A Little Food to Look At

We did a bit of smoking this month and I discovered fruit salads are really easy in summer with all the fresh fruit at the markets. And you don't have to add anything to the fruit. (I'd never made one before because I figured there was more to it, like needing a sauce. I know, weird.)  Hal and I smoked a pair of pork butts to make pulled pork for a family 4th of July party. Oddly, I don't have a photo of the final product, at least not on my camera. Nor do I have a final photo of the ribs we did recently. But they all tasted damn good.

However, here are photos of one of my fruit salads, with MI blueberries, green and black grapes, watermelon, honeydew melon, and cantaloupe. A dinner salad we call a Cobb salad in which I changed the ingredients a lot, this time it had baby shrimp, smoked chicken, and the usual other salad ingredients, and dried currants. Used a bleu cheese dressing.

fruit salad

Cobb salad

Here is our second whole smoked chicken since we started smoking this year. This is one of our own chickens rather than a store bought.

And here is a photo of something Hal wanted to try though we didn't find a lot of decent info on the internet. He smoked 2 venison back straps. I am very glad to say he wrote down everything he did because this was the BEST DAMN BACKSTRAP I HAVE EVER EATEN. And I've cooked a lot of venison backstrap over the years. It was tender, practically melted in your mouth, the flavor was incredible, I can't wait till we try this again. We had some snow peas from my garden and pan fried potatoes.

Best venison EVER