, but I wasn't about to leave it behind. If you want a fairly inexpensive but really good smoker, this Pit Barrel Cooker is great. It's really easy to use, almost a "set it and forget it" like those late night commercials for some kind of cooking thing used to say. I ordered mine from their website, but they might have them at Lowe's or Tractor Supply. You can cook on the grate, or hang things from the bars. I have cooked 8 racks of ribs in mine at once, and I've cooked several whole turkeys. And they have a grate that one side folds down, so you can hang things on one side, and cook on the grate on the other side. Easy to store too, they make a cover for it, but I just keep mine in the shed. https://pitbarrelcooker.com/

That's the thing, right there. No matter what you're cooking, ribs, chicken, ham, Boston butt, when you can give the bone about a quarter turn twist and it comes out, or comes loose, it's done. Don't even need a meat thermometer. I have them, and use use them, but when I smoke, especially like a whole chicken, I do the leg bone test, when that leg bone comes out easy it's good to go. I like to cook a Boston butt the same way, even if the meat thermometer says it's done I like to cook it until the bone comes loose, makes it much easier to shred too.

That looks pretty good, but if you would just put it in an envelope and mail it to me so I can taste it I could critique it much more accurately. I'll taste it for you and then mail it back. Be sure to put enough stamps on it.

We took some ribs out of the freezer as soon as we got home, gonna smoke 'em tomorrow!

I thought I saw you walking by one time, I was headed south and you were going north, but I said "naw, couldn't be, I hadn't seen your truck anywhere". It was up near the road that separates the 2 main areas. The man at headquarters where you register said there were 150-some trucks there then. (That was this morning) He said they've always had over 200, and they could handle over 300 easily. We got there around 8am and left at 10:30 this morning and probably only 6 or 8 more trucks had come in. It was very disappointing to see so few trucks, I've been going since 2005 or 2006, and have seen the place packed before. But the man at headquarters, don't know his name, also said this was the 3rd. year in a row that it's rained. It was almost like last year, Friday was beautiful, and while it hadn't rained more than a little sprinkle when we left, it was coming. We hit it on 81 before we got very far and it rained the rest of the way until we were almost home.

Afraid so. But at least I learned a valuable lesson 🤪

It's getting hot up here. I was going to put our canopy up, but apparently some dumbass left the top part- the importantest part- at home in the shed. I just assumed it was all in the carrying case together. And you know what they say about assuming anything.

Happy birthday!

Thanks, I'm going to watch that again on TV when I get home.