New pool lights

We (finally) were putting in the lights around our pool so we can use it at night.  And we ran into ---- caliche.  It's what they call dirt out here - more like concrete.  So we had to go rent a jackhammer....  David seems good at it though.

It was really really sunny while we were doing the jackhammering.  As you can see by the nice shadows we made.  Note the hats - survival necessity out here.

Final results of the lights - light in the pool too. We jumped right in.

Sunset

We had a nice sunset tonight over the mountains.

Lazy Sunday afternoon in tucson

Ina's visit

David's mom visited us this past weekend to check out Tucson.  She found some nice turquoise jewelry (that matched her shirt quite well).  :)

Monsoon

We saw our first big Monsoon lightning storm tonight. I managed to get this shot of the lightning in front of our house - it was a spectacular show!

What's that, Lassie? BBQ is afoot and target temperature has been reached?

To the smoker!

My my, doesn't that look tasty.

It was difficult to get back in the house in one piece.

HAVE AT THEE!

Now for some slaw and bunnage!

Mmm...

So when we moved away from St. Louis, we decided that instead of putting our offset smoker into storage with all of the rest of our belongings for 2+ months in the Arizona sun, we would gift the mighty implement of BBQ goodness to Karl and Britni. So there we were, without proper BBQ for several months out here.

Finally, as of about a month ago, we picked up the lazy man's way to smoke: a Bradley Digital 6 rack electric smoker. As you can see from the shots, it basically looks like a mini fridge. The cooking chamber is about 3.5 feet tall and at our estimate we can probably do 30-50lbs of food in it at once, depending on the cut(s) of meat, etc...

The specimen of choice was a 10lb pork shoulder from the local megamart. It went into a kosher salt and brown sugar brine for about 8 hours, then into the smoker with apple wood at 250F for another 22 hours.

Yes, you read that right. This thing cooks quite a bit differently than the offset smoker: way... way slower. It took 22 hours for the shoulder to hit 200F, which is the target temperature for getting a pork shoulder to truly fall apart. Once it's there, all you need is a couple forks to turn it into a mound of BBQ goodness.

Quail

Just for Doris - more pictures of our quail family. The babies are really growing up fast.