Confronted with a long string of rainy days.

It's amazing. Three days ago I was immersed in an endless stream of beautiful crisp autumn days. Now after 2 days of rain, I have trouble remembering that it hasn't always been this way. We had a long hot summer and I can distinctly remember longing for the beginning of rain. Now when it has begun, those hot sunny days when I hid inside with the air conditioning seem like a movie I saw.

Memory is quite something. It is a source of delight and confusion. Of safekeeping and rampant drunken lying. It deceives and serves us as a sycophantic slave of our ego.

Blah, blah, and blah. Enough talking like a philosopher. How bout those M's (or N's or O's)?

While I was still in bed this morning Sue told me the heat pump seemed like it wasn't working, so after breakfast I checked the breakers (OK), replaced and checked the fuses (OK) and it still didn't work. So I called the company up the road that put it in back in 2003 and they said they had someone just finishing up another job and they'd send him out. About 20 minutes later he arrived and he's now done fixing it and is writing up the invoice. I told him that I didn't think we could get that kind of response from the paramedics. It cost $310.66 which is less than a visit from the paramedics.

Next comes the smoking of the pork belly and cushions. It's not a whole belly, just a trimmed piece without skin. I'm making a rub with salt, black pepper, powdered onion, granulated garlic, a little cayenne and some turmeric. I'll diamond slice the skin side of the belly and rub the whole thing. I put it into a hickory (with a little mesquite starter) smoker at about 250 degrees. I also put 2 cushions in with the same rub.

I finally put them in a little before 1 pm. It's a blustery rainy day, so Sue helped me move the smoker up onto the front deck so it's out of the rain and easy to tend. There's enough wind today that I won't bother with the fan. I'm 80+% confident that we won't have any smoke alarms going off inside because of the smoke drafting through the attic vent.

So the plan is to slow smoke them for a couple hours then wrap them in aluminum foil and put them back into the smoker for 3 more hours or so to finish them. The belly we might just not fully smoke it but leave it more as a hot smoked bacon. We'll see. Maybe it would be good to divide it and put some back into the smoker to finish into a pulled pork stage. I'll spray everything occasionally with apple cider vinegar.

Here's more of the plan entered later in the day. It's now 1515h and the plan is to bring the belly and cushions up to 165' then I'll wrap the cushions and put them back in the smoker at 225'. I'll take the belly of at 165 and cut a piece for hot smoked bacon. If we don't like it I'll wrap it and put it back in the smoker with the cushion. If we do like it, I'll let it cool and refrigerate it for bacon.

More later,