Over At Smokin' Sam's

Early one morning my good friend Sam pulled into our driveway in his pickup and picked me up.  I threw an ice chest full of beer in the back, and myself and a thermos of coffee in the front and we set sail for his outdoor kitchen/smokehouse.

Ya know ya in a country boy "Cadillac" when in the back ya find 2 ice chests of beer, 2 five-gallon buckets, a few branches of pecan wood found along the road, a dip-net and 3 of the largest turnips I've ever seen.  When we got over to Sam's, our buddy Lance was already there getting ready to stuff a batch of sausage intended for the smoker.  And all this before the neighborhood rooster even started crowing. 

For you non-sausage stuffers I'll explain. The natural  sausage casing comes in a package called a "hank".  A hank is a whole lot of pork intestines that have been thoroughly cleaned and prepared for sausage making, and it comes in very long pieces. These pieces are soaked in a salt water solution or "brine" and invariably requires a lot of patient untangling. It works out best to use one extremely long casing  threaded onto the sausage maker tube, so ya don't have to stop and re-thread right in the middle of everything. 

I aint gonna give yall Sam's sausage recipe cause it aint mine for the givin'.  I will however share with yall a couple valuable sausage making tricks.  If ya look close at this pic ya will notice a lil ball of sausage meat protruding from the tube of the sausage-maker.  This rounds the edges off the sharp tube opening and allows the casing to slide onto the tube without tearing.  The balloon area is actually a few ounces of water.  The water in this "bubble" travels down inside the casing which helps to keep the casing untangled and moving smoothly as it's being loaded onto the tube, and the weight of the water also helps keep the casing open as it approaches the sausage making tube. 

So it's 3 cranks of the handle and tie it off, pinch, pull and cut, then tie it off.  Then tie the 2 ends together, then repeat.  The links come out at one lb. finished. One after another we piled 'em up in the bowl getting them ready for the smoker.

The finished loops of sausage are hung on angle irons then placed in the smoker, 3 racks deep, and 3 racks high.  After all the sausage is hung in the little smokehouse, Sam drags out sawdust, wood chips, smoking pellets and some secret liquid, and loads up the smoke box.  He uses 3 different kinds of wood in 3 different forms, and soaks them down with some kinda mysterious brown water.  I'd tell ya what his combination is but then he'd have to kill me. 

Sam owns what I refer to as the "Frankenstein" of smoke houses. 

The thing is made of plywood and spare parts he scrounged, and is prolly around 5 years old by now.  It's produced thousands of pounds of some of the best smoked meats around our area.  Over the years the wood walls have warped some from the heat, so to prevent too much smoke from escaping,  Sam keeps the thing sealed up with furniture clamps, a bungie cord and a few screen door latches.

After coffee led to beer, which led to sampling assorted homemade beverages, the sausage was finally ready.  Taken out of the smoker, it was dumped into an ice-chest of ice water to "set".  This is an important tip too: If ya prick a hole in this freshly smoked sausage it would squirt juice out, making them kinda deflate into a wrinkled, dry, not-nearly-as-tasty mess; not a good thing, but by shocking them in ice water, the juice 'sets' and allows ya to keep it in the casing, and when it eventually makes its way into a cooking pot it really brings a wonderful smokey flavor to what ya cooking, not to mention eatin' it on it's own.

  That's what we did that afternoon,  at Smokin' Sam's.

Smoked Coon Gumbo

So while we were sittin' and watching the smokehouse do it's thang with the sausages, we started creating a pot of what is known in our small town as a "man dish", famous in these parts as what guys make at da camp or wherever fellas gather in the winter.

We took 3 seasoned, smoked coons and put them in a gumbo pot with a couple gallons of water.  While the water slowly came to a boil we put oil and flour in an oval magnalite pot on the stove and started making a roux, nice and dark brown.

As the roux browned we put sausage and andouille into the gumbo pot to keep the coons company, and then chopped onions and veggies to go into the roux pot.

It takes a lot of steps to build a gumbo, but as we got the whole thing built and simmering away in the gumbo pot, guys started showing up for the feast and before long we were all talking, drinking, trading and having a good ole country boy shindig.

