Recently in smokin Category

i contracted with an award winning photographer to snap some photos of my new pipe. here it is:

and here it is with extra chins:

it's actually bigger than i was expecting (though it looks small profiled against so many chins), and while i don't think it reaches the level of perfection of my other dal fiume, i also paid a lot less for it. i have noticed something about my smoking habits: my favored tobacco category flip-flops when i buy a dal fiume. witness:

going into chicago, my favorite tobacco style was straight virginia, or virginia/perique blends. i bought my first dal fiume from the man himself, intending to use it for Va and Va/Per blends. I smoked a couple such bowls in it, then didn't touch it for 3 months, having switched almost entirely to english blends.

Then I realized that I didn't have a nice Dal Fiume pipe for English blends, so I bought this new one for exactly that, smoked one nice English blend in it, and then promptly switched back over to Va and Va/Oriental blends. I call this the sainttoad Dal Fiume paradox.

i made a promise the other day: i won't buy any pipe that costs more in dollars than i can deadlift in pounds.

that settled, i decided to buy a dal fiume that had been offered on marty's site for far too long. marty, who is more or less local for me, made me a bitchin deal that kept the cost under my deadlift.

so now i'm the proud owner of two dal fiume pipes, one for english blends, one for the rest.

out on the porch enjoying some abingdon in my gourd calabash. a gardener's truck pulled up, i guess to adjust their garbage bin. one of the gardeners said he liked my pipe, asked me where i got it. "the internet", i said, truthfully.

then he asked "you smoke mota in it?"

"nope," i said, "tobacco only".

then, he asked, "oh.. what do you smoke your mota in?"

the correct response being, of course, "i don't smoke mota, especially not in this pipe."

"oh," he said, "me neither, it hurts my lungs."

all right then.

the smoked carrot is nearly "just right" - heavy smoke flavor, but does not taste like a cigarette, as hops observed of the asparagus.

i only had a small cold sample, haven't even had the full lunch portion yet, but i must say: when i do tri-tip, i outdo myself.

my smoked tri-tip recipe is my own invention, more or less. it has the following advantages:

1) it takes about 2 hours including all prep and cleanup. compare to 8-9 hours for pork spare ribs.
2) it tastes friggin great. compare to pork spare ribs : d'oh, no advantage here!
3) tri-tip is leaner and thus healthier than pork spare ribs. okay, another point for tri-tip

most of all, it tastes friggin great and it's easy to prep, easy to smoke. i've been pondering an attempt at a smoker/grill hybrid recipe for steaks (e.g. new york strip steak). it will be a whole lot of work, with a high risk of ruining the steak.

perhaps if i were used to a charcoal grill i wouldn't consider it much work, but i'm a propane guy for steaks.

i'm back on a roll with the smoker. it's smoke smoke smoke from here on out, i can feel it. but first i have to eat some leftovers!

saturday we went to gorilla bbq in pacifica with some new friends. i've never seen a line like this at gorilla before, but i was not surprised:

the view on the inside:

when i asked for minimal sauce (it is always on the side), the owner understood: (paraphrasing from smoked memory) "if you can't eat it without sauce, why bother?" DAMN RIGHT!

I'd describe gorilla's style as masterfully rubbed, perfect texture, gentle smoke, and great sauce -- where it belongs, on the side.

oh, and epic portions. there's a whole pile of pulled pork under the full-size spareribs:

the line didn't get much smaller after we finished:

we left gorilla and headed into the town of pacifica. my first visit to their coastline, after a decade of living in the same area code...

we parked near pacifica ass company.

special care at the beach, where apparently people swimming and wading in the sand have died:

and that was it for pacifica. later that night we ate at teh county's worst burger joint.

the next day was shorts shopping (do these squats make my ass look big? yeah, they do), and a relaxing evening of smoking meats. i loaded the smoker with tri-tip, salmon, (yeah, according to my notes they have the same cooking time, though they favor different woods. the beef was for today's lunch, i haven't tried it yet), asparagus, carrots, and okra.

dinner:

some things worth mentioning: the salmon was rubbed with year old mystery-rub, which apparnetly had, in that time, broken down into basically salt. lots of it. the rub ruined hte fish. scraped off it was tolerable, and smokey, and had the best texture of any salmon i've smoked. but the mystery rub sucked.

the asparagus and okra sucked up way too much smoke. they were not, as hops had feared they'd be, overcooked. they were simply oversmoked, to the point of being inedible. but they might make a good cream of asparagus soup - hops has vowed to find out.

the okra, likewise, sucked up a lot of smoke, but not as much as the asparagus. still, next time i'll do things differently.

the carrots? ask again later. dunno yet.

in all, i've found my bbq mojo again. it helps that i'm in a lifting mindframe and eating lots of meat. it helps that hte weather is nice and i'm a sociable guy and bbqs are a great way to throw a party. more to come.

