Then I remembered: I gots meat to smoke. So I slept in until about 5:45. And in the three hours since, I drank the better part of a pot of coffee, I cussed at the cardinals, I cussed at the Royals, I kissed Millie square on the lips (several times), I ate seven saltines, I did some dishes, I did some laundry, I watched a couple hundred runners in the KC Mito-What? 5k run discover the hills that surround Lake Waukomis are beautiful and unforgiving, and I threw 30 pounds of pork on the Weber Smokey Mountain. The meat is destined for the crews and guests of Jay Robinson Racing at the Kentucky NASCAR Nationwide race. Also, I'm all sweaty and gross, so I'm going to shower now. And maybe write more later. If you're lucky.

I'd post pictures, but the camera's dead. Too many cat pictures, apparenly.

At Basswood Resort this year, we were the latter.

Pearl on Pearl blue, painted by Checkered Flag of Geneseo. I was very, very cool.

But at Basswood, there was no luck. We cooked well. Except Kent, who burned the chicken. And Kent had the most luck, with chicken finishing 11th. That’s the second contest where the chicken wasn’t as good as it usually is, but still finished strong. That’s pretty lucky.

The ribs, not so lucky. They were a little bit over-cooked, which is much better than under-cooked, and the flavor they had was fantastic. The question is, were they that good because Brett wasn’t there to cook them? Or were they that good because we followed Brett’s recipe and used his rub? I like to think they were that good because I willed them to be so, and I am all-powerful. It’s not true, but I like to think it. And it doesn’t matter, because we weren’t lucky. They finished 18th or something like that.

Pork butt – now this was good. We made some progress on pork butt. We learned valuable lessons. Lessons that we should have known by now, that elicit a “well, duh,” when you think about it, but still. We learned.

I did four butts with three recipes. One had a quick slather of Blues Hog Tennessee Red and our regular pork rub. The next just had the usual pork rub with some honey to make it stick (been doing that forever). And the other two, I injected with a version of a marinade recipe I’ve used in the past (tweaked version of TheSlabs.com’s awesome recipe), then let them soak in the marinade for about four hours. I rubbed those two butts with our usual pork rub, tossed them into giant Ziplocs, and there ya go. Put them on the smoker at 10 pm, they were done by 10 am. Deliciously so.

But, again, no luck. Pork finished 12th. Admittedly not bad, but it was good enough for a top ten, we just needed a little bit of luck.
Brisket was the worst. By that, I mean it was damned good and had the worst luck. Brisket was flat out excellent, but it didn’t judge well. I’m tempted to blame that vicious trend of people telling judges that if brisket isn’t cut to the width of a #2 pencil, it must be cooked wrong, but who knows? No matter: we weren’t lucky.

So there’s the deal on Basswood: we were good, not lucky. But we had fun, so we win, ya bastards.

That was HyVee 2009. And that’s why I like a good barbecue contest: it rarely goes as expected, it seldom makes sense, and there’s always beer.

Then we started cooking. Late, apparently. Because after a long, windy, beery night, turn-in time came and the ribs were chewy. Excellent flavor, but nowhere near done enough. I wouldn’t say they were like biting in to the sole of an old church guy’s wingtips. But they needed at least another hour.

Brisket was the same way. Great flavor, but not done enough. It failed the tug test. For those of you not familiar with the stupidest of barbecue judging techniques, someone, somewhere decided that a great way to test tenderness of brisket was to pick the slice up and tug on both ends. Why this is a better way to judge tenderness than, say, taking a bite is a mystery. My guess is the person who came up with this great idea thought he/she was smarter than everyone else. He knew that he could come up with a superior method that made him look oh-so-smart to all of his barbecue fans, and maybe when he showed this brilliant method – the jerk your meat method – he’d become an official barbecue judging “Hot Shot.” Which some people think is even better than being a good cook.

I digress. The brisket was delicious, but needed another hour or two.

Ditto my pork butts. One butt wasn’t even close to being done. Thirteen hours on the damned smoker and it didn’t higher than 165 degrees. I think the hog it came from had been fed a steady diet of asbestos. The bone wouldn’t even pull out (don’t you dare say, “That’s what she said.”)

