The Think Tank

Mom, Maure and Shanon gave me an early birthday present a couple of weeks ago: a new Traeger smoker! We wound up getting the Tex Elite 34, which is really bigger than we needed but during the annual Costco sale it was the same price as the 22″ version so that seemed like the thing to do.

Right out of the gate we smoked a chicken and then a few racks of ribs, all of which turned out pretty tastey. The last week I decided we should make pastrami, which is just a smoked corned beef, in honor of St. Patricks day. Corning beef a process which takes at least a week and since I got the idea too late to corn our own, we started with a store-bought corned beef. I wasn’t able to be home to smoke it, so mom took the controls on Thursday afternoon and smoked one one meat cut of meat!

We brought it with us to Grays Harbor for an Archery tournament and holy moly, was it good! I had Reuben sandwich for lunch and then we had pastrami, fried cabbage and mashed potatoes for St. Patty’s dinner while we watched the Blazers beat down the Detroit Pistons. It was a great meal and the 12 win in a row for the Blazers, so it was a great holiday all around!