Naturally, since Sam was the head of this beast feast, an' didn't wanna "guina pig" the rest of us,  he got him a test bowl to make sure the coon gumbo met with his approval.

We all had a ball and the Gumbo was a smokey delicious critter creation deserving it's well-known reputation.

Some one brought along a tube of those paper cups that looked like they had been pilfered from a coffee pot at work somewheres.  We used them to sample the half a dozen bottles of homemade wine that also showed up.  Having fun, Colin held up 2 identical cups and hollared, "Which one of these yall like best?"

From across the room Bebe (pronounced baybay) held up an identical cup and hollered,"Meh, Colin, dis one is da best!"

Without missing a beat, Colin drank the cup of wine in his left hand and pitched the empty cup into the 5 gallon bucket/trashcan, turned to me lifting the other cup and saying, "Hey Cap, Bebe is right, dis one is betta.'"

  As I mentioned earlier, part of what we do when we get together like this is do some tradin'.  I showed up with a grocery sack of our lemon jelly and an ice chest full of beer.  I left with the pecan wood seen in Sam's truck, assorted muscadine, black berry jellies and a couple jugs of homemade wine.  Not to mention 3 of the biggest turnips I have ever seen.  While I was visiting, Peggy came over and went across the street to visit with Sam's wife ( her "BFF") Louise.  We planned it that way knowing full well that I would be drinking and one thing I NEVER, EVER do is drink and drive.  She brought me home with my "trade goods" and musta did some trading herself cause she scored some of Sam's homemade smokehouse goodies (which were NOT coon, she hastens to add;...must be a girl thing). Well, das how we roll down in tradin' Cajun country.

"Down The Street Where WE Live"

After a long day of fun-filled outdoor chores, fresh from the shower, I flopped down into my big ole recliner with a cold beer and a heavy sigh of relief, thinking of what a great day I just had with my sweet Peggy.  A fine ending to a wonderful day. Right about that time she hollared, "Come see!!", so I hopped up and ran bare-footed outside to see whas up.  She was standing in the middle of our street pointing at a beautiful sunset.

As yall know, I am a big sunset fan, so we stood there arm-in-arm in the middle of our road reveling in God's finishing touch to our glorious day.  I stood there in awe thanking God for this amazing view and the amazing lady who had thought enough of me to call me outside so we could share the awsome handiwork of our generous Creator, together.

Lemon "Shine"

You might know it would be on the eve of a full moon, when Cappy took to looking like a moonshiner. We had only just gotten back from town, him all freshly bathed and dressed up in his loud and colorful Cajun clothes that suit his larger than life personality so well, so as to fit in (if that's possible for us) with the "dinner crowd"  at one of our favorite restaurants in Thibodaux, LaPalma's, afterwhich we headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things, for the project I'm about to let you in on.
   Oh, and before he got all "spiffied up"  he had spent the morning and the better part of the afternoon at our friend, Sam's smokehouse, along with a bunch of his buddies, making andouille and "coon gumbo",  just laughing, tipping a few, having fun being all rowdy and thoroughly enjoying each other's company. (Louise and I stayed safely in her house working on a puzzle she had gotten me for Christmas.)
   Now, presently, Cappy had been doing research about what all we might do with our lemons and the leftover peels, etc. One of the things he hit upon was to make lemon extract, using vodka. Our trip down the grocery aisle included a couple of litres of Smirnoff's plain, unflavored vodka  (On one of his researches he learned that Smirnoff's brand was "celiac safe".) and a case of pint canning jars. 
  When we got home, the first thing he did was to get out of his "dress clothes" and get comfortable. He was in such a hurry to get to his lemon extract project that he didn't even take the time to put on a t-shirt, as usual, or his shoes for that matter. He was so excited that he dove right into the project. I thought he looked like one of those guys on the tv show, "Moonshiners". Whatcha think?

 

  As for what he did, it was simple enough; he just julliened the peels, stuffed them into the pint jars, filled them with the Smirnoff "wood-kah", and screwed the lids on. And now we have only to wait 'til.....once in a blue moon, or something like that, to see the results of his efforts.

Pressing On

The morning after harvesting this year's Meyer's lemon crop, I stepped outside and loaded a dishpan full and began the lemon pressing task.