Butt #2, however, was edible. It only got up to about 190 degrees, but it pulled great and was what we in the business like to call, “Freakin’ delicious.” Everyone agreed it was the best category of the day. Which is saying something, because the chicken was good, as usual. The glaze seemed a little thicker than usual, but it was good. It was more caramelized than usual for some reason (the paste, maybe?). Which I liked, but not everyone liked it as much as the perfection that usually is Stoopid’s chicken.

So there ya have it. Pork was great, and therefore it must have finished best, right. Chicken was good, not great, but given how consistently it kicks ass, it should still finish well. Ribs and brisket are a toss-up, but undercooked ribs usually don’t do well at all. Tugging at the bone with your teeth makes judges feel like cavemen. Remember the movie Caveman? That was cool. So anyway, we know how we’ll finish, right?

Nope. Luck, fate, karma, and providence got together to screw with us again. And we’re not really complaining, because chicken came in 6th (Beer for Kent. Again), and the ribs took 7th. That’d put us damned close to the top after the first two rounds of awards.

And my excellent pork? My tender, moist pork? My perfectly pulled, sweetly sliced and gloriously greasy pork? Curse you, luck! Damn you, fate! Bite me, karma! Oh, pipe down, providence! Pork screwed it all up with a 22nd finish.

Brisket got 22nd, too. Like I said: the tug test. Should we taste this? Noooo. Some prick who took the judging class 8 years ago said just tug it, don’t taste it. So pork and brisket dragged us down to 19th over all. Not good.

But we did win for the most money collected for Juvenile Diabetes. Thank you to our guests who contributed.

I was a bad baseball player. I mean, I sucked. I was the big kid whom everyone though could hit it out of the park at will. And I used to get a lot of hits in practice. But as soon as the ump said, “Play ball,” I crapped the bed.

So on the rare occasion when I hit a home run, I like to holler about it. This was a homer:

So, with dinner on the mound, I stepped up. The first pitch: waffles. It was a strike, but I didn’t swing. It wasn’t the pitch I wanted. Yes, I love waffles. But I didn’t want to swing at waffles. I was waiting. Ok, that’s a lie: I wanted to swing at waffles, I just didn’t see them coming.

The next pitch was pizza. Way outside. I was broke. So the count went to 1-1.

I stepped out of the batter’s box and looked for my sign. Coach Smirnoff touched his nose-cheek-nose-forehead-nose-right ear-butt-chest-belt. Belt means bunt. Belt always means bunt. Since Abner Doubleday stole the game and took credit for it, belt has meant bunt. I stepped back into the box.

I squared around to bunt, which always terrified me. Crushed knuckles were a possibility; crushed nuts were, too. The pitch was a big ass bowl of Apple Jacks. That’s not a bad pitch, but I pulled back. Not what I was looking for. Any other night, maybe, but not for Sunday dinner. So the count is 2 balls, 1 strike.

I dug in again, and sho’ nuff: waffles! This time with eggs and delicious Farmland bacon! I swung and missed. I think I closed my eyes. Either way, I missed. I think it was the eggs screaming, “hey batta batta batta batta” that threw me. Eggs can chatter.

So, two balls, two strikes. The pitch: waffles again, but this time with pulled pork. You could hear the crack of the bat a mile away. That sucker was outta here.

Batting 8th, number...is that a chef jacket? What the...? Anyway, batting 8th, Chinny McSyrup

I didn’t get all of it. The waffles were Bisquick, so they were just good enough. Not as much flavor as a true waffle-lover’s waffle should have. And the pork was just a pound or so of utility pork (Not sauced yet, didn’t try real hard when I smoked it) vacuum packed in the freezer. But together, with a spot of Slabs sauce on the meat and a generous drizzle of black walnut syrup from Peter’s Market, they had just enough power to clear the fence.

It made sense: our pork is sweet, and chicken and waffles is a classic soul dish, so why not? I’m telling you, it was damned good, people. Take a swing at it.

It might also be good luck for the Mighty Mighty Missouri Tigers, as they whooped the shee-hit out of Memphis while I enjoyed it. Apropos, I suppose: Missouri beats Memphis.

