Merry Christmas, all

No illustrious blog post here today, aside from to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

- Mark

New guitar, again

The pics that I posted a day or two ago show our girls with a new Squire Stratocaster Affinity that I bought from http://www.dannyraysmusic.com last week. Well, so much now for THAT guitar.

On Sunday, the output jack on the guitar broke (or so I thought), and so I took it in to Dan today to have it fixed. In typical Mark fashion, while Dan was fixing the Affinity, a different (and considerably more expensive) guitar caught my eye. Convinced in my mind that whatever fix Dan was going to have to do would be thereafter suspect in terms of reliability, and being absolutely in love with the other guitar up on the rack, I totally broke down and had Dan trade in the Affinity for the other. As it turns out, the jack was fine. The outer nut had just fallen off of it, and I hadn't noticed.

In the end, I walked out with this baby. She's a made-in-Mexico 60th Anniversary Fender Deluxe Players Stratocaster. I haven't named her yet. I guess that's next. Perhaps I should even learn how to play.....

Anyhow...two pics here.

Crazy kids with guitars

New toy time!

Yesterday I bought the family a new Squier Stratocaster guitar. No, nobody in the family knows how to play it, but that's okay. It should be fun to learn.

The kids are already having a good time. Here they are with my Seagull S6 and the Strat.

First pork foray

Despite being Texan (grin), I cranked out two cuts of BBQ pork yesterday, with excellent success. They were both done at the same time on my Brinkmann Gourmet water smoker. The first was a picnic cut pork shoulder, and the other was a Boston Butt. Both were rubbed liberally with a nice rub that I made from a recipe that I found in the book Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses. They hit the smoker at 1:00pm, with the idea that I'd smoke them for about 5-6 hours and have them ready for dinner. As it turns out, it was so cold here yesterday that I found it tough to keep the temperature up consistently enough to meet that timeline. So...spaghetti instead for dinner. The two hunks-o-pork came off of the smoker at about 9:30 and were terrific. I wasted no time in pulling some of the pork off, tossing it onto a bun with some sauce and pickle slices, and savoring the results of my hard work. Good stuff.

Now...what we're going to do with all that pork is a bit of a mystery, but there was no way that I was going to stand out there in the cold and only do one roast. I'm sure we'll figure out some way to make sure it doesn't go to waste.

Incidentally, I really like that Legends of Texas Barbecue book. If you're into Texas BBQ and its history, I heartily recommend picking up this book.

- Mark