Taking the lemons into the kitchen, I dumped them in da sink and we scrubbed each one, carefully ridding them of air pollution, dust and stuff that accumulates on their skin while ripening.  Some of them have skin damage, which doesn't affect the quality of the lemon at all. This cosmetic damage is caused by birds coming to land on the outer branches of the citrus trees, and "snicking" or essentially 'zesting' the skin to get the oil for their feathers. That being said, we cull out the worst of the bunch and separate them from the "prettiest" of the batches. It always surprises us how, after being washed, they shine and look wonderful, almost artificially perfect. Yesterday was a warm, breezy day so we opened all the windows and swung open the doors as well, enjoying the breeze and lovely "Spring" smells wafting in from the jungle that is our yard.

This quickly became the routine as Peg carried the lemons in from the patio, dumped them into the sink and gave them a good scrubbing. (this is me doing the first load)  The dishpan took up station on the kitchen island where I could reach it and we began the pressing process.






We started by cutting the lemons in half then quartering the halves.  This lets ya put more into the fruit press, exposes the lemon pulp and makes for lots easier, more efficient squeezing. 

This quickly became the routine for the day.  Over and over we carried, rinsed, scrubbed, chopped and pressed on into the night. We started working at 11:30 in the morning and didn't finish 'til after 9 at night, only taking a few minor breaks along the way. While one of us worked, the other took a break...thas teamwork!  What with the refreshing breeze, we talked and laughed and had fun as we worked.

It was all day and into the night but finally we got that wheelbarrow empty.

With my arms tired, shoulders and back starting to ache from turning that press handle all day, ya can't imagine how happy I was when Peg held up a lemon from the sink and said, "This is the one I've been looking for all day....the last one!"

Well, there it is folks; over 9 gallons of fresh pure Meyer Lemon juice.  The gallon bottles are going in the freezer to wait for future projects, like more lemon jelly, etc.  The small water bottles was this year's improvement.  They are gonna be frozen and taken out for home use, like sauces, dressings, desserts, etc.  Lemon juice lasts for years in the fridge, but folks look at us funny when we pull out a gallon of it, so these small bottles should be perfect for little projects and quick glasses of lemonade.  What a wonderful "fruitful" day for Peg and me as we pressed on into the night reveling in God's gracious bounty. No reason to be sour at all.......oh wait, maybe so, eh? But that's a good thing.

Taming The Lemon Monster 2013

Well, It's that time of the year again and our Lemon Monster is loaded with beautiful Meyer Lemons, so with Peg's help I took a deep breath and went to picking. Here is the video Peg made of this year's lemon pickin'adventure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWWVygAac9I&list=UUe6CkaSkPG0EXROyp-xQkjw&index=1

The Fruit of Our Labor

For the last 2 days Peg and I have been wandering around the yard poking holes in it.  We have finally completed our annual fertilization chore, which includes lugging a big heavy hole puncher around.  The thing is made from an old axle and has a T-bar for a foot brace.  When ya jam it into the ground, wiggle it in a circle it makes a hole that a lb. of fertilizer fits into. (We use "triple 13" or 13-13-13, which is best for our citrus trees.)

I lugged the heavy hole puncher around sticking it in the ground, hollowing the hole out and pulling the thing out again with a "smuck" sound.  Peg kept up with me pushing the wheelbarrow and pouring a red Solo Cup of fertilizer in the holes, humming, "Let's have a party...when's the party gonna begin?" and laughing.  While we were at it we looked over all the trees carefully and did some pruning where necessary. The "hes's touching me!" twigs and branches.  100 lbs of fertilizer; 1 lb. per hole and ya can see why it took awhile.  When it was all said and done we stood hand-in-hand surveying the yard and ya couldn't tell we had done anything.  I told Peg, "Sheesh all dat bending, toting, lifting, poking, squatting and pouring, and we got nothing to show for it". 

She just smiled and pointed at the grapefruit tree we were standing by and said, "When ya can walk out into the yard and reach up and pick Ruby Red grapefruit that big and fresh and sooo sweet, take 10 steps and pick a navel orange that is even bigger! Them's the fruit of this labor.

