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Fourth of July Faux Pas

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The Austin brother-in-law was all set to bring Rudy's barbecue for our Fourth of July family celebration. The economic outlook being what it is, I suggested that I should smoke a brisket on my gas grill to save a boatload of cash while feeding the dozen folks expected for our celebration. Now, I have smoked brisket on my grill precisely one other time, with lessons learned. Still, the family was amenable and so at 6 a.m. sharp, I put a dry rub seasoned brisket on the grill to smoke using mesquite wood chips.     Mesquite chips smoking In my research and limited experience, six hours ought to be long enough to smoke a brisket. The last time I tried it, six hours was not enough, so I decided this time to turn up the burner a bit. Cooking brisket on a gas grill requires the "indirect" method of cooking. One of the four grill burners was turned on. The remaining three were off. The brisket cooks over the off burners by indirect heat. The wood chips are placed over the on...
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Sausage and Pasta Bake

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Today's Daily Plate is a combination of several comfort foods. It pairs jalapeno pork sausage (what can be more comforting than that?) with whole wheat pasta and adds three different types of cheese in a homemade cheese sauce. Just talking about it makes me comfortable all over again! Oh, and don't forget homemade whole wheat bread on the side. The pasta was made up of odds and ends of packages and boxes I had on the shelf. Mostly it is penne and shells, but there are also some bow ties. The sausage was a local store brand of link sausages filled with jalapeno and a bit spicy.  To this I added onions, bell peppers and a couple of fresh jalapeno peppers and sauteed the lot up in a skillet. Meanwhile, I boiled the pasta until al dente, and combined the two in a large casserole dish. Then, I made a roux of equal parts flour and butter (I was making an extra large batch, so I used 6 tablespoons of each which made 4 1/2 cups of final sauce and would have been better with five cup...
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Chipotle Beenie Weenies!

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Tonight's Daily Plate is whimsical, if nothing else. We had a couple of packages of Hebrew National brand 98-percent fat free wieners. So, I got to thinking about my childhood and the infamous canned franks and beans which were something akin to eating lumpy wallpaper paste. I'm happy to say that beenie weenies made from scratch are a hundred times better than the canned stuff. The recipe is easy enough. I used dry cranberry beans, since that's what I had on hand. Most recipes call for navy or small white beans. I was limited on time today, so I used my pressure cooker for the beans. I rinsed a 28-oz package of beans and placed them in the pressure cooker. I covered them with water about two inches above the beans. I sealed and brought the cooker up to pressure and then turned it off and let it sit for an hour. Then, I drained the water off and filled it again, this time with 8 cups of water. I brought the pressure cooker back up to pressure and cooked the beans for 10 mi...
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