Hair still smells like smoke
May 11, 2011
This weekend brisket brought my father and I closer together. I had a 28 minute phone call with him! 28 minutes – and the whole time, I do believe that we were engaged and actually conversing. And all because of brisket.
My old housemates were throwing a barbecue, and I’d volunteered to help out by being on the smoking team. I and the super-chef roommate (SCR) were smoking a 6 pound brisket, a 5 pound pork shoulder, and two trout. We had spent the whole week sending each other over-excited emails (well, really, SCR was sending me all sorts of emails while I half-assedly looked for recipes) and intense phone conversations about the smoking. At one point, I stood in Smart & Final talking to the woman about meat while my boyfriend ran around grabbing ridiculous quantities of snackfood (there are pounds of coby jack cheese cubes in my fridge. pounds). At one point, this woman with an Eastern European accent and friendly eyes started asking me (an obviously harried woman yelling into a phone) what I was going to do with my big piece of meat (the ten pound brisket) that I was preparing to wrestle into my basket. I found myself trying to answer her, while still talking to SCR and explaining that pork shoulders and pork butts are the same thing, and yelling at the boy friend to stop throwing salami into the cart. We walked out of there $120 bucks poorer. But at least now I have the remaining 4 pounds of brisket in my freezer.
Saturday we got started early – I was there at 8:30 am with a marinated brisket, two trout, and a baggie of ice in my garbage can. I also had mimosa supplies, a six pack of shiner bock, and a bunch of other stuff in preparation for a looong day. And long it was – I was there until past 11PM.
But back to the conversation. Once the grill was going and SCR was inside working on other matters, I found myself outside minding the very finicky coals. We’d struggled to get the grill to maintain the 230 degree temperature, and I was periodically lighting small quantities of coals and dumping them into the grill. I was also drinking my fourth mimosa and/or beer. So I called my dad.
And it was great! He was also grilling, getting ready to make some kebabs, which he’d never done before. When I explained about the trouble with the coals, he commiserated with us, expressing shock that we were trying to pull this off in a grill and not a smoker. Then we talked about all kinds of stuff – his garden, the trees he’s having cut out of the back yard, the family’s plans for the summer, and his surprisingly strong feelings about weddings. I had no idea! Apparently he’s only been to a few – like 4 – his whole life and feels like they are just drama-rama-bombs. He pointed out that of his six brothers (of which he’s actually one, so five brothers, but whatever), those who went before the justice of the peace stayed married 20 years while those who had weddings didn’t last ten. He knows that can only mean so much, but it was still neat to hear. And he said that he didn’t even know whether his older sisters had had weddings (he’s the baby of the family). It was just lovely. My dad’s an awesome dude.
But then I told him that he’d have to get used to weddings what with the four of us, and he agreed. So that’s good.
