So ends another weekend. Not a bad one though, in fact I shall even try to briefly recap it. My excitement began on Tuesday, when I made a pot of ham and beans. (What does that to do with the weekend? Well, nothing at all. But “beans” is in the post title so I feel obligated to talk about them.) I am quite a fan of this dish. Can’t get enough of it. I don’t make it very often though, because neither of us really like ham. (Or rather, ham doesn’t like us.) Kinda hard to make ham & beans without it though. The project began last weekend, when I smoked a cheap Easter ham on the Traeger. It’s a recipe I read about last year, but when I tried it in ’25 I wasn’t at all happy with the results. Quite the opposite, actually; I vowed to totally scrap that experiment. Well, Easter ’26 rolled around and I just couldn’t resist the big ham I saw at the grocery. They were almost giving them away. So, I gave it another shot. The recipe I was following had two cook methods listed; The first was at 200-ish degrees for “a long time,” and the second was at 275 for around 5 hours. The basic premise is, you take the ham up to 200 degrees internal temp, and it should shred like a pork butt. So last year, I did the hot and fast method. It was very dry, and the outside was so tough I just peeled it all off and threw it away. I certainly did not want a repeat of that debacle, so this time I ran the Traeger at it’s lowest setting and just kept an eye on it all day. Complete turn around, I was super happy with this one. It came out very juicy, smokey, and shredded great. Having nothing else to do with 7 pounds of shredded ham, I immediately started planning ham and beans. (Wow, that was a lengthy ham discourse, and I haven’t even gotten to the beans yet.) For the last five years or so, I’ve done ham and beans in an Instant Pot. Not bad, never really had any complaints. This year though, I decided to fall back on the good ol’ stovetop method. Soak the beans overnight, throw everything in a dutch oven, and let it simmer all day. WAY better. I guess I forgot how good this simple recipe could really be. Totally different texture; The pressure cooker works well, but it doesn’t really thicken to the consistency I like. So, in the case of both the ham & the soup, the longer, time-consuming method is worth the trouble. Lesson(s) learned I guess.
On to the actual weekend. Saturday, I grilled hamburgers. My favorite; blue cheese with bacon. (Point Reyes blue cheese, to be specific. Quite possibly the only good food product to come out of California.) That’s it for the burgers. They were actually super delicious, and I can’t wait to make them again, but I must move on to Sunday before my fingers start cramping up. Sunday, the weather finally cleared off a bit, at least relative to what it has been lately. I jumped at this opportunity to take a motorcycle ride with a group of guys. This group normally goes on Saturdays, but the weather has been so sketchy lately (including this past Saturday,) that it got moved to Sunday this time. The destination of choice was Daddy’s Ribs in Lockeford, CA. Yeah, don’t get me started, I knew this was going to be a failure before I ever left the house. It was more about the trip for me. These guys know all the great routes, I would never figure out the roads they take by myself. I’m more of the “plug it in Google Maps and take off” school, but that doesn’t really work well on a bike. Gotta have the scenery, the back roads, low traffic, etc. Indeed, it was a great ride. (Besides being, quite literally, the only guy riding a “metric” motorcycle. Still a bit self-conscious about that, but I’ll get over it. Maybe.) We got to the restaurant around 11:30, and grabbed some tables outside to have lunch. Know what? The ribs were not that bad. I’m not sure I would make the hour drive just to get them, but they were much better than most I’ve had out there. The sides, on the other hand, were nothing to get excited about. The cornbread was good. The beans and mac & cheese were… OK. All-in-all, given my expectations, I call it a success though. After lunch, we walked over to the nearby Lockeford Meat shop. This place specializes in all things sausage. They must have had two dozen varieties of sausage in the case, and a line out the door and down the street waiting to buy it. They were pretty efficient though, and the wait wasn’t too bad. I’m kind of space-limited on my bike, so I was only able to get 2 pounds of andouille links. For as much as I do love the butcher shop by our house, I have never been crazy about their andouille. Hopefully this is better, I have high hopes. Now THIS place would be worth the drive another time, I’ll be back there soon.
