Pics from Rhode Island

Sally and I went camping up in Rhode Island last week while our girls were on a mission trip to Philadelphia.  We stayed at a campsite maybe five miles north of Newport.  We were only up there for three days, and it felt like we spent half our time setting up or tearing down, but it was still nice to get away.  We spent a day at the beach and a day out on the bikes, and I cooked a lot on the travel grill.  The trip itself was a lot of work, but it was also fun.  

I took this one for the Grill Geek Instagram account.  I took it myself using my
camera's ten-second count-down timer and Night Portrait mode.

World Cup celebration.

I took these pictures with the camera I got for the coming Army Football season.  I was originally looking just for a simple point-and-shoot, but on my friend Matt's advice, I bought used and went a little upscale.  The camera itself is 2014 tech, but I prioritized optical zoom and wound up with a decent piece of entry-level equipment.  I'm not some great photographer, but I read the manual cover-to-cover, and I then spent a good amount of our trip playing with the settings.  Results are below.

#GrillGeek: Grilled Swordfish with Pineapple Salsa

4 swordfish steaks (½” to 1” thick)

1 cored pineapple
Chili seasoning (optional)
Medium salsa
Oil oil
Salt
Pepper
Oregano or Italian seasoning
Hot sauce (optional)

#GrillGeek: Simple vs. Easy

I don’t know if you guys know this, but I’ve been working—very occasionally—on a grilling cookbook for the past eight months or so.  I got the first maybe 10K words down and ran into something of a wall.  I realized that I needed to experiment more, that I’d gotten stuck too deeply in a rut with my grilling to write an interesting full-length story.  

I needed time and space to experiment.

Goals for 2019

I refuse to call them "resolutions".

I couldn't find my shirt last night...

...when we started grilling.  Sally, of course, took this as an opportunity to start taking pictures.

Despite spending an entire day out on Long Island Sound, I still need to work on my tan.

5 Things on a Friday: Black Friday Edition

It's Black Friday, and I don't mind telling you that I ate too much last night at dinner.  It was worth it.  We had tons of Sally's family over, along with Hannah's best friend and the best friend's mom.  That's a total of thirteen people!

With that many folks, I thought we might struggle to feed everyone.  However, we had a seventeen pound turkey, at least two full trays of stuffing (including one gluten free!), a whole roast pork loin, and tons and tons of other stuff.  We wound up eating much less than half of the food we prepared, but as Thanksgivings go, this was a good one.

Grill Your Turkey (Part 1): Brine

At this point, you will need a turkey.  I hope for your sake that it is already at least partially thawed.

We started thawing ours yesterday in a giant pot full of cold water, changing the water every two hours.  In roughly twenty-four hours, we got to a point where the turkey was ready for work, so I suppose that if you start right now you might still make it.  Granted, you're looking at a couple of midnight wake-ups to change your thawing water.  But I think it can be done with a bit of diligence and determination.

Weekend Round-Up

That was a very disheartening loss on Saturday.  I’ve been an Army Football fan for a long time, and by now I suppose I should know better, but man, I let myself buy in big-time coming into this weekend’s game.  Army Athletics has been squawking non-stop since hiring Jeff Monken to coach the football team, and I let myself get way excited by the prospects.  I even did up the blog in Army’s colors Saturday morning.  This is me trying to show team spirit.

How to Smoke a Chicken (or Turkey) on Your Grill

I've done this twice now, and both times it's come out well.  So now I'm sharing the recipe, and we'll see what you guys think.

You will need:

• A chicken or turkey, between 8 & 12 lbs.
• A kettle grill
• Lots of charcoal, preferably lump wood
• Cherry or hickory wood chips
• A disposable roasting pan
• One large carrot
• 2 sticks of celery
• Half an onion
• Several cloves of garlic
• 1.5 to 2 cups of chicken broth
• 1 to 2 tablespoons of salt
• 1 to 2 tablespoons of pepper

How to Grill Better

Start with real wood charcoal, lit using a chimney.

Two sheets of newspaper are enough to get this going 95% of the time.

When the charcoal is ready, pour it out slanted to one side. This creates a Three Zone Fire. Directly over the fire is Hot, the middle is Warm, and away from the coals is Cool.

Making the Three-Zone Fire is the key step.

Cool your food according to you recipe and/or appropriate instructions. These are fresh, homemade pork sausages we got at church this morning. I'm cooking them about seven minutes each side on Medium and five minutes each side on Low. Vegetables will be five each side on Medium. Always cook with the lid closes.

Brauts first.

Then let the brauts finish cooking on low while you cook the veggies on Medium.

Cook with the lid closed.

And voila!