Upside-Down Pear

Saturday night, we had our new neighbor, Tim, over. Menu:

• pasta salad (penne with red cabbage, celery, candy onions)
• green salad (cucumber, green leaf lettuce, homemade balsamic vinegar & olive oil dressing)
• grilled salmon filet
• chopped garnish (sundried tomato, cucumber, capers, green onion, balsamic vinegar)
• tomato mozzerella salad (brought by Tim)

After Tim left, Nat fired up his birthday present — a Weber smoker — and filled it with the pork shoulder we’d purchased earlier in the day.

The pork smoked overnight…and all day today…and the biggest piece of shoulder isn’t done yet (we’re finishing it in the oven, because…damn)! The smallest piece, however, finished around 5:30pm — and a little later, Jet & Drue showed up to assist us in consuming it.

• home-smoked pulled pork
• pasta salad (same as the night before)
• Kansas City-style homemade barbeque sauce (modified from a recipe in Chicken on the Grill)
• sauteed patty pan squash with carmelized onions
• fig tart (rosemary cornmeal crust, fresh figs, orange custard)
• fresh berries & peaches (brought by Jet & Drue)

This week, I have a lot of fruit to be baked into crumbles and tartlets, so my aged air conditioner will be getting quite the workout keeping the downstairs habitable. But first…we need to finish off that fig tart!