Rehashing the week.

It seems as though I have not managed to post something a very long time. In actuality, its been about a week. So I think a little recap is in order.

The big event last week was fishing Ruth Lake. Now Ruth is actually a reservoir, and certainly not all that big. An example, from the South end to the North end, in a boat, only takes a couple of minutes. The good thing about Ruth are the large trout in there.

Its a little hard to tell from this angle, but this nice Rainbow Trout is almost 13 inches long. And as far as trout go, that's a darn nice fish. We left Eureka at about 0500, Cody wanted to be the first on lake, not missing any portion of the morning bite. As it turned out, we arrived at Ruth before Dawn and were he only people on the lake the entire day. We caught 7 fish. I landed my limit of 5. Cody, well, he landed 2 and actually lost 4. Its a sad story, really, and I suggest not bringing it up to him as he is fragile and sensitive. We saw 4 bald eagles as well. Our national bird is certainly beautiful, and as far as California Bald Eagles go, 2 of these birds of prey were actually quite large (Alaskan Eagles are huge in comparsison). Unfortunately as we got closer to them they became rather camera shy. The only picture I got is completely unrecognizable.

If, I were hunting the Sasquatch, Big Foot, I might get famous with a picture of this quality (since any and all pictures that involve the mythical beast look much like this one, completely out of focus). But since I simply wanted to show a picture of a California Bald Eagle, a creature that actually exists, I will simply tell you there are 2 large nests on the west side of the lake near the middle. And since Bald Eagles are firm believers in monogamy, you can venture out to this site and see any of the four at any given time.

In the end, all I can say is I out fished Cosy, which is always worth saying. Also, as a side note to this story: Cody hates mayonnaise. I forgot this as I slathered two turkey sandwiches with the heavenly (or hateful, depending on your point of view) condiment. It should suffice to say I felt guilty as I ate both sandwiches.
Later in the week, while at work, Wife gave me the green light to purchase and smoke some pork shoulders. As far as I am concerned, she might as well have told me to go Best Buy and purchase some of my most wanted electronics. So, off to Costco where I purchased 14.4 pounds of pork.

Oh, glorious meat. Err, pork. Anyway, I love pulled pork. after cooking for nearly 12 hours over indirect heat, it takes on a completely different look.

But first, I smoked the living crap out of it. That's hickory (for lack of any other wood chips at the time). I smoked it pretty heavily for the first 2 hours. Smoking adds a nice flavor to the pork. When you cut it later, it actually has a pink to red color where the smoke has penetrated it. While it doesn't get to the center, after shredding it. the smoky flavor is mixed in with the rest of the pork and simply tastes amazing. After about 2 hours the pork gets a nice seared look, and at this point smoking is really pointless to continue as the searing prevents the smoke from getting into the meat. But oh its looks tasty.
This was taken near the end of my smoking session. After that it was about 9 hours of cooking over low heat. And I will say we ate pork sandwiches last night and they were tasty.
One of the best things about cooking pork shoulders is that it takes all day. So I make coffee in the early morning and set out to simply make a full day of it. And its worth every minutes.
And finally, we are going on a cruise in 3 days. We won a 5 day cruise from Carnival in a raffle. So on Sunday we travel to Southern California, we board the boat on Monday. We will be visiting Catalina Island, Ensenada (that's in Mexico people), and spending a full day sailing the pacific before returning to American soil. Its going to be a good time.
I'll work on something of a more meaningful post in the near future, but for now this is what I have.