An Off Day/Day Off

Day off?  Why would a retired guy need a day off?  First off, it wasn't really planned this way.  Second, despite being retired, I hardly ever sit around and read or watch TV.  Most days I spend several hours in the shop working on some aspect of some project, or on more than one project. Today I had a reset because the power went out at noon (almost exactly) and I try to minimize our power footprint while the backup generator is on.  Power was out until about 2. 

More importantly, there was barbecue to take care of.  We had some old (dated 2015) spare ribs in the freezer along with some month old beef short ribs and decided last night that with the forecast being what it is, we'd smoke all of the ribs today and have leftovers for a few days.  Barbecue is a slow process and it rarely hurts to be lazy about timing, but there are times when you gotta do what you gotta do.  There are recipes for a reason.  The recipes started with getting everything into the smoker by about noon.  It ended up closer to 12:30. 

A rack of pork spare ribs on the left split in two pieces, surrounded by a bunch of beef short ribs.  Mrs. Graybeard (bless her heart) makes the dry rub from jars of spices and then gets all the meat ready, leaving me to just run the smoker, and thinks I'm doing the hard part!  We used the same rub for both beef and pork, and generally use the same basic rub.  Other than the rub, I did the 3-2-1 method that several people talk about on the spare ribs, a six hour recipe cooking by time instead of temperature.   For the short ribs, they just got stuck on the top shelf in the smoker with a temperature probe.  Thankfully, at the end of the ribs' six hours the thick beef rib I was measuring was 195F internal.  (Six hours is short for a barbecue session)  The goal is >190, but you probably don't want to go over 205.  Everything was fall-off-the-bone tender.  One of the beef ribs fell apart while putting it on this tray to bring indoors.    

Aside from that, I did a little work in the shop, but no holes were drilled and no metal changed shape.  Watched a little football.  Browsed through a few of the magazines that are stacked up.  Answered a handful of emails.  Generally took it easy.  Despite it peaking in the mid-80s, it's definitely getting more like fall here.  The forecast for next weekend brings the first cold front of the season through, which means a high near 80 and low closer to 60.  Forecasts of the first cool weather are famously inaccurate, though.  Hope you had a nice relaxing day, too.