Weekend recap. . .

So this weekend was cold and rainy. The kids went stir crazy inside. At one point I told Sandy that we should go and buy the kids galoshes and raincoats and just send them outside. But we didn't. We had invited my Mom and Alex Marquis over for dinner, so we defrosted a turkey for smoking. I'd never smoked a turkey before, so this kinda went against my rule of trying things out before inviting people over. Sandy made a potato salad, and we whipped up a strawberry ice cream mixture so we could make it at dinner. Well, Sunday morning Sandy and I got up early to start the bird, and it was raining outside. On the back porch there was no protection from the wind and rain, and behind the garage it was a little better but good. I have smoked when there was snow outside, but the rain runs down the lid and onto the coals at the bottom. This is different from my Smokey Joe where the lid overlaps the cooking part so the rain doesn't get in. (If you have the top vent closed.) In retrospect, I don't know if I explained this to Sandy. We had a little bit of a disagreement about how bad it looked to smoke something on our front porch. Sandy thought it looked white trashy. I kind of agreed, but I didn't see much of an alternative. In the end, we smoked the turkey on the front porch. It took about 8 hours to cook to an internal temp of 180. I thought about building some kind of moveable wooden screen to camoflage the smoker if we needed to smoke outdoors, but maybe next time we'll just pay better attention to the weather report. My Mom and Alex came over. Mom brought a green salad, and Alex brought a nice bottle of wine he said he had purchased at a Wal-Mart in Mexico. I also drank a can of Boddington's Pub Ale. "Wine before beer, never fear," I reminded the group. After dinner Alex brought out his can-tenna style wifi antenna, and we pointed it around the neighborhood. Best we got was a couple bars, no connection. Pointing it straight at the Hampton didn't yield anything, surprisingly. I know that they have wifi in there. . .it's just password protected.

That's it for now. Oh, Saturday night Sandy and I saw Stephen Colbert on CSPAN. Check the previous post for more on that.