This is a reanimation of the Vicaribus blog as lived by Miro Kazakoff and Ehren Foss in 2004 and 2005. The photos may be spotty.

Let's go crazy, restrained Midwestern style!

Posted by Miro

The Fossoshpere is flush with cash (a client paid up). This morning I witnessed Ehren go on a shopping spree Foss-style. It consisted of:

1) One "tsunami" sized meal at Ron’s, one of Eugene’s inexplicably large number of Hawaian fast food restaurants (think a higher quality version of those food court places that are always offering samples of chicken in sauce on toothpicks. You know what I’m talking about).

2) One pair of hiking socks (Store Brand)

3) One climbing harness (store brand)

4) Laces. Initially determined to be unnecessary (his hiking boots are currently tied with rope) until a pair was discovered in the discount bin.

5) Ehren deciding that he didn’t need a new pair of hiking boots after all. His old reliable boots will do him just fine. Maybe some liquid nails in the three or four torn seams, and they’ll last a few more years still.

Adopting highways must be a strong matter of civic pride in Oregon. Never have I seen so many stretches of highway adopted by so many diverse groups. Such as:

• More individuals than I can remember
• Several radio stations
• The Good Sam RV club (go RV’ers!)
• The Optimist Society (I’d never heard of them before)
• Friends of John Denver
• The Oregon Department of Corrections Inmate Work Crew (some how I’m not sure civic pride was the driving force on this one)

Given that the Fossoshpere is blogged in almost real-time, I’m almost embarrassed to post anything that happened two days ago, but keeping up with Ehren is near impossible so I’m not going to try.

Two nights ago I discovered Brenna’s smoker. She had one of those combo grill/smokers. I’ve been itching to experiment with smoking ever since Brownlow prepared a truly banging smoked chicken in his Big Green Egg, a Kamando-style Japanense cooker. Kamando’s are combination grill/smoker/ovens that offer really versatile outdoor cooking options by providing the height of a smoker, the insulting power of ceramics, as well as the airflow control of a grill. Brenna’s grill was more modest that Brownlow’s 100 lbs behemoth, but it was more than enough to get me stoked to prepare a smoked chicken.

This is one of my cooking stories (and I have more than a few like this) where in my zeal for a certain dish but lack of supplies, I’m forced to cheat on nearly every aspect of the cooking process. In this case the Albertson’s had no wood chips. We went across the street to the Bed, Bath & Beyond hoping that there might be some smoker chips in the “beyond” portion of the store. No luck. So, over Brenna’s protests, I ended up buying those cedar blocks that you put in clothing to keep the moths out. I’m pretty sure these ones weren’t treated with any chemicals to enhance the smell.

I brought home the chips and chopped them into chunks as best I could using the Brenna’s small hatchet. The chickens eyed me warily (they lost a brother to that hatchet), but my fingers were always in more danger than they were.

Likewise Brenna didn’t have a roasting rack, so I decided to beer butt the chicken. I’m pretty sure I first saw this preparation in Ted Nuget’s cookbook. This should have been more of a warning to me. In beer butting, one cuts the top off a half full beer can and mounts the chicken on top of the can in lieu of a roaster. The beer helps keep the chicken moist. Brownlow, smartly enough, used a vertical roaster and just stuck the beer can under the chicken. Now I know why.

I greased up the chicken with some leftover bacon fat, salt and peppered the whole thing and plopped it on the beer can. The chicken, which was on the large size at 5 pounds, listed violently to one side when mounted. The drumsticks actually touched the ground and the whole body was angled forward as if the raw chicken was about to launch off the grill in a full sprint.

Nevertheless, I set up the smoker with one of our propane tanks (it was LP), tossed a few of the cedar chunks I had soaked in water, and plopped the chicken down on the grill rack. I forgot the drip pan. About an hour in, I smelled burning and jump outside. The beer butt method is great in theory, but when the beer evaporates, the can has less ballast. My whole chicken tipped over. Without a drip pan, a flare up was going strong under it and charring the breast. My first thought was, “Wow, what a lovely brown color on the non-burnt side.” I threw water on the flame up. Then I remembered this is exactly what not to do with a propane fire.

I turned off the propane feed, restarted the whole thing at a lower temperature, and set the electric thermometer to go off when the chicken hit 160 degrees. This, I now know, is 5 degrees below where you should remove chicken from cooking. In the end: chicken discovered to be raw (except for the charred part) 20 minutes after being pulled off grill, finished in the over, still tasty.