New Toy

I bet you thought that you were about to see pictures of a bicycle. Nope!

Behold, my friends, the Traeger Junior Grill:

 

I’ve been craving a Traeger ever since Lowell, Alton and I had some life-changing beef kabobs on Alton’s Traeger a few months ago. I did a bit of research, let the anticipation build up … and finally purchased my very own Traeger last week.

While most home grills run off of gas or charcoal, the Traegers burn custom wood pellets. This grill is really more of a grill/smoker, with temperature settings for smoking, slow-cooking or grilling.

The hopper on the left side is for the wood pellets. For our first round of grilling, Aaron & I used apple wood.

 

We bought a 3-pound piece of sirloin from Bill the Butcher with a decent fat cap on top. We cooked it on medium for about an hour and then dropped the heat to “smoke” until the internal temperature hit about 140 F.

As we were waiting for our smoked beef to finish cooking, we got a bit hungry … so we cooked up a few bacon cheeseburgers on the old gas grill.  It is rather wonderful to be a two-grill household!

 

Finally our beef was ready to eat. Our lack of experience showed through, though. You can see that our beef fell over in the middle of the cooking process and the fat cap was no longer on top of the meat. So not as much of it soaked through the beef as we intended … but the end product was still delicious!

   

Next up: a 5-pound Mangalitsa Pork Shoulder!

Issaquah Triathlon: Meet the Pro, and Volunteer!

This Saturday I will be racing at the Issaquah Triathlon. This will be one of my tune-up events for the next ITU Pan American Cup in Coteau-du-Lac, Quebec, on June 26th.

I raced at Issaquah back in 2004 and 2005. The 2004 race was my first overall victory in a triathlon, so that was pretty memorable. In 2005 I finished second behind Jon Salerno. I just found a picture online from the 2004 race – it looks like I blew a kiss to the photographer! Classy!

In addition to competing in this Saturday’s race, I will also be hanging out in the expo area after the race to talk triathlon with anybody who wants to stop by. So come find me! I will have one of those big collapsible canopy/tents set up with a few chairs. I’ll be happy to talk about training, nutrition, racing, equipment, travel tips, the Olympic qualification process, life on the road, incriminating stories about other pros, … whatever you have always wanted to know about triathlon! I will have some coupons and giveaways from a few of my sponsors & friends – Brooks running shoes, Nuun and Bill the Butcher. I will have some of my racing equipment on hand for you to check out, including the latest Helix wetsuit, goggles and accessories from Blue Seventy and a set of brand-new Mad Fiber wheels. I will also have some information about a few training camps that I am helping to organize – a week-long camp in Kona this August and then also some warm-weather training camps this winter.

This is the first time that I’ve put together an informal “meet the pro” event, and if people seem to get a kick out of it then I will gladly do this again at other Seattle-area races. If you have other ideas on how to make this awesome, please let me know – chris [at] christremonte [dot] com.

On a related note: I talked to the Race Director yesterday and they could still use a few more volunteers. These events take a lot of manpower in order to go smoothly, and we racers really appreciate your help. In fact, to show my appreciation I have teamed up with Bill the Butcher to offer a $25 gift certificate to each of the next four people who offer to volunteer at the race. If you are interested, please email info@issaquahtri.com and then also email me at chris [at] christremonte [dot] com so I can set aside a gift certificate for you!

I hope to see a lot of you out there this Saturday! Woohoo!!

Fajitas!

Last night we did another Austin Endurance Ranch prep dinner.  This week’s main course was fajitas, including meats from Bill the Butcher and tortillas that we made ourselves, from scratch.  We also had a bit more Tremonte & Son’s Fine Ale, a giant salad, chips and salsa, margaritas and a few desserts.  Good times.

