Personal - David Carr

Hiking with the kids on our fall vacation

Life Reorganized

October 25, 2020/in Personal/by David Carr

Life has been different here lately. Like basically every other family in America, the coronavirus pandemic has forced significant changes to the way we live. I haven’t traveled for work since January. My kids haven’t played with friends since March. They haven’t seen their grandparents in eight months.

Since my son is in virtual classes, he’s in school here at the house all day, and at six years of age, requires a fair amount of hand-holding. Throw my toddler daughter into the mix, and the day is a chaotic rodeo from about 7am until they’re in bed around 8:30pm each evening. Then my wife and I finish the work we didn’t get a chance to complete earlier. It’s exhausting.

This has triggered the reprioritization of everything in our lives too as we juggle the kids all day, work all evening, and essentially just try to catch our breaths and recover on the weekends. Most of my personal goals have gone by the wayside, things I was looking forward to doing this year are on hold indefinitely, and the less urgent things we need to do are a struggle to manage at times. Worse, the federal government’s reluctance to manage the crisis and a mediocre response by the state means there’s no real end in sight.

One of the things that I’ve had to set aside was writing. This is something I intended to do at least twice per month and was actually looking forward to, but it just doesn’t add enough value to prioritize it over other stuff. I’m trying to get back to it now.

My plan is to write at least two articles per month about the happenings in our life (family stuff, running and cycling, holidays) on my personal blog, and at least two articles of professional interest on my professional blog.

This seems doable. At least for now. Wish me luck?

Sourdough Starter and Baking Bread

May 10, 2020/1 Comment/in Personal/by David Carr

Like many people stuck at home during the coronavirus event, I decided to play around with sourdough. This requires making a sourdough starter, which is a 7- to 8-day process that creates the cultivates the wild yeast in a form that can be used for baking. Since wild yeast are present in all flour, the easiest way to make a starter is simply by combining flour and water and letting it sit for several days.

Note: This is an ongoing post that will be updated intermittently for a week or so, with the post date being the day that it starts.

Smoking Ribs on Gut Feel

March 13, 2020/in Personal/by David Carr

I decided to cook ribs without monitoring their temperature. Usually I follow the 3-2-1 method (three hours unwrapped, two hours wrapped in foil, one hour unwrapped) but cook them until they reach 190. But, I was cooking these on a workday, so I needed to be able to focus less on the cook, and decided to just throw ’em on and try not to be overly involved with the effort.

They may actually have been the best ribs I’ve made yet.

Smoked Brisket On a Schedule

February 16, 2020/in Personal/by David Carr

Smoked brisket and burnt ends are a special treat these days in the Carr household. This past weekend was the second time I’ve made brisket on the smoker, and it’s a significant time commitment, but the payoff is worth it. I wrote a few weeks ago about how my butcher has hiked their price for brisket from $3.99 to $5.99, which is a significant jump in cost for smoked brisket. Thanks to a neighbor, I was able to get an 18-pound packer (both point and flat cuts) for $3.69 per pound at Costco. Despite my wife raising the alarm when I brought it home, I didn’t quite consider how damn big this chunk of meat was, and as it turned out, had trouble fitting it on my 18.5″ Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. There are worse problems one could have, I suppose, when making smoked brisket.

Smoked Pork Butt

February 5, 2020/in Personal/by David Carr

Food: Smoked pork butt
Temperature: 270°
Cooking time: 9:30
Wood used: Cherry
Notes: Cooked using minion method to start charcoal, then basted several times, wrapped after 8 hours

We all love pulled pork, and I wanted to try a sandwich I miss from when we lived in Florida. So, I threw a pork butt on the smoker and let it cook all day while I was stuck on conference calls. There was a barbecue place in Jacksonville called Bono’s BBQ, which offers a sandwich they call a Bo-Hawg. It’s a pulled pork sandwich with a link of smoked sausage and a slice of cheddar cheese. And it’s very amazing.

Smoked Brisket Burnt Ends

December 24, 2019/in Personal/by David Carr

After trying my hand at smoking a pork butt a few weeks ago, I decided to try a smoked brisket on my new Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. This was a little daunting to me because of the duration of the cook, but it actually wasn’t anymore involved than the pork butt was. And the payoff was incredible.

For this cook, I followed Malcolm Reed‘s recommendation for cooking brisket burnt ends. If you haven’t seen Malcom’s site, HowToBBQRight.com, you’re missing out on a great resource. His videos were very influential in making me want to buy a smoker and start making some of the stuff from his site.

Food: Brisket and Burnt Ends
Temperature: 250°
Cooking time: 9-12 hours
Wood used: Pecan, Cherry
Note: Cooked low and slow until internal temperature reaches 205°

Smoked Pork Butt

November 26, 2019/in Personal/by David Carr

Food: Smoked pork butt
Temperature: 225-250°
Cooking time: 12:00
Wood used: Apple
Notes: Cooked using minion method to start charcoal, then basted several times

I really want to cook a brisket in the coming weeks, and I felt that a pork shoulder or pork butt would be a good stepping stone for a long cook like the brisket. There’s less risk, obviously, in a $16 butt than a $60 brisket, so if I’m going to mess things up, it’s preferable to do it with a shoulder or butt. Previously, I’ve only done shorter smokes, using a chicken or ribs. Also, it’s worth noting — since many people don’t realize this — that the pork shoulder and butt are not the same thing, nor is the butt from the rear of the pig.

Smoked Ribs

September 21, 2019/in Personal/by David Carr

Food: Smoked baby back (pork) ribs
Temperature: 275°
Cooking time: 5:30
Wood used: Apple
Notes: Cooked using minion method to start charcoal, then the popular 3-2-1 cooking method for ribs, spraying regularly with apple juice.

OK, it’s time to smoke some ribs. I’ve tried out the smoker on a couple of chickens and learned how to use it a little, so it’s time to make something I love… pork ribs!

I decided to try a popular way of cooking ribs called the 3-2-1 Method. Basically, you cook the ribs uncovered for three hours, then sauce and wrap them for two more hours, then cook them uncovered with another layer of sauce for one more hour. I deviated from this slightly in that the last hour was too long — the ribs were already at ready temperature — so I only cooked them about 35 minutes.

Smoked Chicken

September 20, 2019/in Personal/by David Carr

Food: Smoked Chicken
Temperature: 275°
Cooking time: 3:00
Wood used: Apple
Note: Used Minion Method to start charcoal, which worked great. Kept consistent temperatures throughout the entire cook and held right around 270-280 degrees.

This was actually my second time using my new smoker, having just wrecked a similar chicken a day earlier. I’m not entirely sure where things went wrong on the first go-around, but the breast read a little under minimum safe temperature and the leg was a little over. When I carved it, the breast was fine, but everything else was undercooked.

Since I wanted to try ribs this weekend, I decided to get another chicken and give it another shot. This one turned out pretty great.

I put a rub on the chicken and held the smoker at 275° for three hours, spraying it with cooking spray every 30 minutes or so to help the skin turn crispy. Overall, I think it went well and I’m getting used to tuning the temperatures with the vents on the Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. It’s still going to take some practice though to get better at it.

Father’s Day Hiking

June 17, 2019/2 Comments/in Fitness, Personal/by David Carr

For Father’s Day, we decided to get out and go for a hike. My son used to love being in the child carrier when we’d go hiking at the Jacksonville Arboretum & Gardens so we decided to give my daughter a go at it. We went to Raven Rock State Park, which s about 45 minutes from us. She loved it and we all had a great time.