Send off BBQ for Mr. Ed and Jean Our Dear Friends

Peg and I began preparing our send off BBQ for our friends Mr. Ed and Jean, because their wonderful visit was coming to an end.  We thawed some spareribs and removed the membrane from them.

We seasoned them up Friday night and took out a couple bags of redfish fillets our neighbors, Jude and Sonia had contributed to the party.  We called it a night, and considered it a good start. 
7 A.M. and we were up and at it, drinking coffee and plotting the BBQ
By 8 A.M. I had the pit all cleaned out and ashes of BBQs past disposed of.



8:15  I lit the charcoal chimney, jumped in the Jeep and made a beer run. By 8:45 the ribs were rubbed down with my sweet, spicy "Cappy's Cajun Butt Rub".



At 9 A.M. on the dot, the ribs hit the pit and my Blues-picking buddy, "The irascible Mr. Ed" started warming up with some Clapton chords.

10 in the morning and the backyard fire pit is lit.  Those of you who know our yard will note the lack of bananas I whacked them all down to the ground with Mr. Ed's help.  The ones still standing are actually in the neighbors yard.  I plan to ask them if they want me to whack them too, while the cane knife is sharp and I still feel like whacking.

After an hour and a half or so, I started to feel like I aughta be BBQín' or something, so I rolled the ribs over and mopped them with a mop sauce of butter, beer and left over rub.

At noon I took the ribs up and added some fresh charcoal to the pit.  When I put them back, I stacked them on the warm side of the pit and put a pan of beans on, and some smoked sausage to heat up.  You can see that at this point the ribs are pretty well done. 

At 12:30 I pulled the ribs out to let them rest in a dishpan and replaced them with redfish fillets on the "half-shell". This is a trick for holding the fillet's meat together.  When ya fillet the fish leave skin and scales on the fillet.  This helps it hold together and retain the fish broth.  They come out juicy smokeylicous.

We separated the ribs and slathered them in Peg's sweet spicy chunky BBQ sauce and stored them in the oven while putting the finishing touches on the rest of the stuff.  It wasn't long before a hush fell over the crowd as they wrapped their lips around our feast.









I even remembered to fix yall a plate.  Smoked sausage in sweet and sour glaze, the ribs, macaroni salad, corn and the redfish.

As I  write this, it's late, the company is gone, and I cant help being thankful for this wonderful day!  Good friends, good food and like the Cajuns say "bon ton".  Filled with homespun music and laughter it was truly a blessing.  I am very glad I got to share it with yall and hope your day was Blest as well.  

This years anual Batch of boudin

This year for our annual "Boudin Making Day" with the usual crowd of ol' boys, I was unable to attend. A stomach virus kept me "commode bound" while all my buddies spent the day drinking and having a ball at our good friend, Sam's outdoor kitchen and smoke shack. I sweet-talked my friend, "Mr. Ed" into taking a few pictures, but he aint the "foodie" that I am, but Bless his heart he did his best under the inebriating circumstances.

25 lbs. of pork, 8 lbs. of liver, my Cajun seasoning to taste, 6 bell peppers and a qt. bag of chopped green onion tops, plus a qt. bag of chopped parsley. Stir till cooked.


Ya place the meat mixture in a pan to cool and while it's cooling.......


You fry up a batch of "cracklins".  Cracklins are cubes of fresh skin on belly bacon meat.  They are fried in their own lard till they float, taken out of the oil, cooled, then twice fried a few seconds to blister the skin.These hard cooking, hard drinking country boys dove into them after the first fryin' on accounta they couldn't wait.
This is a wonderful ole Cajun gentleman known as "Bebe" pronounced "Baybay". Mr. Ed kept saying "Baybay" with a deep Maurice Chevalier accent.

Here Bebe and Ed are showing off their wonderful fried "bacony" cracklins.  Think they been drinkin'???


Our buddy Steve enjoying his!