I should point out that not only is RJ’s good enough to make my turd-trousers tolerable, but it’s also good enough that I’ll ignore the fact that it’s on the wrong side of State Line. That’s right: it’s in Kansas. I’ve said it a million times: the only reasons to go to Kansas are for the races and to burn Lawrence. RJ’s pulled pork is worth venturing into the wastelands of the Beaker State.

As usual, I only had pulled pork. The first couple-few times I go to a barbecue joint, I get pulled pork, because if you can’t make good pulled pork, stay away from brisket, and don’t even look at that rack of ribs. Our cat can make good pulled pork. But then, the cat makes a mean jalapeno fudge, so that’s not a good analogy.

Bristol Motor Speedway: exceptional cook/race fan.

But when I say pulled pork is easy, I’m not talking about competition-grade pulled pork. I can’t seem to make that anymore. I’m talking about Kansas City style, joint/dive grade pulled pork. If a restaurant / dive / joint / roadhouse / shack / hovel / outhouse /guy-in-a-truck-parked-at-the-old-K-Mart can’t make decent pulled pork, they should get out of the business. It’s a butt: Rub it, smoke it, sauce it, pull it.

Now, you can add some stuff in there if you want. I’ve been having wonderfully bad dreams about El Camino Real (downtown KCK) pork pastor, so I’m thinking of adding crushed pineapple to my pulled pork. And Guinness. And bacon. And Charleston Chews. And equal parts love and hate. Actually, the love might make it bitter.

But unless you do something stupid in there, it’ll be good. RJ’s doesn’t do anything stupid. I was worried at first: there’s some cinnamon or something in their sauce. It might not be cinnamon, but it has that flavor. You know what I mean. If you don’t know what I mean, go try it, you’ll see. It works. It’s damned good sauce.

I made a tenderloin with cinnamon in the rub once. I used this recipe:

Cinnamon BBQ Rub
1/3-cup salt
1/4-cup paprika
3 T chili powder
3 T freshly ground black pepper
1 T ground cumin
2 t garlic powder
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t cayenne (optional)
Yellow table mustard

I have no idea where I got that recipe, but it’s not mine, and I think whomever it came from had a lot of success with it. But my tenderloin sucked. Why did my tenderloin suck? Because I was wearing slacks. Ok, not really. It might have sucked because I didn’t use this sauce recipe that came with the rub recipe:

Sauce for the Cinnamon rub recipe
1 stick of butter - not margarine
2 T molasses
3 T honey
1 t lime juice

I think I’ve put that sauce on waffles. God, I love waffles.

I digress.

RJ’s has exceptional pulled pork, unique sauce, and freakin’ good fries. Dudley reports that the pork butt burger special was pretty damned good, too. It looked like a discus, but thicker. Kids from nearby high schools could use them at track meets. The butt burger is damned close to the same weight as a discus, too. I also liked RJ’s beans, which were basic - oniony, not overly meated or smoked, but good.

And now that I think about it, the shack they’re in is damned close to perfect, too. A small bar right in the middle, minimal number of tables, but plenty of TVs and good music. The KU stuff brought a little chunk of beans or something up in my throat, but a cold PBR washed it back down.

So, what’s my point? RJ’s Bob-Be-Que Shack is good. Try it.

Get a pen; you’ll need to run to the grocery store.

Here it is – write this down:

* One package of little smokies. Unfortunately, you’ll have to get a lesser brand, because Farmland® doesn’t make little smokies. I prefer pork to beef, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
* One pound package of Farmland® bacon – I prefer Honey Maple Flavored, but have had success with Cider House® and Hickory Smoked.
* Brown sugar – let’s say a cup. Maybe more. Maybe less. No, go with more. I like dark brown sugar better, but that’s just me.
* Barbecue Rub – I’ve used our own recipe, but Slabs Stephy Style is the best according to Sara. Not sure if Keira Knightly has a preference.
* Butter – you know: churned cow juice.

Get a 9x13 dish. Well, you know, give or take. Honestly, I don’t care about your dish. Just get something to cook this crap in. But remember, there’s a buttload of pork fat and sugar in these, so be prepared for a messy pan. I’ve used aluminum pan before, but disposable isn’t green, so I use a 9x13 dish and then wash it. Green is good. Although I don’t know how ungreen the gas used to heat the water to clean the dish would be. Then there’s the soap and the processing of that soap. Damn. It ain’t easy being green.

