bbq-ful weekend

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.