Ashwin handled the cooking of the flank steak:

I got to demonstrate the proper technique for dividing dough and rolling tortillas.  At the height of our tortilla-rolling frenzy our little sweatshop had five forced laborers working for their dinner:

 

We need to work on using that “red eye reduction” setting on the camera… Myk looks like he is about to come for your soul.

Courtenay and Loren worked on the salad:

Two of us are hard at work.  One of us is hard at work opening his beer:

No Pomerians were harmed in the cooking of this dinner.  “No, I didn’t bring the Pomeranian bowling.  I didn’t rent it shoes.  I didn’t buy it a beer.  It’s not gonna take your turn!”

  

All of the rolling and cooking took a bit longer than expected, so by the time the food was ready everybody was very eager to eat:

We finished off with a variety of desserts.  Ritz made these oat-berry bars and Ashwin brought some fresh berries and a chocolate cake.

Sadly we didn’t get a photo of the awesome salsa that Nat made for us.  We put it out with the chips as an appetizer and it disappeared quickly, despite the generous portion.  It was a green salsa with a delayed but powerful kick.  Tasty!

Loren wears his sponsor gear everywhere he goes, just in case.  Sort of reminds me of Barrett and Andrew and their PowerBar Team Elite gear that they wear *everywhere.*  The first day that I met Andrew he was ironing PowerBar patches onto everything that he owned.

Ben discovered the “creepily lit self portrait” settingon my new camera:

He also discovered the “two goofy guys gazing off into space” setting:

Of course, nobody could be as goofy as that goober in the pink hat.  But check out his awesome t-shirt!  It is made of bamboo!

If you haven’t booked your Austin Endurance Ranch trip yet, you are missing out on some mighty fine grubbin’.

A New Tradition

Last night we had an excellent dinner featuring an old family recipe as well as some new ideas.

 

The central piece of the meal was my grandfather’s recipe for pasta sauce, or “gravy” as the Italians call it.  There are a few keys to this sauce:

• Start with beef neckbones, or whatever bones your favorite butcher has on-hand
• Simmer for as long as possible, at least three hours … if you can make the sauce the day before serving and then let it sit in the fridge overnight, even better
• No stirring after you add the spices.  There is some dissention within the family about this point, but my grandfather’s rule was always that you sprinkle the spices on top and then “let them percolate.”  You can and should scrape the sides of the pot periodically, to keep things from sticking.  But don’t stir!

The finished product:

 

As I said the other day, this sauce was served over your choice of Zone pasta or fresh local pasta.  I also made a fresh loaf of bread in my bread machine.  It was a bit salty.  Oops.

Courtenay Brown once again assembled an excellent salad.

A last-minute addition to our feast was this excellent Italian-seasoned tri-tip that I got from Bill the Butcher.  We broiled it fat-side-up for 10-12 minutes, then flipped it over and baked it at 400 degrees for another 5-7 minutes.  We removed the meat for a moment, poured some red wine over it, then threw it back into the oven to make its own “reduction.”  We sort of forgot about the meat for a little while after that, as we finished cooking the other courses, but the tri-tip still came out of the oven mostly medium.

For dessert we had a small pile of strawberries with vanilla yogurt.  The berries were surprisingly tasty for being out-of-season.

What’s Cookin’, Good Lookin’

As we prepare for this winter’s edition of the Austin Endurance Ranch I wanted to run through all of the planned recipes, so I’m inviting friends over every Thursday night to be my guinea pigs.

For our first effort two weeks ago, Courtenay and I made enchiladas and a salad while Ben “worked” on his laptop.  Here are the results:

Cooking the enchilada filling:

Filling the pan:

 

Salad in a pot, salad on a plate:

 

The finished product:

Ben helped eat:

 

This week I’ll be following the old Tremonte family recipe for pasta sauce.  This will be served over a choice of Zone or Cucina Fresca pasta, along with some fresh bread, salad, dessert… good times! 

I may try to throw in some Chicken Parmesan, too, if Bill the Butcher has some scavenger chicken in-stock tomorrow night.