Ok, you need to wrap the little smokies in bacon, but not a whole slice. That’d be crazy. So do this: take one slice of bacon and one little smoky. Start at the end of the bacon and roll the smoky up in it until you have just a slight over-lap. Cut the bacon there, then use that as your template to cut the rest of the bacon. It’s a little less than a third of a slice of bacon per smoky. OK? OK. Do that on each and every little smoky. I put the two ends of the bacon on the bottom, so’s they don’t curl up while cooking. Make sense? Good.

When you get them all in a layer in the dish or pan or whatever the hell you’re cooking it in, cover it all with brown sugar. Wait. I need to make this clear. A single layer. The bacon-wrapped little smokies have to be in a single layer, or you’ll have soggy bacon, and Sara hates soggy bacon. Again, I’m not sure about Keira Knightly’s bacon preferences, but I recommend making it the way Sara likes it. She’s tougher than you and hotter than Keira.

Back to the sugar: cover it all with sugar. I’m not positive, but I think I used at least a cup of dark brown sugar. I’m not fooling around here, people. Ok, now top it all with a nice sprinkle of barbecue rub. The Slabs Stephy Style was perfect, better than our usual pork rub, I reckon, because it’s not as sweet. We have sweet covered with the brown sugar.

Now, pop the whole thing in the oven at 400. Did you pre-heat the oven? Pre-heat the oven. When instructions say pre-heat the oven, do so. The people who create this stuff aren’t just yanking your chain.

Ok, leave it in there for, oh, let’s say 45 minutes. Check it now and then, though, to see if the bacon is done to where you want it. Check it by looking through the glass, not opening the door. Unless your glass is covered with a burnt on layer of carbonite that’d make Han Solo crap himself. God, I don’t even like Star Wars.

Anyway, when it’s done where you want it, this stuff will be sitting in a bubbly gooey glaze of brown sugar and bacon grease sweeter than Lenka, richer than Oprah, and better than anything you’ve ever eaten. Which means you should drop four or five little pats of butter on to – let ‘em melt in there. Just a couple tablespoons. Trust me. You've come this far, you might as well go right over the top.

There it is. The Super Bowl is approaching. You’ll be asked to go to a party. When you ask, “What should I bring,” this time you don’t have to hope the host will say, “Oh, just yourself.” Take this dish fulla death and I promise you’ll be loved by everyone at the party. And most local cardiologists.

By the way, I did not invent this. Got it from Kent and Kelly, the Bacon King and Dip Queen of the universe. And if you’re thinking about turning this in for a sausage category at a KCBS contest, don’t. As we were told at Blue Springs last fall: “You guys were DQ’d because of the bacon. Sure was good, though. Thanks.” There ya go.

Good luck, and good bacon.

See, it takes a power washer. And when you clean something with a power washer, everything that you’re not cleaning gets dirty. I’m talking everything in the county gets dirty. I washed it in Marshall, Missouri; they found bits of last place brisket in Sedalia.

I love power washers. Our old deck is new and lovely thanks to a power washer. A power washer will clean anything. It’ll clean the stench of brimstone off of Dick Cheney, though probably not the blood off of his hands. And the power washer is the easiest, most effective way to clean the smoker. It’s cool, but every bit of gunk that leaves the smoker has to go somewhere. It gravitates towards me.

I think these are the first times I’ve posted pics of our smoker online. Note that this is before I was even done power-washing it. So it’s still a mess. See how black it is inside? That's not "seasoned," and it's not going to give it a "special flavor." It's foul and about half an hour after this picture was taken, most of that black goop was on me. But I wore it well.

That’s all.

Chocolate covered bacon. It works.

Ok, I cut the slices into thirds and fried them crisp. Crisp is important, texture-wise. You don’t want a chewy pork fat bite when you’re eating candy. Fry them crisp, let them cool. When cooled, dip the bacon into melted chocolate-flavored almond bark. Make sure the bacon is covered completely with chocolate. Put them on wax paper to let the chocolate set.

