Whoa! What a party! Everyone had a great time and ate some (hopefully) tasty exotic meat.

The weather didn’t do us any favors this year but we can’t complain. We’ve had a number of good weather Saturdays over the years so I imagine that we were due. It never rained so hard that it sent people scrambling for cover… just a slight dampness to the day.

I hope to write out a more detailed account later, but here are some photos friends took during the party.

My package from ExoticMeats.com had arrived, already. Less than 48 hours from last speaking to Russ.

Getting up every day at 5:45am for work can be tough. However, I just discovered that waking up at 3 in the morning to put a pork shoulder on my WSM isn’t so bad.

As we saw in Part One… so far the first Weber Smokey Mountain smoke has been pretty uneventful.

Sometimes, the simplest things are the best things. This is a fool-proof chicken marinade.

Things started out easy enough. Simple three page newspaper roll into the bottom of the chimney. Lit well and took a good 20 minutes to ash over. It seemed like a long time but it did give me the chance to take care of some other things. I honestly believe that this early in the process – Nicole had her doubts. I imagine she suspected the very real possibility of having to save dinner by whiping out a quick dinner after I mess this up and the chicken is ruined. Not that I blame her. Sometimes, trying new things doesn’t always turn out exactly how I plan it. But not this day… this day would be different.