Sunday, September 1 2019

Dear Journal,

Good morning everyone! It's about 8:53 AM, and in a few minutes I'll wake everyone up for breakfast so we can start getting ready for church. I had an early start today. I just got back from getting groceries at Hy-Vee. I really love the grocery store early in the morning. It's much easier to get to where you need to be, not to mention the roads are pretty much empty, so it's a delightful drive.

It was nice to get some time this morning to straighten up the house and put food away. After church, the Flinkman family is stopping by. We're taking them to the biergarten, which has been long awaited on their summer TO-DO list. Before we leave, we'll probably hang around the house for a beer, and maybe even some leftovers.

I'm still licking my wounds from last night's dinner. The ribs turned out OK, but I kind of hit a turning point with ribs last night that makes me never want to do them again. Last night, I pretty much had everything perfect. The internal temp of the grill was pretty much set at 230F for a full fives hours, but the temp never got above 170F (you're supposed to wait until about 190F, so it was still quite a ways off). Finally, sometime around 8:00 PM I just decided to finish them in the oven. We didn't finally sit down to eat until about 8:30. All things considered, the ribs turned out pretty good. I think the reason they didn't get up to the expected temp was because they were much less fatty (remember I was praising them for the marbled, dark colored meat?). But it kills me watching my family wait until 8:30 to eat dinner - my personal cut off point is 7 PM. Not to mention I wasted an entire day. I don't know - after knowing what kind of other meals you can make with five hours on a Saturday, it's hard to justify it to myself.

So I'm taking a break from ribs. After Rod went to bed, Marissa and I sat outside by the fire. Smoking ribs leaves kind of a sticky residue on the grill, and I have to burn it all off anyway before putting the grill away. It was nice to just sit, talk, and listen to music on the porch.

Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday, and a wonderful labor day weekend.