Ponderings about life, religion and ribs

The older I get the more I understand that some of the best things in life just.... take.... time.

I started a new hobby about a month ago. It started when my kids bought me an attachment for my grill that now enables me to smoke stuff! (Well ok, I mean meat). Anyway, the big wide world of smoking ribs, chicken, brisket, etc. has entered my interest zone. I started out small, just a small rack of baby backs. The first time didn't turn out that great. Then I bought a smoker's cookbook. Since then, I've noticed a certain metamorphosis going on. The tweaking of the rub, the sweet and hot of the mop sauce, and the subtle differences in using either hickory or apple wood have developed over time. However, the biggest learning curve happened when I discovered that the longer I smoked the meat, the tenderer and tastier it got.


Now a days, people don't like to wait. (And I am certainly one of them!) I'm not going to try and postulate when we all decided we didn't like waiting any more, but I can tell that society in general is moving at a break neck speed compared to when I was a kid. It often seems like some people are running headlong
into life like they're in the Indy 500, burning rubber to win the race. But the Indy 500 is on a circular track that goes no where! Maybe in life, if we took the time to look at the map, we wouldn't end up so lost.
What? There's a map? What map? (" What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.") Matthew 18:12-14 NIV


Smoking ribs I've found, like lots of things, takes time if you want them to be really good! When I only cooked them for 3 hours, they were kind of shmuckey. But ohhhh boy, do they rock when you give' em 7 or 8 hours! (my favorite rib verse: Genesis 2:21-24)


Peace!
John