How To Make the Perfect Pulled Pork

"Anything worth doing, is worth doing slowly." Mae West. I love it! ;-D

Pulled pork. YummY!

We have a small smoker that we mostly smoke salmon, chicken and ribs in.

My neighbor, however, has a huge, large (did I say big?)... Smoker. He makes the most moist, tender and flavorful pork butts!

It looks something like this:

I haven't a picture of the one he actually has.

I came across this article and it is thorough in everthing you would want to know about smoking.

It includes rubs, and even the "why" behind the reason lean meat just does not work in this slow cooking process. ;-)

If you want to have a barbe' soon, check it out. Your friends and family will be amazed!

Smoker Method:
http://www.kitchendaily.com/2011/05/24/how-to-make-perfect-pulled-pork/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl5%7Csec1_lnk1%7C65208

If you do not have a smoker, do it the old fashioned way... the oven:

Easy Oven Method:

Six easy steps:
1. Rub pork with dry rub.
2. Refrigerate overnight.
3. Allow pork to rest at room temperature for one hour before cooking.
4. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
5. Sear pork on all sides in hot pan with oil over high heat. I use an iron skillet.
6. Place in pan (like a roaster), cover with aluminum foil.
7. Bake for 4 hours.

There is no better food to take camping, or for summer fun. A great Father's Day meal too. ;-)

The story and process behind the art work: "Humble Angel."

To those who have lost anyone to death, let me preface this publication which shows the stages of my representation of the celestrial with, "I hope that this angelic image comforts you as it did me."

I allow myself to be inspired by dreams that I have. This composition is my attempt to capture a dream that I had about Mike, my husband who died in 2007.

I began in acrylic (because it dries faster), painting a black backdrop; wanting to create an intangible background, the white drip technique was added. It is a portrayal representing the afterlife. A scene of magnificence that the viewer may fill in: Waterfall? ...maybe; lights or white brilliance? ...maybe. It is not concrete, but more abstract in nature.

 Stage Two is just getting my rough draft down on the canvas. I over emphasized the glasses angle to get the dimensions of the side view of the face in perspective first before getting the glasses set.

 With oil paints I begin putting in a base coat, or the low lights for hair. Continuing with oil paints, I begin adding brilliant color.

  This stage shows the work of creating a heavenly or spiritual body by adding loads of paint layers. This painting took about 3 months to paint because of the drying time between layers, as well as it was a very emotional one for me.

 More layers to create the body, and highlights added.

A splatter technique was used to finish the body.

I love this stage because it is the one that captures my attempt to show the nature of the painting: Humility. He is shrugging his shoulders as if to say, "This is me." The wings are folded down to show the opposite of conceit. A creature, so amazing in stature, folding his wings and shrugging his shoulders to send a message of comfort, "I am okay." 'Showing off' or boasting is not in his nature; a confident humility is.

Personification was needed. I wanted to make the face more human-lifelike, because in the dream, I had no doubt who I was looking at. The face was recognizable. Once I had a portrait of the face complete, I needed to make it more heavenly. You can also see that I have begun to highlight the hair too.

 In the last stage, I had to combine the human "flesh colors" to blend well with the pastel colors of the heavenly body. I added pinks and whiter shades to both the face and the body to make the human face blend with the newly given spiritual body.

The end result is: Humble Angel.