I had some folks from the neigh­bor­hood over last night for a win­ter bar­be­cue. I made about ten pounds of pork bar­be­cue and had green beans, corn bread, pota­to sal­ad, cole slaw, banana pud­ding and pecan pie. And lots of High Life. The pork bar­be­cue turned out real­ly well, I put a BBQ rub on the pic­nic shoul­ders, doused it in a lit­tle liq­uid smoke, wrapped it up in foil and roast­ed it for about three hours before tak­ing it out of the foil and roast­ing it for anoth­er sev­en or so. The pork shred­ded quite eas­i­ly and did­n’t have an over­whelm­ing BBQ fla­vor, the pork was still very much evi­dent. The BBQ sauce I made was­n’t like Nashville or Kansas City sauce, and was good, but still needs a bit of work. It had a slight spicy tang to it, and some sweet notes, but the main body of fla­vor was still unin­ter­est­ing.

The big sur­prise of the evening was my banana pud­ding. It was ridi­cu­li­cious. I was brought a petu­nia prim­rose, a home gnome, a jar of Tremont-grade grape jam, a 3‑year old bot­tle of caber­net, and choco­late chip muffins. I told peo­ple not to bring any­thing, dammit! Today there is cleanup, but it should­n’t be too bad, only requir­ing one trip to the recy­cling drop-off.

I have just enough left­over bar­be­cue for a cou­ple of sand­wich­es. Man am I look­ing for­ward to that.

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