Leave the peanuts out. They brought nothing to the party.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. And it’s good. Get over the weirdness of it, already. It’s good. When I sampled it around the office with bacon experts and anyone who’d take a bite, no one who tried it said it was gross. One person did prefer the bacon cookies to chocolate covered bacon, but that’s OK. Most people really like it.

There’s certainly nothing new about savory chocolate, but this isn’t really savory. It’s sweet like candy, then it gooses you with a smoky bacon flavor finish. Likewise, salt and chocolate together is elementary, but this is different. This isn’t a chocolate covered peanut salt and chocolate combo. This is…people, this is bacon.

I also made a batch with Farmland® Hickory Smoked bacon and Farmland® Lower Sodium bacon. Equally delicious, a little less sweet. There ya go. Try it.

Yes, Mike, it was a Pleasant Valley Sunday. Except it was Saturday. And the food wasn't pleasant at all.

Then there’s Pleasant Valley. Not tho thooper. We took 4th in Chicken, 17th in Ribs, 20th in Pork, and 22nd in brisket: dead ass last. Overall, we finished 19th out of 22 teams. We sucked. Well, obviously the chicken didn’t suck. The only time chicken sucks is when Kent has a hangover. And he’s gotten so good at chicken that even hangovers don’t affect it much. The true measure of how well you’ve mastered a barbecue category is how well you can do it when you have a blistering, drooling, why-did-I-do-this-again hangover.

The Beckners are thinking, "Well, it doesn't suck."
Sara's thinking, "If I choke down this crap, I'm going to Sheridan's."

So Blue Springs was great, Pleasant Valley sucked. No, I take that back. The contests were both great. Blue Springs always is, and Pleasant Valley was a wonderful little competition. It reminded me of the old days out in Waverly and Slater, Missouri. Like those classics, PV is a small contest, set in a park, relaxing and quiet. And the purse at Pleasant Valley is big enough to be worth the effort, yet not so big that it brings out the big britches crowd. You know, the ones who live in a fantasy world where they deserve the cash and butt kissing usually reserved for prima donna celebrities - the kind of schmucks who say things like, "Do you know who I am?!" PV was a nice, friendly little barbecue contest, the way they were meant to be.

Except we sucked. The chicken was the only thing not over-cooked. Some of the ribs looked like they’d been pulled from a tar pit. I’m blaming equipment failure for the most part – thermometers lied to me again. New ones. But it’s still my fault for trusting them.

We should compare pictures from Blue Springs and Pleasant Valley. It’d be a great way to look at presentation. Except I forgot to take any pics at Blue Springs. So we’ll just look at the suckiness off PV.

Chicken: 168.0000. Four 9’s and three 8’s in appearance. At BS, we had three 9’s and four 8’s. Fairly consistent. Only 162.2854 at Blue Springs, where the 168 would have taken third.

Ribs: 149.7140. Two 9’s, three 8’s, one 7. At BS, we had one 9, four 8’s, one 7. Again, consistent. But our ribs scored 160.5714 at Blue Springs. We lost 11 points from one contest to the next.

Pork: 143.9998. Two 8’s, two 7’s, two 6’s. Stinky. Blue Springs scored one 9, three 8’s and two 7’s, giving us a 153.7140.

Brisket: 131.4282. Worst. Ever. Three 8’s and three 7’s, which could have been worse. Fortunately, the taste and tenderness were so awful, we were still able to claim worst freakin’ brisket of the weekend. Dammit. At BS, we had one 9, three 8’s and one 7, total score of 148.5712

What’s it all mean? Well, the meat was over-cooked at Pleasant Valley. Over-cooked is the worst, because besides the taste (this tastes like a briquette) and tenderness (this is like meaty Cream of Wheat®), it’s hard to build a decent box because the meat’s falling apart. Appearance scores end up sucking, too. I mean, look at the brisket. All those sloppy little bits and pieces there needed to come off. Except by the time we got the crumbling slices in the box, we were close to missing the turn-in time. So there they are, in all their crappiness. That's what happens when you over-cook it.