 

She didn't even mention the amazing Meyer "lemon monster" that lives at the end of the row 'cuz...... you guessed it...(thats another story.)

Deer Meat Sauce Piquante

Sunday morning when I got up, right after starting the coffee, I seasoned a qt. bag of deer meat I had thawing over-night.  The bag was very full so I figure it had 3 lbs of meat in it.  I dusted the meat with Cajun seasoning, splashed in a lil worcestershire (hadda look up how to spell it) sauce, and added a few vigerous shakes of a Crystal Hot Sauce bottle for good measure.

While the coffee was dripping I fried up a 12 oz. pack of bacon for breakfast in our lil black iron pot.  After the smell of the frying bacon and brewing coffee woke Peg up and we had breakfast, I dumped the deer meat into the hot bacon drippings, and flash browned it.

The meat sizzled away filling the house with wonderful smells.  It's funny how smells can trigger memories. I had a fond memory of deer meat sizzling at a camp site over an open fire. (but das another story.)

Once the deer meat had cooked down rendering a rich gravy, I took the meat and about half the drippins and put them in our crock pot on low.  In the black iron pot I put 3 chopped yellow onions and a lb. of smoked sausage cut in little cubes.

The onions and sausage simmered down to a brown caramelized thick sauce, and if I had stopped there and put the deer back in and let it simmer it would be "etouffee".  (But das another story.)

Once the onions and sausage cooked down, I added 2 cans of drained diced tomatoes, and 1 can of Rotel original tomatoes, stirred that in and let it cook and reduce over medium heat.

When the tomatoes were about halfway smothered down I added a heaping tablespoon of minced garlic.  Ya don't wanta add garlic too early or it will scorch and get bitter on ya.

My dad taught me the trick to this Cajun Creole Sauce (but das another story) He always cooked the tomatoes down, stirring more the thicker they got.  The trick he taught me is when done ya can make a hole in the middle of the pot and no tomato juice runs back into the hole.  If anything runs back in it should only be maybe a lil grease.

After the tomatoes were done I dumped them in the crock pot and added half a gallon of water, a cup of catsup, a rough chopped bell pepper, and a big drained can of sliced mushrooms.  Then I thickened it with a half a cup or so of Peg's dark brown roux (how to make dat is another story).  The sauce stewed away for hours in the ole crock pot while me and Peg played in the yard mucking out our asparagus patch and building a fire in the fire pit.  We had a wonderful afternoon, and around 2 pm our friends, Sam and Louise showed up, and then we really started having fun.  Me and Sam sat out by the fire-pit laughing and telling stories, and while we weren't looking Peg and Louise, made a killer coleslaw. In all the excitement what with the foot ballgame and such, we forgot to take a picture of the stuff plated up but trust me it was a thing of beauty.  Thick and rich, spicy and tender and so dang tasty we had the remaining lil bit for breakfast the next day.  Sauce Piquante (pronounced, pea-caw')  is the most complex of the country Cajun sauces and sadly, the original simple country fare of Cajun cooking is fast dying out.  (but.....das another story;-)

The Strawberry Patch

Now that I have been home for a few days I am starting on a few projects in the yard.  First on the list was to weed and muck out our lil strawberry patch.  We have an assortment of strawberry plants that have been in our 4X4' raised bed. I was very happy to see they were alive and well under the off-season weeds that had taken over the bed while I wasn't looking.  As I weeded, I uncovered blooming berry plants with some tiny green berries already forming.

At this rate Peg will be happily munching fresh berries before I get home next hitch.  This is a "honey-do" that will have a sweet ending. 

