Perspective.

Today Hannah turns 15. Last night I was waxing nostalgic with my sweet daughter, wishing she could stop growing up and just stay my little girl forever. She looked at me and said, "Dad, face it, in five years I'm going to be twenty."


Oh no!! How could that be? Where have the days gone? Five years from now seems way too close. 2005 seemed like a few blinks of the eye ago! Panic set in.

I began to think a little and I reflected back and realized that I've been telling Hannah, (and her siblings), to stop growing or even 'reverse grow' for years now. If I meant it then and I mean it now, then the truth is I love that girl no matter her age. I think I love her now more than ever. So instead of longing for what was, I am excited for what is to come. The panic was replaced with peace.

What a wonderful thing it is to gain a new perspective on life!

Precious.

Make Believe Pals

The last time I had TV idols were back in the eighties. I really wanted to be a member of the A-Team. My friends and I would pretend to be the A-Team, even though I wanted to be Hannibal, the rest of the team thought I should be Face, my hair color was the same.

For my adult life I have become less and less interested in all the TV and movie glitz and glamour of Hollywood. It’s to fake for me. I must be coming around because I think I have assembled the new A-Team. It's Ben Bailey, Mike Rowe, Alton Brown, and Me. These three guys are the guys that I'd like to hang out with. I guess if we have to do a little 'solider of fortune' work we could do that too, but man I think that we all would get along just swell.

This time I get to be Hannibal!!

Shhhhh!

(meat memoirs trois)


I get a kick out of the whole 'secret ingredient' aspect of cooking. The Colonial’s secret spices, the bean commercial with that talking dog that holds the secret family recipe and every other weekend cook-out in America has hushed secret ingredients, secret sauces, and the like. It's like some kind of a badge or right of passage into the culinary world. I think its' a bunch of hooey. It seems to me on the one hand you have the lay man, who is just dying to know what the secret ingredient is, will not be able to re-create whatever it was that he ate. On the other hand and for the most part, a good cook or chief should be able to extrapolate what is in the foods that he or she tastes. So why is it so secret? Basically good food starts with good ingredients, but that is just the start.


On occasion I get asked, “What’s in your secret rub?” My answer is that I don't have a secret rub. It's no secret that I use brown sugar, coarse kosher salt, paprika, seasoned salt, garlic salt, ground black pepper, onion salt, and crushed red pepper flakes for most of the meat I cook. (Grill, smoke, or barbeque)

looking into my rub ingredients.

The mystery for most folks is the fact that if you want good meat on Sunday you might have to get started on Wednesday or Thursday. That is the secret ingredient. From what I have observed, most people would find it easier to understand if I said I used juniper berries that I collect on the island of Crete while on my annual spice voyage than me saying it was pre-planning and time.

So my secret seems to be safe.

Heart Shaped Rock

(the title makes me think of Nirvana)

I have seen many a'rock in my day. If the average Joe has seen millions of rocks, than I have seen billions. I have been in the drilling and excavating business for nearly seventeen years!! One day about three years ago as I was walking on a job site I looked down and saw a heart shaped rock. I had never seen one before, so I snatched it up off the ground and put it in my pocket. Then my mind wandered a bit to thoughts of the warm, joyous embrace that soon would be mine when I returned home and gave this special, one in one billion heart shaped rock the woman who has my heart. Ah, how romantic I am!




That evening was family night so I thought I'd parlay this into my share. When I start my share with, "So today at work I got something," The kids usually complete my sentence with, "a new quarter." But I not this time. Romeo removed from his pocket his amorous piece of aggregate. I looked over to my wife to present it to her. I didn’t get swooned like I had imagined. Instead I got, "I don't want that dirty rock in my house."



What? Where was the enamored reciprocation of affection? It was as if ice cold water was being poured on my heart. Just as my heart was about to break, the response came.



It did not come from my sweet wife, but my sweet three year old daughter. "Oh Daddy it's beautiful! Can I please have it?" My heart re-warmed. "Of course you can have it sweetheart, I got it for you!" She giggled as she took it and held it close to her heart.



That night was the start of something. The next day when I pulled into the drive my sweet little girl met me and greeted me with a big hug and asked, "What did you brought me for, Daddy".



What did I brought her for? What did I brought her for? I am a quick thinker so I pulled out of my pocket a piece of gum and with all the hype one could build gum up to be I gave it to her. She was just a thrilled with that as the rock for the day before. This became a ritual. Now, years later, it still continues. It may not be everyday, but at least three days a week she meets me at my truck and just as giddy as she was years ago asks if I brought her anything for her.



I cannot decide whether or not it's healthy, but it is fun to see her light up and get so excited over a gel pen, or a magnet, or a paper weight. So I guess I'll keep doing it.

The actual heart shaped rock. Cool huh?

What could be more dangerous than a motorcycle sidecar?

How about a sidecar on a scooter? Oh man, I needed to come in for a closer look. 

Yes. It's true. A suicde car. Unbelieveable!

I guess one thing that that may be more dangerous is the chap speeding along, paying little attention to driving, trying to get a close up shot of this!!

I just had to see if there was a person in it, there was not. Phew!!

 I am going to assume this ingenuitive, small carbon footed, forward thinker uses the sidecar for groceries and not for human cargo. I hope.

Where's the Beef?

meat memoirs deux

The Brisket:

So far I have smoked pasrami, pork butt, whole chicken, sausage, and beef brisket.

Brisket is my favorite. It is not too overwhelming, it's a nice casual day of smoking. I use pecan wood. It makes sweet and delicious. I trimmed off the point to use later for pastrami. Smoking just the flat makes for a more uniform size piece and the smoke more evenly penetrates it.

Sliced and ready to serve.

Those Hixon Kids

I was told that my Grandpa Farrer once said that if you give the Hixon kids a couple of sticks, in no time at all they will come up with a game to play. I have always revered that comment. I realize that he probably was not referring to me; I was only 3 years old when he died, but I thought it spoke to our ingenuity, creativity, and playful/competitive nature.


As I was leaving a job site the other day, I saw something that caught my eye. It was a piece of 12" corrugated HDPE drain pipe. It was a scrap from the underground utility contractor. It was trash to them but to me it looked like hours of fun for my kids. So I grabbed it and threw it in the truck.

I spent all day today working in the front and watching the next generation of Hixon kids across the street at the park playing with this piece of pipe. It was just as much fun as I hoped it would be.

I love it!