I woke this morning with just a teensy hangover, and a fridge packed with leftovers. This was not an ideal situation. I live alone, don't want to eat that much, and most of this food is inappropriate for dogs or cats to share with me. It was a little overwhelming, the volume of leftovers we had from yesterday. The clock is ticking on all of them, and I just don't know how I'm going to get through all of this. I'm not good with leftovers to begin with. Once I've eaten a food for one meal, generally, I'm done with it for a long time. Nearly every styrofoam box I've taken out of restaurants for the last ten or fifteen years has been summarily handed over to the man. It doesn't matter how good a dish was. I give the second helping of it away. Freezing isn't an option, either. I dislike the texture of foods once they have been frozen. There was only one remedy for it. I invited myself over to the Bonfire leader's house, promising to deliver dinner in exchange for a chance to cool off in the immersion drinking tank (the pool). We still had more chicken, artichokes, and hummus than I knew what to do with, so I packed a picnic basket to take with me. But I had a secret weapon to make sure dinner was a hit. When I shopped yesterday, ahead of the party, I noticed a tri-tip hiding out among the more common cuts of meat. Tri-tip has only recently started showing up in supermarkets outside of California, and most people still have no idea how to cook it. We learned of this lovely little cut about thirteen years ago, the first time we went to Cali, and lived along the Central Coast in Santa Barbara county. Every Saturday, if you drove down any of the main streets in places like Santa Maria or Lompoc, every civic group in town was set up in parking lots, with giant smokers full of ribs and tri-tip, selling plates of smoky goodness to raise funds. You could smell it even when the car windows were rolled up, and it was impossible to resist. But why would you want to? It was best to go fairly early, before all the best meats were sold out. We fell in love with this odd-end cut of meat, that most places outside of California have always ground up into hamburger. What a waste.
I had been reluctant to smoke meat at home for years, because it always set off my migraines, but this weekend, I knew I had to bring back that old favorite. There has been a bag of whiskey barrel wood chips in the garage for a couple years, waiting for the day I was ready to try again to have the smoke around. I followed the instructions I found online for using them on the gas grill, but I don't know that I was getting the full effect. It never got very smoky, which might explain why I don't have a headache now. It did impart just enough flavor that by the time I got it over to my buddies, and we finished it off on the grill over there, it was perfect. The meat was very rare, just how we like it, and as tender and flavorful as the best steak from Husk. None of the group had ever heard of the tri-tip cut, but I have made three converts tonight. By the time we were done, the cowboy in the group mumbled in ecstasy, "I'm glad that cow had to die." I promised I would provide my friends with the photo I took of the spices that went into the rub (not pictured: salt and brown sugar; the small grinder in the front contains whole coriander seeds). If you want it like we had it, smoke it on the cool side of the grill until the internal temperature is a scant 130 degrees. Bloody cow heaven.
The Park was so lovely this morning, with all the bright colors and candles still spread around the deck, and the early summer flowers starting to bloom. I love how the flowers bloom like color-changing LED bulbs, first the whites, then soft pinks and purples, then deep rose pinks. Now I have corals all over, in the varieties of azaleas blooming now, and the canna lilies starting to burst into showy spires. Reds are coming soon, along with the magenta crepe myrtles that will be exploding in the sky over the next few weeks. I sat outside most of the morning and early afternoon, watching the flowers and birds, and the little boy cat tromping toward the shade garden with an unfortunate skink hanging from his mouth. I listened to music and made a preliminary sketch for the next painting I hope to start soon, of the Dance of Shiva. I'm so excited about the color for this one, where I'm planning on making a vivid background of bright fuchsia and flame orange, with the blue-skinned god dancing in the center. It's a symbol of destruction and creation, a perfect accessory for the cyclical nature of a garden. He will fit in perfectly at the Park.
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