The LONG Hitch

The long hitch started December 20th, five days before Christmas. I left home early that morning with 2 garbage bags stuffed full of Christmas presents for the guys on my Boat who were getting off work that day, as me and my tankerman, Mike were getting back on the boat for our 28 day hitch.  Black garbage bags aint exactly Santa sacks, but Peg packed them that way so the other guys (the crew who had to stay on the boat) couldn't see what this year's gifts looked like.  The guys who were getting off the boat left with smiles, all excited that they would be home for the holidays, leaving the less fortunate of us to man the boat 'til they'd return.  The next four days on the boat seemed to drag as we started listening to Christmas music on the radio and watching some standard videos on tv, like A Christmas Story, It's a Wonderful Life, and my MOST favorite, Tyler Perry's, "A Madea's Christmas" the play.  On Christmas Eve, my beloved Peg spent 5 hours on the road driving down to where the boat was parked, to deliver us our Christmas presents.  She brought everyone a stocking filled with goodies, topped with a musical, animated fuzzy toy, as she does every year and each of the crew a new pillow, with a set of individually themed pillowcases that she made from material she ordered online.  Also everybody got a big canister of fancy dipped pretzels.  The galley table looked like Santa passed Christmas morning with all the presents piled on it. This year we didn't have room to set up our little tree with all the fancy lights, etc., but that didn't really matter anyhow.

I laid everything out while the crew was still sleeping Christmas morning, and when they got up they tore into the presents like the kids we all are at heart.

My Texan tankermen loved their Houston Texan pillow cases, While my "red-necked" wheelman grinned at his NASCAR themed cases.  Not shown are the tankerman and my relief captain's pillow cases because they took home with them. New Orleans Saints cases for the tankerman and  The Three Stooges for my relief captain. 

 

They then got into their stockings, discovering an assortment of candy, peppermint candy canes, a bag of lumps of coal (made of chocolate) also included was some type of game for each, an activity book.  For a gag gift, the white box shown contains a log of "Poop Soap". Peg thought they could have fun 'pranking' their friends or family at home with them.  I hadda giggle cause as they opened them, they all looked it over then sniffed it.

The crew settled down and we had a Christmas dinner of Ham and all the trimmings.  The next week before New Years went by pretty fast as my days were consumed with driving the boat and doing all the computer and paperwork required to end a year and start another one.
New Years Day found us docked in Venice, so I had time to prepare our traditional New Years dinner of pork roast with black- eyed peas, smothered cabbage and cornbread.  I also made a couple sweet-tater pies with pecan praline topping.  The crew finished off a pie and a half in one sitting, so I guess they liked it.  I am not sure why I didn't take pictures of the meal, I guess I was too busy cooking.
The next 2 weeks seemed to drag by ever so slowly as the weather turned all damp, foggy, rainy and dreary.  Some days the fog wouldn't burn off at all leaving us stuck whereever we were, waiting for a break.  The crew would disappear as they walked to the front of the barge, and in the gloom there was nothing to see except for the occasional pelican perched on a pylon.

 

The fog played tricks on our eyes.  Every day common things took on an eerie glow and the big dock lights could be barely seen peering at us through the gloom like the eyes of some big creature from the foggy gloom.  They were very spooky 'til we realized they were big lightts facing away from us which gave the illusion of 2 dark spots with a glow around them.  The picture doesn't show the effect well, but if you use your imagination ya can see what we saw staring at us through the gloom. On the rare days that the wind blew hard enough to blow the fog away, the water in the Sounds was rough and choppy.  On days like this the seagulls come along for the ride strutting around our barge.  Even the pelicans sometimes take a break from fishing and ride along for awhile, too

 
















The barge kicked up spray as we plowed along occasionally ruffling our passengers' feathers.

If ya look close at the starboard bow corner ya can try to make out a rainbow effect in the spray.  The story is that when rainbows fade they fall into the water, and sometimes ya kick them up in the spray.

We passed a big house boat one day and the whole crew came to the wheelhouse to see us slowly pass it.  We talked about the lucky guys we saw on the stern drinking glasses filled with some kinda drink.  Based on the fruit we could see, we surmised "da lucky stiffs" were sitting there sippin' mojitos as we worked for a livin'.  All of us talkin' about how lucky they were to be lounging on that big ole boat.  As we passed by we began to talk and think about it and decided that just maybe we were the lucky ones.  After all we were in the same place, had all our food, fuel, etc. paid for, and were making a good livin', in the same place where these rich dudes decided to come to visit.  In a week or so they waved to us as they headed back up the river off to their world in the "Rat Race", while we kept right on riding around in our lil corner of heaven.  As me and the crew talked about it, we decided that maybe LONG holiday hitches weren't so bad after all .