Road Trip 2010 - Planning

"Being here; not getting there"

Carla and I are preparing to embark on our latest road trip. We'll be heading out of Portland and driving to Chicago and back. I've always wanted to drive across the mid west. Most everyone who I tell that to gives me a quizzical look; I imagine I'll understand those looks by the time we get back.

We know our place is in good hands; we've got a house sitter, great neighbors and work on our deck going on. We've got a common set of instructions with our neighbors when one or the other of us are gone.

• "If the party is loud and they won't let you in, call the cops".
• "We aren't moving. If a moving van shows up, call the cops"

We've been planning with various levels of intensity over the past few months. But we've had the maps out on the table for a couple of weeks now trying to get a handle on what we've bitten off:

To Chicago

We've driven through the west so many times that our plan is to get some distance between us and Portland the first couple of days. Once we get out into Wyoming and out of familiar territory we'll slow down to travel about 250 --> 350 miles a day mostly off the interstate. We'll be on US 30 a good part of the way out.

We are being flexible, but do have some rough milestones for getting to Chicago. Here is how the day's shape up

1. Carla picks me up at work and we head to central or eastern Oregon. We'll stay at either Pendleton or La Grande where I found a nice trackside motel.
2. We blast through eatern Oregon, Idaho and most of Utah, stopping at Echo, UT where I80 branches off from I84.
3. Drive through western Wyoming; planning to stop in Cheyenne. We hope to have a lovely drive watching the sun rise over the Rockies.
4. Head over to following US Highway 30 to North Platte; I expect we'll stop often to take train pictures. Once we get into North Platte, we'll head over to the Union Pacific visitor center. This is one of the largest rail facilities in the world; the visitor center has two viewing decks on the 7th and 8th floor of the tower.
5. More train viewing as we follow US 30 and 36 through eastern Nebraska to Bellevue (a suburb of Omaha0. Our hotel in Bellevue has excellent view of the tracks and by all accounts a terrific barbecue joint across the street.
6. We leave Nebraska and cut through the southwest corner of Iowa and into Missouri with a planned night in Hannibal. Is this where Harry Truman grew up?
7. From Hannibal we have a short drive to Springfield, IL where we'll take in the Lincoln museum and all the other sites related to my presidential relative.
8. Back on Route 66! We cut across Illinois on the Mother Road and arrive in Chicago to visit Andrew and Henriët

Chicago - The Windy City / The City of Big Shoulders

We'll have just a few days in Chicago - first order of business? laundry! :)

Some of our planned activities are:

• The Art Institute
• A boat ride / architectural tour
• the Field Museum of natural history
• Maybe a White Sox game; Cubs are out of town
• Tour the home of Chess Records
• A hot dog at Flub a Dub Chub (no ketchup!)
• Deep dish Chicago pizza
• 3 great breakfast places Andrew and Henriët know of
• Maybe some music one night

Returning Home

The focus of the return home are the sites of South Dakota and eastern Montana. We'll tour the badlands, Mt. Rushmore, and the Little Big Horn memorial. Of course no trip through the upper mid west is complete without a stop at Wall Drug!

1. We head out of Chicago late morning and head to La Crosse, WI
2. Pedal to the metal as we blow across southern Minnesota to get to Chamberlain, SD so we can have some fun
3. Chamerblain to Deadwood, going off the beaten path for a scenic drive through the Badlands of South Dakota
4. Visit Mt. Rushmore; Wall Drug and what not
5. Head to Billings taking time to tour the Little Big Horn battle site (the place of Custer's Last Stand which I remember doing a book report on in the 5th grade).
6. Billings to Missoula
7. Missoula to Kennewick, WA
8. Home

Those last 3 days are a little unfocused. But we are really focusing on our trip motto of "being there, not getting there" The vacation is the trip, not the day or week's destination. So, although we could definitely do it much faster, we want to really see it and be there.

Let's see if I can keep up daily or bi-daily posts.

Baby Back Ribs on the Smokenator

Sunday July 25, 2010

After pimping my grill by adding a couple of holes for my smoker probes, I thought I'd try out the Weber kettle grill and Smokenator. My first try yielded acceptable but not fantastic results. I think the problem was that I wasn't measuring the temperature properly; measuring at the vent rather than the grill just allowed for too much variation.

So here is how it went down. Here is a picture of the grill with briquettes in the Smokenator. It shows how the briquettes fit in.

The water pan is sitting in the disposable aluminum tray used to catch drippings. Before we get started, the pan will go in the big square hole and be filled with hot water.

Now the grate goes on top and the ribs get started

The 2 smoker probes are pushed through a bit of potato to hold them in place (as you can imagine, it wasn't my idea - I read of it elsewhere). I'm glad I made the modification. The instructions call for maintaining 250* at the upper vent; but this meant I was under 200* at the grate. In order to get the desired 225* where the food is, I had to crank it up to 300* at the vent. I also think that that large disposable aluminum tray may have affected my heat.