But even at BS, we should be getting all 8’s and 9’s on appearance by now. I mean, after 14 years of wasting lettuce and parsley in these boxes, you’d think we’d have it down. So, echoing Chicago Northsiders yet again this season: Wait ‘til next year.

We also had my year-old electronic thermometer placed next to Kent’s fresh-out-of-the-package thermometer. Mine read a healthy and hearty 230+/- degrees, Kent’s read 200 degrees. Thirty degrees is no small difference. Warm your beer up 30 degrees, see how you like it. Do it.

Looked bad, tasted OK, finished 27th, I hate Madonna.

So one brisket was dried out, but the other was just about right. I don’t know why it didn’t dry out, but there ya go. So, it had to be good, right? Not if I picked out the wrong briskets, dammit. Our friends at HyVee let me pick our meat myself from every hunk they had in the cooler, and I grabbed two smaller ones. Because I’m an idiot.

The one we turned in was cooked about right, and the seasoning didn’t suck, either. I used a new marinade and rub recipe, and even wrote them down, in case we wanted to do it again. I can’t find the paper I wrote them down on, but still. Nice effort. But the briskets were both too small. We couldn’t get good presentation slices. Dammit.

Ditto the pork. The butts I picked out just weren’t good enough. Too small, and the muscles and fat were all weird. And it’s my fault because I picked them out. But I have to pass the blame onto someone, so I think hogs had something to do with it. They probably knew I’d be smoking them, so they slammed their shoulders against their pen walls over and over again, like when Mel Gibson popped his shoulder out in Lethal Weapon.

Martin Riggs has no problem with eating pork, even when it looks this bad.

Anyway, one butt was pullable, but they both needed more time on the smoker. And the flavor was good after I added the little somethin’ somethin’, but the presentation was just a freakin’ train wreck. Finished 41st.

Ribs were good, but I thought they could have used another hour on the smoker. Blame for that goes back to the incorrect crappy ass stupid thermometer. Flavor was great, and they boxed up real purty. And they scored the best – 18th out of 73 teams. One more hour on the smoker and they’d have probably been declared the greatest ribs in the history of everything.

Not sucky.

I don’t know what the hell happened with the chicken (56th). Sometimes the chicken just doesn’t click. Although Kent did seem pretty happy. And not at all surprised that he once again won the loser’s Old Style. Holy crap, are you tanking chicken to get the beer? Was that a chicken “Lookout block?”

Cold Style Gold Style Who Wants an Old Style!

Anyway, there ya go. We sucked at barbecue for a myriad of reasons. It could just be our “Tao of Que” attitude about contests. Maybe we shouldn’t just accept that we score where we score, be content with it. Maybe we need to try harder. Or not.

Congratulations on winning the beer again, stupid.

The bottom line: Brett deep fried mac and cheese. We dusted it with TheSlabs.com Stephy Style rub, and Brett got 3rd for it. And just like that, we became one of those teams. Great at sides, crappy at bbq.

If a barbecuer could admit that some pits do produce a better tasting product, it might happen. But no one dare stray from the mantra, “It’s the cooker, not the cook,” for fear of retribution from…well, I don’t know who. From what I’ve seen, the barbecue thought police are hardly a force to be feared. They’re loud, especially if you challenge some long-standing stupidity, like, say, “barbecue sauce just hides mistakes,” but they’re harmless. So someone speak up.

Until then, I’m looking at methods to make it easier. That’s why I tried this:

The bus tub rub.

I cooked those six butts for the Lake Waukomis Women’s Club volunteer appreciation day at the Kansas City T-Bones game. That’s a really long title. And about three times the pork we needed, but I needed some practice and to restock my poor, barren freezer, so what the hell.

Anyway, I figured it’d be a lot easier to rub and tightly pack the meat in this bus tub than it would be to wrap them all individually, like I usually do. I figured the tight fit would work as well as the tight plastic wrap.

I was wrong. Stupid lazy bastard that I am, I was wrong. The pork was barely even edible. I tossed most of it in the lake, along with several bottles of KC Masterpiece and an apology to the grass carp that would no doubt dine on the vile stuff.

That’s a lie. It wasn’t bad at all. We ate the crap out of it, in fact, even though it was close to 150 degrees in the T-Bones parking lot.

