Red White and Boom, Perfect Pork, Break Week

Red, White, and Boom

We attended the Red, White and Boom concert at Riverbend to see the Cincinnati Pops. It was also the event where the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award that was presented to John Morris Russell, the Pops conductor, would take place. They had over a hundred Scouts there to march up and down the aisles to celebrate JMR. Ted was also included in the parade and received a patch for it. We go to this concert every year anyway and it was nice to be included a little bit in the show.

Perfect Pork

I like to run my charcoal smoker quite a bit, and I chose the first weekend of the month to do it. If possible I’d smoke all my food, but these cuts are just too fatty to eat all of the time. Recently I tried smoking a beef brisket, which was good, but there are things I’d do differently next time. For the pork shoulder though, I might have nailed it. I smoked this overnight, around 14 hours, using chunks (not shavings) of apple wood. I did trim some of the fat cap off, so that I could get a nice flavored bark to mix in with the tender pork to add some texture. I again utilized my homemade smoking rub and applied a generous amount of kosher salt. After smoking for 14 hours I pulled it off and tempted it 175, perfect and ready to get into the oven and through the stall. I then baked it wrapped in foil at 250 degrees for another 6 hours and temped it at 203, probe tender. Now, I did something I usually don’t do, and I let it sit for another four hours. I rarely did this before, mostly because I’d cook during the day and pull it off around midnight and there wasn’t enough time to shred it. Everyone loved it and I will do this process for now on. The was the first time we ate the entire pork shoulder before it went bad.

Other Updates

I sat down and played some video games this week for the first time in awhile. I am in between classes so I have some free evening time for once. I plan on using this time in the future to chunk down my open technology courses I want to complete for my SETP, which I am calling my “Self-Edification Technology Program”. This is a course full of technical skills including Python, SQL, ETL techologies, DevOps processes and technologies, and project management.