After 3 hours the ribs are looking fine.

Normally I do about 2 hours on smoke then apply the Texas crutch - wrap each rack in aluminum foil with about a cup of apple juice. Having forgotten the apple juice I just went for the third hour on smoke.

Then to finish, I place them on the grill, slather barbecue sauce on each side, and grill about 20 minutes

Finally to the platter

I am such a guy. I was cooking dinner while Carla was driving home today from a visit with high school buds near Yreka/Fort Jones CA. I was so focused on cooking the meat I forgot about a vegetable, or a salad. Well, I guess we could have used those potato bits. Carla whipped up a salad before we sat down.

All in all, a success.

If this looks good and you want to try your hand at barbecue. You have GOT to go to AmazingRibs.com Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn has dozens of great recipes. These ribs are from his "Last Meal Ribs" recipe. So, good they are definitely want you want for your last meal. He has a good section on how to set up your gas grill for smoking. It worked well for me.

Not just book reports. Let's talk Barbecue!

Saturday July 24, 2010

I've been keeping my resolution to read at least 8 books a year. I've finished 10 so far this year. But I'm more interested in barbecue this time of year. I've smoked pork shoulders in my Alton Brown clay pot / electric hot plate setup for a few years with spectacular results; but it is limited to one shoulder, it's not nearly big enough for racks of ribs. I've tried using my Weber Genesis to do ribs. The results are good but not great. It's hard to get much smoke from the usual techniques of putting wood chips in foil.

So, this winter, spring and early summer I had my heart set on a pellet smoker for doing some barbecue. I even went so far as renting a Mak 2 Star General for Father's Day

Too bad it was so damn wet and cool that weekend. For whatever reason I had a moment of clarity and realized it was too expensive. Instead I bought a Weber 26.75" kettle grill and a "Smokenator" attachment. This is a piece of bent steel which fits along 1 side of the Weber. You fill it with charcoal briquettes and wood and you get a few hours of nice controlled heat and smoke. Every few hours you add some more water and/or briquettes. I've used it twice so far. Once for two HUGE pork shoulders and then today for 3 racks of

baby back ribs. I was happy, but not delighted, with the pork shoulders; there were a couple of spots that were tough as leather and definitely could not be considered "pulled

pork". I think this was because I wasn't measuring the temperature properly. The trick to barbecue is low and slow; you want to maintain about 225* for about 8 hours for a small pork shoulder.

The instructions call for measuring the temperature at the upper vent. Reading up on the process, I've found many people think that the differential between the grate and the vent is too much. So, I thought I'd measure at the grate. I have a Maverick ET-73 remote thermometer which has two temperature probes that connect to a transmitter so I can monitor the temperature from my armchair in the house while I'm watching the Dodgers.

My problem was that I didn't want to snake the probe cables under the lid of the Weber where they might get crimped or disrupt the seal the lid has on the ket

tle. Maintaining airflow is critical for the Smokenator. So, I though a modification was in order.

I am not a handy man by any stretch of the imagination; but once i

n a while I get brave. I messed up a bit but overall I think it came out okay.

First I gathered my tools (well not all of them; I'd have to make 2 trips back to the garage)

• Drill
• Gauge for measuring the probes and drill bits
• Center punch and hammer (with protective glasses)
• A block of wood and a clamp
• A round file (not in picture)
• Dremel moto tool with grinder to file off the burrs (not in picture)
• Some high temp paint.

Then I picked a spot under the rim, but over grate.

Next, I laid 3 strips of masking tape over the spot (I had hoped that the masking tape would help protect the enamel). Then I clamped a piece of wood to the inside and made an indentation with a center punch.

Next, I used my newly purchased bolt gauge to measure the size of the probes, realizing that the crimped end near the cable makes it a bit wider. I picked a matching drill bit and drilled a hole.

The hole was just a smidge too small, so I went back to the garage to find a small round file in my old model railroad toolkit. I filed out the hole until the probe fit through. One hole down

I repeated the process for the second hole. I didn't need as much space for this probe so I had less filing to do.

The holes had some sharp burrs on the inside of the kettle; so back into the garage to get my Dremel tool to put on a little grinder to clean things up.

Now for the unveiling. Off came the masking tape. Uh oh. I must have done something wrong on the 2nd hole because a big chunk of enamel came off on the back of the tape.

Good thing I live in western Oregon where it hardly rains so rust won't be a problem. Oh wait, DANG - rust just might be a problem. Oh well, that's why they invented paint, right? I masked the spot and painted inside and out with some Rustoleum high temperature black spray paint.

Before following my lead, you might want to see if it was worth while and see if there are any hints from some real handy men and women out there.

I put rubbed down 3 racks of ribs and let them sit overnight for the big test Sunday.