Now, about the boudin:






Once the meat cools, ya gotta mix in cooked rice. I figure one cup of rice for 1 lb. of meat, but the guys just cooked a 20 lb. sack, figuring close enough. 


Once you get everything mixed together well, you push it down into the sausage stuffer, while one of your buddies handles the end where the mixture comes out into the pork casing. There's a knack for getting this done right, but with a roomful of Cajuns who've been doin' this for years, they got it down to a science. The end result is this pile of boudin, which was twisted into links and weighed in at a lil over 80 lbs. Half of it went into the smoker, and the rest was left cooked, but unsmoked.  We feel certain that the finished product could compete with the best in any contest. It was amazin'. Of course how how could it not be; it was my recipe and seasoning.I am told that shortly before taking this picture is when they decided to sample the quart of "shine" somebody brought. That makes it the last picture they remembered to take. I was kinda comforted by the fact that they forgot to watch the rice real close and quit taking pictures, cuz it makes me feel like they coulda used my help, so I was not forgot.  By noon I was ready to face the world and try to go on over to see how things were going, but these early rizin' country boys were already finished and when I stepped out the door to go meet 'em in my Jeep, they were pullin' in the driveway. Oh well, at least they showed up with my yearly supply of this wonderful Cajun tradition.

Merry Christmas 2013

 

Happy Birthday, Thom

We wish to tell our son, Thom, Happy Birthday today. For some reason, his phone isn't working, so we haven't been able to contact him, but know he reads our Blog here, so....here ya go! If you see this, Thom, your Christmas/Birthday box should be there today (if it hasn't already gotten there) or if not today, it should be there tomorrow.

 

   Last night I made this little video of our "winter yard". We hardly EVER get snow, but there was going to be a hard freeze, so we had to cover about five of our new little trees. The pomegranate tree, which sits in an old whiskey barrel, didn't freeze to death...instead it came to life! It had fun playing with our cats. When Mama cat would pat her tail, the "tree" would dance. When Mama rolled on the ground and looked at the "tree", it would dance! Who in the world was this Stranger in our yard that morning?? Watch this short little video to see the "scary" show.  Nope...sorry, but the video wouldn't upload here on the Blog, so here's the youtube link (click on it; it's just us): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOKOf1Uxh38&feature=c4-overview&list=UUe6CkaSkPG0EXROyp-xQkjw

This Weekend's BBQed Chicken

We been running errands all day, but while we were at it I had 10 lb. of chicken hind quarters sitting in Cajun spices, "woo" sauce, lemon juice, and a beer.  Planning on taking advantage of the last day of late sunshine, and putting them on the grill.

With Alley-gater, and Pourky the "Q" mascots looking on, I fired up da chimney.

With natural chunk hard wood charcoal by the air intake on the left and an aluminum pan on the other side, I put the chicken and the required Cajun sausage over the pan of water, opened a beer and got the Blues on the outdoor speakers.

The stuff the chicken was soaking in went into a small pot and with half a stick of butter, and was brought to a simmer on the stove.  It will be used as a mop later, but ya need to simmer it 'cause of the chicken blood it may contain.  Ya can't be too careful.  It's been down for 30 minutes and from my hand on the pit, feels around 180 degrees.  Country boy thermometer when ya can lay ya hand down for a sec. or so 'fore ya gotta snatch it off da pit, is 180-200 degrees.

OK, mopped them, flopped them, mopped them again.  See 'em again in an hour.  Now, where did I put my beer?

Naturally, at the 1.5 hour we couldn't stand it no more and took the Cajun sausage in, sliced it up and are nibbling on it as we dance on da carport jamming to da Blues.

After 2 hours we mopped them, flipped them,

 

and mopped for the last time.  Got another beer and are enjoying the end of a beautiful day.

Well, da sausage was "slap yo mama good", and da chicken is getting right. Won't be long now; it's been like, 8 beers, so it aughta be getting close.

