SMOKE DAY 2009: EVERY BONEY DOG HAS HIS DAY.

Girlfriend "Agatha" and I made our second pilgrammage to Wisconsin in as many years and celebrated "Smoke Day" with our congenial host, Boney Dog.

Last year's Smoke Day bash was great, but this year's...well, it smoked it.

 

In an example of product placement that should yield him royalties from the Weber Grill Company, Mr. Dog had four Weber Bullets  chugging away--plus, two Weber kettle grills.  Oh yeah, there was a Big Green Egg smoking turkeys--but that was hidden on the back deck.

All in all, Boney smoked 170 lbs. of swine, bovine, chicken and turkey hunks.  That's not a typo.  I said, 170 lbs. 

In a stunning display of foresight avoidance, I stupidly booked a hotel room in Milwaukee for Saturday night and was unable to take home any of the leftovers--although, in hindsight, it would've been worth the salmonella risk.

Featured dishes were smoked pork butt (using Chris Lilly's six-time world championship recipe and, IMO, the best dish of the day), brisket flat, burnt ends from the brisket point, smoked chicken breasts with Big Bob Gibson's Alabama White Sauce, a perfectly chestnut-colored smoked turkey, spare ribs, hot links, Atomic Camel Turds (ACTs), Redneck Sushi (which is not only Boney's signature dish, but his intellectual property...and don't believe anything to the contrary printed in Wikipedia). 

And then, there was a dish that I had never considered but just may change my pit-tending life forever.  He smoked an enormous chuck roast to 195F-200F, then shredded it.  In other words, pulled beef (pictured above)--which I didn't even know was possible!  

It was so smokey and moist that I really don't see the point of ever wasting my time smoking another brisket.  Yeah, it was THAT good.

Girlfriend Agatha not only loved the Q, but also the fact that she had a designated driver.

On a sad note, neither the One Armed Bandit nor The King were in attendance this year.  So, I had no choice but to punish them by eating their portions.

And as my waist expanded from 31 inches to 31.001, Boney's wife Bobbie threw open the curtains to her beautifully remodeled kitchen and revealed something like 40 (yeah, seriously) homemade pies.  Everything from fruit pies to frozen pies to cream pies.  My personal favorite was, unsurprisingly, the Coconut Macadamia Pie.  But...

...the Apple Bacon Pie was a stroke of genius.  And the perfect way to cap-off Smoke Day 2009.

Thanks, Boney and Bobbie.  We'd been looking forward to this for the past eleven months, and it exceeded expectations...again.