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!

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’.

Pizza Night

This past Thursday we did another Endurance Ranch rehearsal dinner.  Our main course this time around was pizza with your choice of homemade crusts and toppings.  I made a whole wheat crust and an almond meal crust so that gluten-free and low-carb folks would have options.  For toppings we had fresh mozzarella, basil, three colors of bell peppers, mushrooms, pepperoni, pancetta, and parmesan cheese.  Of course we also included a big salad with a homemade dressing courtesy of Courtenay Brown.

This feast was accompanied by frothy glasses of Tremonte and Son’s Fine Ale.  My dad and I brewed up a batch of a hoppy reddish ale, following a recipe from my sister’s friend Ben.

On to the photographic evidence:

Lots of pizza:

Salad with mixed greens, strawberries, pears, red/yellow/orange bell peppers, bleu cheese crumbles and fresh dressing.  It may be hard to tell how much salad is in this picture – this is a large, party-sized punch bowl.

Delicious Beer!

 

If you would like to eat victoriously with us in Redmond, let me know!

If you would like to eat and train victoriously with us in Austin this winter, also let me know!!

Another Night of Eating Victoriously

Tonight’s Austin Endurance Ranch preview dinner was once again packed with good times and good company, and featured the following menu:

Brisket -- brined and smoked by you-know-who, then finished at home according to his instructions

Couscous & Fruit Salad -- recipe from Lindsay Cotter, but substituted quinoa for couscous

Romaine/Tomato/Feta Salad -- our Minister of Salad was a bit under the weather and had to bail, so we had to do this ourselves based on her instructions

Sweet Potato and Cabbage Coleslaw -- another Lindsay Cotter recipe

Collard Greens -- I found a vegetarian recipe online with no hamhocks

Cornbread -- following the mix/box on this one. I've gotta cut corners *somewhere!*

vegetarian baked beans from a can at the grocery store

Brownies and Tiramisu -- courtesy of Susan and Dave

Mac & Jack's African Amber -- 2 growlers, picked 'em up yesterday at the brewery

We have a few friends bail at the last minute, leaving a lot of extra food for our crowd of five people … but everybody pitched in with preparations and we sat down to eat very close to 8pm.

The main course:

 

The collard greens were a crowd favorite.  Here are the before and after cooking pictures.  You can actually see the edges of the pot sneaking out from under the raw pile o’ greens:

 

Giant salad.  It is hard to grasp the giantness in this picture.  This salad is in a party-sized punch bowl:

Gluten free corn muffins with a honey butter dipping sauce.  My cell phone camera can’t quite capture the awesomeness that is honey butter.  Check out that glare!

 

Quinoa with fruit and almonds and all that awesomeness:

The sweet potato and Savoy cabbage slaw gets a bit of a kick from the jalapeno:

Vegetarian baked beans.  You can’t eat BBQ without baked beans!

A tasty liquid accompaniment to our meal, brewed right down the street in Redmond:

Dessert!  Brownies and tiramisu!

I am exhausted after another awesome early-morning workout, a busy day at work, and an awesome evening of cooking/eating/conversation.  Time to go to bed.

If you like what you’re seeing foodwise, join us for a training camp in Austin this winter.  Yay!

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.