Mark and I started the day off by eating bacon with oatmeal we slow cooked the entire night (we got oats from Whole Foods, not that instant stuff =).

Then, we smoked salmon for lunch:

And had some mangoes with that:

Then, we (by we, I mean mostly Mark and Andrew) went totally awesome on ribs, despite the rain causing a lot of havoc on maintaining the appropriate temperature in the smoker. Despite that, they turned out pretty great:

And… we wrapped up the meal with peas:

Tomorrow, bacon of the elements (bacon, scallops, duck) for dinner and some undetermined whole fish for lunch.

For day two of Meatcation, as planned, we started smoking a large chunk of brisket and made our own sausages from scratch. Here’s a video of the sausage stuffing craziness:

I will say that our sausages were a great success despite there being doubt we could actually stuff them properly (we did not have the specific tools to make the job easy). Andrew and I got creative (as you can see from the video above) and made it work. For dinner, we also made our own BBQ sauce and cream corn.

I’ve added these to the Meatcation set on flickr.

Meatcation has begun! We kicked off the week with some tasty lamb chops with asparagus. We also built a questionable structure to guard our flame against the water from the heavens.

As usual, Flickr has more Meatcation pics.

I also somehow managed to watch Star Trek three times last week (four if you count once with the commentary). Although, to be fair, I did fall asleep half of the last time through it (food coma). Here are some photos of my crazy sisters from Thanksgiving:

We plan on starting the smoker at ~3AM to cook brisket for Monday night. On to day 2!

Andrew, Mark and I reserved our suckling pig for next week. Woo! We don’t have any idea how large it is or how much it will cost, but we kind of like going into it blind. =)

If anyone plans on dropping by on a day other than Saturday (where we will likely have plenty to go around), either:

1. Bring your own meat for us to cook


2. Let us know well in advance so we can buy enough and tell you how much money to bring

Now to obtain a smoker…

I have had plans to take a self-portrait to put above my fire place for a while now. I took the first stab at the photo for it today, which turned out better than I was expecting!

I haven’t printed anything large with these types of Photoshop effects on it, so I’m not sure how that will go. As a test, I’m printing out a large 20x30 at Costco to see how it looks. If it looks good, I’ll be printing it on canvas. Woo!

Some notes for the future:

• Having a camera assistance would be a plus (running back and forth with the camera shooting on a timer is a hassle).


• I could use a mirror (running back and forth to bathroom to practice facial expressions is a hassle).


• Use less mousse - in my inexperience with hair products, I used too much…

One year after The Great Food Roadtrip of 2008, there will be MEATCATION!!! Behold version 0.87 of the Meatcation agenda:

Open house dates will be announced and people are free to show up whenever bringing meats of their own for us to cook. =)

Brook & Frances gave me a Fujifilm Instax 200, which is like a wide-screen Polaroid. Now, witness the fruits of the first cartridge, starring Sexy Sammy!!

Oh, I will also add that we had an epic downing of XT in Ulduar where we were under-manned, under-geared, and under-experienced. It was awesome.

SNOWMAN!

And Brook gave me these:

This weekend, I…

• Played some more Ultimate


• Went to Bill & Tonia’s baby shower with Ryan and Heather


• Went shopping with Nancy for a bit and got a monocle!


• Watched Mark play Shadow Complex for a really long time, passed out on the couch, woke up to random “yelling” from Andrew/Nancy/Viraj (playing Settlers), then finally went to sleep in my room after Mark/Ryan left the living room (at ~6AM?)


• Went home for hot-pot

And… that’s all I can remember for now, but I feel like I’m forgetting stuff… =p

I will consider myself blessed if I’m fortunate enough to work with a group like my BV team in future endeavors. Cheers!

Rest of the photos here.