Easy Meat

"You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need
You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street
You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed"- Pink Floyd






I must admit that I have been in a cooking slump lately.

Not only have I not been motivated to cook, I really haven't been too enthusiastic about eating either.

Everything just seems blase, it must be the heat.

So I decided to do a pictorial recap of some of the summer's food and post some pics that didn't make it onto the blog....enjoy!

Smoking with Doug

" We turned the lights down low and had a party on the patio." - ZZ Top

A couple of weekends ago I went over to my friend Doug's house where his friend Tommy was smoking chicken, pork, and salmon among other things.

Above you can see two beer can chickens cheek to cheek.




Below the two chickens was about an eight pound Boston Butt and a huge piece of salmon.

I found out that this particular Weber smoker is known as the "bullet" and Tommy was particularly adept at smoking on it.

The coals are in the very bottom that you can access by way of a door on the side.

He had some "chunks" of hickory that were soaked prior to going on the coals. He prefers them to chips.

Just above the coals sits a "drip pan", that was about half filled with beer before we put on the meat. (You can see it on the left)

On top of that was the first grate. He loaded the butt and the fish on this level.

The two chickens were placed on the top grate.

He had a digital thermometer hanging inside the body of the smoker. He kept it at 250 or below the entire time.


After 2 hours we pulled the salmon off. It was the best salmon I can remember eating in a very long time.

After about 4 hours we pulled off the chickens.

About 2 hrs after that the butt came off, which I forgot to sample.

Gipsy Kings

" Le le lei le le lei le le lei
Le le lei le le lei le le lei" - Gipsy Kings

Okay, so this isn't a blog about cooking, however a fair amount of eating was done, so it fits within the theme.

On a sweltering night the Gipsy Kings came to town...

So the wheeled cooler was dusted off and packed down with Corona and Carr and ice and glasses and pasta and Gouda and prosciutto and, well you get the picture.

Contrary to what the naysayers would have you believe, Chastain Amphitheater is the best venue in Atlanta, don't believe me? What other place lets you bring glass beer bottles in? The silence is deafening.

Beer bottles aside, the best part is, you get to bring in bottles of wine. And so we did.




And that bottle is starting to wear off right about now...

Observations:

First time ever arriving at a show too early...

Vardaman to cop, "Can we park here?"

Cop, "It's alright with me."

Gotan Project "Lunatico" cd played before the show, very cool.

It was too damn hot, but the show was good, though not anything to write home about.

I suspect a good time was had by all...


Le le lei le le lei le le lei
Le le lei le le lei le le lei

Get Ready

Now might be a good time to dust off a copy of Atlas Shrugged....