The flavor just didn’t get as deep into the meat as it does when I wrap them. The meat was smoky enough, and with some post-pull manipulation (add some sauce, some rub, some something I’m not saying) it was damned good. But not as good as I wanted it. Not as good as it could have been. Not as good as it should have been. Well, not that bad.

I’ll probably still use the tub when I’m doing quantities like that, but I’ll go back to wrapping. Experiment complete – method judged substandard.

Just keep rapping, punk.

It was also my first load-it-to-the-brim smoke on the WSM. In spite of the exceptional and enthusiastic help I had, it didn’t go as planned.

Go watch the ball game, I'll take care of the pork. Trust me. Nice dirt lawn, by the way.

That much meat (six eight-pound butts on two levels) took forever to come to temperature. In fact, it took well over 16 hours, the final four in the oven. It was my fault, though. I think with more practice, I can get that much meat to cook as planned, even if I have to change the plan. Experiment complete – results judged inconclusive.

It’s Excelsior Springs week, by the way.

Saturday arrived just as Saturday was supposed to arrive. That’s good. The world didn’t end overnight. Not that anyone thought it would, right? Right. The sun came up, it was warm, kind of humid, and not hung-over. So we went to the races.


Well-fed and goin' fast.

Vrooooom: off to IRP to cook for Jay Robinson Racing’s #28 Border Patrol Chevy (Kenny Wallace), the #4 JVC Chevy (Derrike Cope) and the…um...#49 Gremlin Grill Chevy (Kertus Davis).

Pat, are you writing about hog dewormers? Or ribs?

I was going to tell our hundreds of thousands of readers about the loin chops. Kent made some kind of mustard and vinegar marinade that they soaked in for a couple days. It was awesome. I wonder if Kelly spit in it? Anyway, I was going to write about the marinade and then about the Blues Hog mustard sauce we finished the chops with, but I can’t. Which is a shame, because Blues Hog mustard is incredible. But instead, I’m sitting at the least private cubicle in a building with hundreds of cubicles. If I sat down in the center lane of I-70 in St. Charles, Missouri at about 5 pm on a Wednesday, I wouldn’t have as many people zooming by as I do where I’m sitting right now.

Stand there an' look purty

Oh! Oh! At IRP, which I refuse to call ORP, we also grilled wings and drums for the Discount Tire racing team. I’ll tell you about it if the two bastards discussing leadership skills RIGHT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF MY DAMNED WALL will shut the hell up and leave. But they’re not going to. So I can’t tell you that Allison, the new member of the JRR team who is a hoot and kept an eye on us (we love Allison, but wonder why she was assigned watch-the-barbecue-guys duty), wanted some grilling tips, and that her husband is the spotter for David Ragan, so we showed her the squeeze margarine thing and the aluminum pan w/ pineapple juice braise and what have you. I’m not going to tell you about that unless these jerks leave. Ok, one of the jerks is a girl and she smells really good.

Anyway, all that was lunch and it was a good time. Hot, but a good time. Dinner was uneventful, which is good, because apparently the top of the half wall of my cube is a coffee table. Yep: my cube has one wall that rises just high enough that it’s the perfect height for passers-by to put their drinks on it. If I had a full wall, I’d tell you the ribs were great, the brisket great, the beans adequate, the cheesy corn predictably brilliant, the cukes and onions a sweettangyspicy work of freakin’ art. But Les Nessman and I, we don’t get walls, so you don’t get to hear about it.

SIlver Swine Award Winners know their pulled pork

So that’s Saturday at IRP. Oh, and the race was cool, I held the pit sign. That is all.

So the briskets for the race team were damn good. Ditto on the ribs. I smoked 15 racks in two batches during the week before the race. Because smoking meat on a work night is just a hoot. I should have cooked it sooner, but it’s been a weird summer, so get off my back.

Breakfast of...

Plus, there are some perks to cooking overnight. For starters, peeing off of the deck at 3 am is always fun, because you don’t have to worry about neighbors the way you do when you pee off of the porch at noon. I also got to talk to some spiders. That was interesting. And I never quite fell asleep those nights, but rather was just asleep enough to dream about stuff like the ribs burning and the deck burning or the fire going out so the ribs don’t cook and 22 NASCAR crewmembers get sick and me burning for it.

