I am shot to chit.. got home around 4 and slept till 9. Stopped at WilieBs to drop off some leftover stuff and the 6 foot grill.
We were cooking for a planned 225, but it turned out to to be 150-175 for dinner and breakfast even less. The windy weather kept the kyakers on dry land.
Scott and I worked the pits most of the time, while the rest did the food handling, serving and crowd control(showtime!!). Vinnney did the butts in the spicewine, so actually he did'nt do anything but pull up a chair and watch that pit coast. :wink: That medimum spicewine swallowed up 25 pork butts. Impressive!
What was awesome is how everyone took control of something that needed to be done and did it. Westex was a pork puller, Skip(Mr Wannabebbqueen) was in the kitchen makin/inventin the pork for sammis, BigBarry Birdserver later to be know as Humpty Drum-pty, Vinney the Sammi-man got the pork from Skip to build the samis, Westex the cornhauler, Queenie was Salad Servin and MotoEric was burpin up sodas.
yakfisher and I tended MOAB turning out a few hindred pieces of chicken as they came off and got consumed. We were short a pit and hoped Moab would handle it but just in case i brought the Boyscouts Bionic Bandera which later on, turned out to save the day. Those banderas are great little pits, and i am so glad they were the cornerstone of the Bandera Brethren... (to bad my original was misplaced in the wrong home 
....)
heres a few highlights.
first high point.
I forgot the firewood. Nice move a-hole.
I bring two stick burners and no sticks.
i was supposed to pick it up at willies, but had so much loading of the foods, that we forgot to load the wood. Barry went on a home depot run.. NO WOOD and any of the,... yak stole some oak from someones campfire pile. :twisted: Moab needs a chit load of wood to get hot, but once its going, a log or 2 an hour or some lump is all ya need.. its that first burst that charcoalalone can not do. It HAS to have flames going into the chamber to get all the steel hot.
Next,..... Never figure # pieces of chicken in a 40 lb box based on weight. Willie and I, when estimating how much to buy grabbed a few thighs from a box at the restauratnt and weighed a few.. average -8-9 oz. ok. 40lb*16oz=640oz/9each=71 pieces average per box. We needed 210 so we got 3 boxes AND a case of wings which averaged about 120 per box. thats over 300 pieces.. cool, covered.
Well, we got bird thighs from chernoybl. They looked like they were from farkin turkeys. 16oz and up. Some I could swear came off of some teradactyl somwhere. Normally that would be a good thing, but what it did was cut our piece count in half. Once loaded, we only had about 100 pieces but expecting 200+. Yakfisher and I took some psycho couch time to rework the plan. The deal to the customer was 1/4 chicken(leg and thigh), but we had to rework it to one of these huge thighs or a leg/wing combo. Originally, the wings were just for those who were dead set on whtemeat. But we had less people than we thought, so we made it with extra anyway.
a real eyecatcher was Bigbarry Poppins walkin back across the runway to the tune of "Johnny comes marchin home." A single troop, arm in a sling, knees bandaged up and bloody. Im watchin sayin, chit.. hes returning to his platoon. :eusa_clap :eusa_clap all he nneded was a head bandage and to be carrying a Brethren flag. :mrgreen:
Never trust Motoeric or Bigbarry to clean your jalepenos. I had an ABT that gave me some hiccups that sucked my workboots up thru my legs and stuck in my throat. Of course, yakfisher found that funny.
Difference between this and a competition is:
GREASE.
competition: @ butts, 2 briskets, 20 chicken, 6 racks ribs. Grease stays in the pit til ya get home.
Here: 200 chicken, 30 lbs bacon, 30 sausage.. GALLONS of grease, gotta be dumped a few times. A few times it wound up on the damn floor.
it was a ton of work and planning the week leading up, and i was concerned that it was being well recieved by the fishers.. our timing was off a little bit becase the chicken was so big it was taking loneger to cook. Notto mention that we could not fit as mush as we needed to on a rack. there are some tricks with MOAB that can push the cooks and give different results that we used and we were within and hour of target times. The big life saver was the little Bandera.. the spicebox was busy withthe butts, so with 6 shelves in it, the bandera was able to offload 20-30 big thighs from moab allowing us to clear shelves to start the wings. Then, removing the watertray in Moab gives the 2 bottom shelves a more direct heat right out of the firebox that can cook wings real fast and crispy them up.. its not direct grilling, but definately hight heat roasting. Without the bandera, we were screwed.
I missed all the smiles up front being i was working in the pit area and didnt get to schmooze any with the crowds. glad to know people were happy..
AS usual, meeting a brethren for the first time.. I was greted by Yakfishingfool and there was a total lack of first time wierdness, silence, shyness, etc.. Everytime i met one of us, the thing that catches me the most is the feeling you known they guy for years.. Especially when the first thing that happens is ball busting, wise cracking and reference to past liefe expreriences that only someone you know.or knows you can either reference, or understand.... Yak, it was a pleasure!!
although the trailer is not completed yet, it made life so much easier.. prep area, fridge, running hot water, it would have been a real b*tch doing this with just water buckets and ice chests. its nice to fire up a coffee maker, or sit down on a couch to take a break. Best thing is flolding out a bed and getting some real sleep for a few hours. Even if barry decides to interupt it with ambulances and earthquakes. He took his flop 20 feet away and we never heard a thing except a little talkign which i thought was just some guys sitting around having a few beers and enjoying the gale force winds coming off the bay.
Hands down, i had a great time.. it was a ton of work, and pretty much non stop except for a 4 hours sleep.. but thats was the fun... cooking and feeding people for a full day.. Now that we know what to expect, I'd do it again next year in a heartbeat.. and this time i'll bring a grease bucket. : )