since we moved into the new place last summer, i haven't used the smoker, and it's been a huge bummer. as you may know, when we moved here, there was some confusion about whether it was legal for me to operate a charcoal burning device on the premises, so in addition to clearing it with the fire marshal, I had a rider added on to the lease clarifying that I was going to be smoking. that's how into it I was.

and then for some reason I stopped.

two days ago I biked past a local ethnic market that had a whiteboard in the window that read, "FRESH GOAT". that's when it hit me: FRESH GOAT was a solution to no fewer than four impending problems:

1) my poor, lonely smoker hadn't seen any use in a year, goat bbq would be a great motivation to see if I still had the skills
2) i had two tupperwares full of leftover BBQ rubs, and I could really use the tupperware for more productive things than storing rubs for over a year
3) something to do on memorial day
4) four!

After the bike ride we went to the store. As soon as I came in the store, the shopkeep said, "you're here for the goat." I sure was. He was only selling in units of 1/4 goat, and he was down to his last 1/4, having gotten the goat in on Friday, seemingly in live condition at that point. The 1/4 goat was definitely no longer alive, but it was neatly butchered and trimmed. He cut it up into smaller pieces for me.

He asked me what my marinade would be and I said I'd be smoking it with a rub of brown sugar and probably some other stuff, I've never cooked goat before and certainly never smoked it. His favorite recipe is a curry or stew involving lots of garlic and ginger, but that wasn't the route I wanted to go (see numbers 1 and 2 above).

Eventually we left, and when we got home, I spiked the old rub with some fresh cardamom and cumin. Then we did stuff, a night passed.

The next day was goat smoking day!

I went out to check my gear, and you guessed it: no charcoal. Well, I had some, but it sure wasn't enough. I'm not sure how I managed not to check it the day before. I chalk it up to forgetting the routine.

Three stores had no charcoal, or the wrong charcoal, but at last we located the good stuff at Trag's, a neighborhood grocery that I do not generally favor. Time was running short (I guessed: I had only a rough guesstimate about how long the goat would take), and back home I went.

Here's the goat, partly trimmed:

That's a leg, two halves of one side of the rib, some neck, and a piece of I-know-not-what. It's partially trimmed of fat, the goat was mostly bone and fat. according to the shopkeep it was slaughtered just before it got old enough to start getting "gamey".

the mustard slather:

I'm not convinced of the usefulness of the mustard slather, and in my bong-style smoker it may do more harm than good, hampering crust formation something awful, but I had bbq mustard to get rid of, so I slathered.

now we're smoking!

I forgot to take a pic of the rubbed meat. you'll see it in a bit. the smoker was loaded with a lot of pecan, a lot of hickory, and a tiny bit of mesquite. i don't skimp on the wood, i like my Q smokey. I think (even now that I have more of a yard) that the smoking process desensitizes me to the smoke flavor for the day and I overcompensate, making the meat super smokey for my guests but "just right" in my perception. Until I try the leftovers, that is, and am amazed by how smokey they are. That might be the Leftovers Flavor Concentration Effect, though.

Meat check!

Those are not done!

Now they're done!

What are these things? Your guess is as good as mine:

Here's a hint: they were 170F internally. Give up? Me too.

hops, The Captain, and a bit of well done, smoked, well rested goat. The goat parts were foil-wrapped in a cooler by the table. ghetto style!

paired with smokey baba ganooj, fresh local tortillas (cash only, i had to bring dolares to hops at the restaurant) that i overcooked while reheating, and some wonderful green flash hop head red. see that sauce? it was holding down the tablecloth. sauce is for losers whose Q has no flavor. but if you're such a loser, "bone suckin' sauce" is some of the best sauce you can find to give your pathetic meat some flavor.

The smoking took about 5 hours, and the process did not escape the notice of the neighbors. One set of neighbors are frequent weber kettle grillers, and the dude thought my smoker was cool, and was excited to hear that I was smoking goat, so they came over and tried some, and seemed to genuinely like it.

The meat came out perfectly: it was very, very goat-y. the bones were a giveaway that it wasn't pig, cow, chicken, or even younger versions of those animals, but even in a blind tasting, it would be obvious this was something "exotic". the southern-style rub worked very nicely, the hickory/pecan smoke worked very nicely, and everything was well and fully cooked. the texture was similar to a moist pork butt. there was not a whole lot of meat, but the meat was flavorful.

overall, I'd say it was a big success. i have now smoked a goat, I freed up two tupperwares, I have leftovers for a week or two, and my smoking skills are refreshed. i've scoped out the location for smoking at the new place, and i've reviewed and transcribed my smoker notes from the old notebook to a more bigger notebook. the only downside is that goat is frelling expensive: about 7 bucks a pound. so, someday when i want a special bbq, we'll save up and get a goat, but until then, well... i came across my notes and recipe for mesquite smoked tri-tip...