Alrighty, afta 3 hours we grabbed a leg bone and twisted, and it came apart in our hand.  So we called it "did'.  Cookin' temperature?  Not sure; if it woulda been more than 220, the water in the pan under the chicken woulda boiled and let me know.  If it hadda been less than 180, I coulda held my hand on the lid for more than a second.  Internal temperature??  Who cares.  Twist a leg bone and ya can tell if it's done or  not.  Now we got chicken to last the weekend, and share with the neighbors.  Only problem is....I am outa Beer.

 

 
 

Cajun Turkey Cheese..Er...Loaf...Er Pate'; Delicious Stuff

Peggy and I picked up a couple turkeys and made what us Cajuns call "cheese" out of them.  We enjoy making it and at a li'l less than $2. a lb. Not only is it delicious, but very economical.  They sell it in stores around here for over $6 a lb.  We like the fact that when we make it ourselves, we control the ingredients.  Nowadays, the stuff ya buy is full of chemicals; ya cant pronounce the fillers.  We know ours is healthy and delicious.  Here's how we do it:

We cut the turkey up like ya cut a chicken.

For this batch we used my Dad's old pot known as Gumbo Jr.

We added onions and bell pepper,

then came Cajun seasoning, "Woo" sauce, hot sauce, and liquid crab boil, then we covered the stuff with water.

Fired up the burner out on the patio.

Then let it boil for right at 2 hours at a gentle boil. 

Once that was done we took the meat out of the pot and put it in a couple dishpans to cool.

After the meat cooled we took it off the bone and strained the broth through a colander to make sure we got out all the little bones.  I should mention we did not boil the livers 'cause they are too strong flavored.  We saved the giblets for future stuffings or rice dressings.

Once it was all ground up we added the broth back, slowly bringing it to a pudding-like consistency

We weighed the finished cheese.

When it was done, we ended up with 7 loaf pans of this delicious Cajun delicacy.  It needs to sit in the fridge so it "sets".  It freezes well, makes good sandwiches, is good cubed as Hor D'Oeuvres on game day, on a cracker or straight up. It's nice to know what ya eating and its satisfying to know ya made it.  Here is the recipe we used, but feel free to adapt it and make it your own.

 

1 fresh turkey around 20 lbs

 

3 lbs. yellow onions, quartered

1 large bell  pepper, rough cut

1/2 cup Cajun seasoning, to taste

2 Tablespoons hot sauce, to taste

2 Tablespoons Worstershire sauce

2 Tablespoons liquid Crab boil

1 gallon of water

 

Follow the steps we gave you above. Enjoy!

 

Cajun Country Boy Fishing Lessons, Cappy-Style

Several of the outdoor forums I read, as well as lots of Youtube videos I watch, all sing the same song.  They are mostly from young parents who long for the outdoor life they didn't get as a kid; folks who didn't have parents or grandparents to teach them the love for God's glorious nature.  Now that they are all "growed up" with small children of their own, they want to teach their kids how to fish, but don't have a clue how to go about it.  I see lots of pleas for help. After making a couple of trips to sporting good stores and striking out, having spent hundreds of dollars for over-priced store bought stuff, no wonder they get discouraged about fishing in general.  GI-Joe poles and Dora the Explorer tackle boxes full of gimmicky, flimsy tackle seldom works.  All it takes is a few simple lessons and a li'l common sense and anyone can catch fish.  "Think like a fish and ya will catch one".  If ya can teach a small child the joy of fishing, who knows how many lives you have affected?  If the kid grows up spending time on a bayou bank instead of a city street, think of the possibilities.
   With this in mind, I have decided to start a series of videos and slideshows showing fishing lessons much like I was taught by my ancesters.  I plan for them to be short ,very simple and start at the basics, slowly working up to more complex fishing. 
 My very first video is: Catfishing Lesson #1 "Handlines", below.  (Please let me know what yall think as I attempt to teach someone how to love the simple pleasure of fishing.)