Anyway, Kent and I pulled out of KC at about 7 am Friday. We’d have left earlier, but I slept-in until 5:30. Yeah, I know, I’m lazy. I was also slowed when it started pouring rain just as I began loading the car. Yeah, I know, I’m wimpy.

We started late, but luck was with us, as it stopped raining by the time we reached Illinois. So we only had about three and a half freakin’ hours of non-stop rain on I-70. Great times. The corn looked good, though. In case you’s wondering. Corn looked good.

Stopped in Kingdom City, MO for gas and McDonald’s breakfast, because we always do. When you find a comfortable exit, use it. Don’t stray. Stay with what you know. Ulysses stopped at the same Sonic every time he passed it during all those years wandering the Mediterranean, because they never once left a thing of tots out of his order. Look it up.

Where'd ya say I wandered?

We got to Indy at about 4, or maybe it was 3 or 5 or 8 or next Tuesday or sometime during the Renaissance. I can never tell what time it is in that state. After a well-fried tenderloin and a well-poured beer or two at the Knights of Columbus Brickyard Festival, the night ended without incident. That’s my story, I’m sticking to it.

Wait, one question: why is it OK to gamble at the K of C? Is it OK to lose money gambling if the church gets your losses? If so, that must mean it’s OK to win money if it’s from the church. I don’t get that. I like the sound of taking money from the church, but I don’t get it. And I could insert all kinds of jokes here about that money being needed for legal defense funds, but I’ll end here and cover Saturday’s events later.

Then it began. Some…um…ladies moved into the cabin across from ours. Near as we could tell, they rented the cabin to drink in for the night. Just show up, drink until you pass out, then leave at sunrise. Which is fine, I suppose. I dunno why you need a cabin at Basswood to do that, but there ya go. And they didn’t get too loud or boisterous or use the dogwood tree as a stripper pole. It was just kind of weird.

We also got to hear a neighbor go from funny redneck to Klansman in just a few dozen beers. I might be the only one who heard him, because of the singing (keep reading), but yeah. Carlin’s seven words weren’t nearly as repugnant as what this hillbilly asshole was yelling.

Let’s get to the singing. It’s my fault. I burned a CD with American Pie on it. Played at 10 pm on Friday night at a barbecue contest, a sing-along is unavoidable. And brutal. Buddy Holly could be heard screaming from the grave at the heinous rendition Brett, Lisa, Kelly, and most of the Basswood Resort residents performed. Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Just loud, and post-quiet hours, and I got to be the old grouch again. Somebody has to do it. Now, stay off of my lawn.

I asked her for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away...

The real agony, though, was Kelly and Lisa’s rendition of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’. Sorry, girls, it was fun, but it actually hurt my teeth. The temporary crowns I had in? They rattled and ached, then stabbed me with a kabob skewer and ran from the park.

Singing ability not withstanding, Kent still married much better than Kelly.

So we had a circus of drunk Platte County divorcees, a drunk racist dirtbag competing, Brett as Don McClain, and Kelly and Lisa screeching Just a small town girl…living in a LONELY wer-herld…took a midnight train going an-nee-wayre! What could make it better?

Some asshole with a gun. Truth is, we didn’t know about the gun until a few days later, but yeah. Some jackass got liquored up and belligerent, then didn’t want to shut up and go to bed. Instead, he got his gun out so everyone knew what a tough man he was. Here’s what I think: if you’re so paranoid, stupid, and gutless that you think you have to take a handgun to a barbecue contest, just stay home. Build a compound and don’t leave. I might even drop off food for you, because we don’t need assholes like you in society. Just stay away.

Big picture, though, it was still a fun contest. It always is. Just weirder than usual. The resort will deal with security issues next year. And nobody liked our food, which is quite normal for us at Basswood. We don't do well there. We’ll still go back next year, though. Why? To sing, baby. To sing.

Basswood Resort, Platte City, MO
41 Teams
Chicken: 29th
Ribs: 21st
Pork: 24th (I didn’t inject with the marinade, and I could taste the difference)
Brisket: 18th
Overall: 19th