My Man's Man

Frank started with the "Worth-the-Wait Turkey" recipe in Smoke & Spice.  I read the recipe and I’m still a little worried about the "mop every 30 minutes" for the last six hours of cook time part!  Hopefully we time this right – getting up at 3 am to feed the baby is enough middle of the night activity for me.

We started last night.  First we went to the store to get all of the ingredients.  The one thing we couldn’t find was garlic-flavored oil even though we went to two stores.  Frank plans to improvise, something he does well.

When we got home, Frank mixed up all the ingredients in the blender.  (And mentioned that he’d like a small food processor for Christmas.   And then he took a very big (kitchen?) syringe and injected the mixture throughout the turkey.  It is now marinating in our fridgerator.

More to come tomorrow …

We needed a new grill and Frank really wanted a smoker, so I decided to buy him a smoker grill for his birthday.  (I always feel strange buying "kitchen" stuff for presents since it implies work for the giftee, but in this case it was perfect.  Frank uses his smoker grill almost everyday.)  After lots of research we decided on a Traeger Grill.  All the reviews you will find on the web are fantastic and our experience over the past few months confirm everything we’ve heard.  We’ve yet to make anything on it that’s not delicious.  Some of the reasons Frank liked the Traeger were:

• automatic pellet feeding,
• temperature control,
• temperature span up to 500F,
• option for a digital thermastat,
• doesn’t flame up,
• … everything has that smokey flavor!

We got the Lil ‘Tex – they pretty much told me the only difference in
the residential grills was cosmetic and size.  The Lil’ Tex has had
enough room for everything we’ve done so far and we are smoking a
turkey in it tomorrow.

I ordered our smoker grill directly from The Traeger Store. (You can buy parts and supplies from Amazon.) They included a bunch of extras like pellets and spices and free shipping.  It came on a big FedEx truck and I had them put it in the garage.  I then had to get a step ladder to open up the top of the package to make sure the grill was in good shape!

Shortly after I met Frank I was describing him to a friend of mine and she said, "Oh, a man’s man."  I thought about it for a moment and said, "yeah, he’s a man’s man." The comment stuck with me, partly because it was a relevation to me and partly because my friend that said it was gay.  (For some reason it was weird that my female homosexual friend labeled somebody a "man’s man.")  Frank was a man’s man because he was big and strong, used to have a construction company, loved hunting, served in the army, etc.

Then I discovered that my man’s man not only likes hunting, but he loves cooking.  (Every night, for me.   And he likes making pickles and sausages and smoking turkeys.  (Not to mention that he can clean, iron and sew better than me too.  – Good thing I can fix the home computer network and change diapers!)

Back on topic, why "my man’s man?"  He has all these really neat hobbies like making sausage, canning pickles and cooking elaborate seafood dinners for Christmas Eve that I want to share with all of you …