The Captain brought a cherry cobbler made with cherries freshly picked this weekend from the farm of a mutual coworker of ours:

there was also brandied-cherry juice in there. it was a great finish to a good meal, competently paired with some very nice amontillado.

all righty then. as a follow up to my recent post about setting realistic goals, i'm going to do just that.

I've read and re-read, grokked and modified Dan John's opinions on goal setting. He quotes The One Minute Manager (of whom I've never heard, but who cares?):

Look at your goals.
Look at your behavior.
Does your behavior match your goals?

And Dan's contributions, at least the contributions I'll be using, are these:

If your goals don't match your behavior, either change your behavior or change your goals.

Hidden in there is this little nugget of truth, which I dug out all on my own using my critical thinking shovel: if your goals don't match your behavior, perhaps
you've lied about or omitted a goal or a behavior.

Or maybe you haven't, and you need to change a goal or a behavior.

Two final tips from Dan John: start living like you've achieved your goal, and let everyone know about your goals so you're more likely to be shamed into achieving them. I'm definitely on top of the sharing bit.

I've made two additions of my own to the goal-setting ideas espoused in Dan's book: I've categorized my goals into three groups, "attain", "maintain", and "attain and maintain". And lastly, possibly most importantly, through the experienced garnered of years of trying to be both a distance runner and a lifter, I've decided that a goal setting system needs priorities, so that if it becomes obvious that one goal is interfering with another, I can decide which to drop.

So without further ado, here's what I've come up with after some days of brainstorming, my near and long-term personal fitness goals:

Attain (I have never done any of these):
- deadlift 5x405
- clean and press bodyweight
- 15 palms-out pull ups

Attain and Maintain (I've done two of these before):
- fit into size 36 pants
- sport a single chin, manly and well defined, needing no beardly obfuscation
- beefy forearms

Maintain (I like these):
- eat good food regularly
- drink wine/whisky regularly
- continue rock climbing as a relaxing rest activity
- continue cycling as a relaxing rest activity
- baseline of strength such that 5x315 DL is "easy"
- good GI health
- long-term health, ability to keep lifting into old age

I've kicked my DL goal way up, adding 5lbs and changing it from a 1RM goal to a 5RM goal, because I think I need to stop whining about how hard 400 is and just friggin do it. It's not that hard, it's only 50lbs more than my current 5RM, and I've got the rest of my life to do it, though the sooner I manage, the sooner I can start shooting for 500.

Single-chin + good GI health is my original fitness goal from way-back-when, and while I've done reasonably well on the GI front (fighting my genetics tooth and nail), the single-chin issue is a big one for me. In fact, I think a bodyweight C+P will be easier for me to manage.

So, as for priorities, here's the same list sorted by priority (sorting it right now, this part I haven't thought about until now):

Goals, all, prioritized:
- M: good GI health
- M: long-term health, ability to keep lifting into old age
- M: baseline of strength such that 5x315 DL is "easy"
- A: deadlift 5x405
- M: eat good food regularly
- A: clean and press bodyweight
- M: drink wine/whisky regularly
- M: continue cycling as a relaxing rest activity
- A+M: fit into size 36 pants
- A: 15 palms-out pull ups
- M: continue rock climbing as a relaxing rest activity
- A+M: sport a single chin, manly and well defined, needing no beardly obfuscation
- A+M: beefy forearms

So there we go, lucky 13 goals, sorted two ways. Someone should put that on a Chinese food menu.

I guess this post will actually be a part 1 of 2, since I haven't the time to examine my behaviors right now and formulate training plans. I guess that I'm lucky since after honest sorting, my top 3 are all maintains -- although at some point (soon) my #1 becomes "lose weight" just like my #9.

In part 2, I should also come up with a deadline for the A/A+M goals, I guess, though of all the goals I've set, "beefy forearms" is the one I have the least idea how to attain. Like with "good GI health", I think my genetics are against me there.

It seems that at the moment, lifting goals dominate my thoughts, and thus my goals. It's very possible that will change. What effect that will have on my behavior remains to be seen.

As a booster to my morale, I will point out to myself that I recently set a goal of posting more on the blog, analyzed my behavior, and took the necessary steps to achieve my goal. I'd say that was a success, to the detriment of my readers (har har).

"why are you even looking at that website?" said hops, "you said you're not going to buy a pipe from them."

"yeah," i said, "but i can look."

"if it was up to me," said hops, "you wouldn't even look."

"okay," i said, "how about baki?"

"who?"

[ baki's website loads ]

"oh," says hops, "you can look at them."

"great, and buy from them?"

"sure," said hops.

"great, i bought one this morning."

i just spent $X on fancy tobacco pipes in chicago, and now I'm stressing about spending $X/N (where N is pretty large) on bumper plates for cleans?

that's just not right.