In my last post, I mentioned my plan to smoke a brisket for Christmas dinner. On Wednesday afternoon, I scootered over to Siesel’s Old Fashioned Meats a few miles away from Mission Bay RV Resort (map). I was glad to be on the scooter – if I had driven a car I would’ve had to park several blocks away as the lot was full and the streets around the store didn’t have any open parking spaces either.

When I went inside, I took a number at the meat counter – I was number 65. I heard one of the butchers call out “Number 48.” I knew this was going to take a while. Everyone was looking for something special for Christmas dinner. There were at least four butchers working behind the counter so things moved along without too much delay. I asked for a large cut of the brisket flat. The guy told me he might be able to get six pounds of flat – I said that would be great.

I saw him come out of the cooler with the largest chunk of brisket I’ve ever seen. He trimmed it and cut away the flat – it was five and half pounds. It was a USDA Choice cut and looked to be a nice hunk of flat (HOF). If you’re interested in learning all you want to know about brisket, take a look at this site.

Thursday morning I scootered over to Vons Grocery store. It was a zoo – nothing like waiting until the last minute to shop. Donna wanted me to pick up some marinated mushrooms and and mixed olives from their olive bar. I also bought Stubbs Beef Rub.

Donna’s knee was sore and she wanted to skip pickleball – bicycling wasn’t too hard on her knee though. She went for a bike ride while I shopped. When I returned, I dressed for the court and went to the Pacific Beach Recreation Center to play pickleball. I played from noon ’til 2:30pm. I needed to get home in time to clean the Traeger and prep the brisket.

I trimmed a little more off the fat cap – I left about 1/4 inch of fat on the cap side and seasoned the meat with Stubbs. I wrapped it in plastic and butcher paper and put it in the refrigerator.

Thursday night we cheated a bit and opened our Christmas presents. I surprised Donna with a Garmin Edge 500 bicycle computer. It’s basically a GPS for her bike that will record distance, time, average speed, elevation changes and a host of other features. Her Shimano Flight Deck bicycle computer died. I installed the Flight Deck from my bike on hers, but that one went kaput too.

Donna surprised me with a quad-copter drone. Once I get the hang of flying it, I can mount my Samsung S5 on it and record video or shoot photos. I’ll be a spy in the sky.

On Christmas morning, I was up at 5am. With my LED headlight strapped on, I filled the hopper on the Traeger with hickory wood pellets from Pacific Pellets and fired up the smoker/grill. It was dark-thirty out and the moon was setting in the western sky. It was cold and windy and this photo shows the moisture in the air.

I put the HOF on the grill to start the cook at 5:30am.

I went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. I got back up at 6am and went outside to check the smoker. I left it on the smoke setting which usually gets the pit up to 200 degrees. The combination of five pounds of cold meat and the strong wind had the pit temperature stuck at 135 degrees. I changed the setting from smoke – which feeds pellets based on a timer instead of the temperature probe – to 180 degrees. This activated the signal from the temperature probe. A half hour later the temperature only rose to about 160 degrees. The ambient temperature was in the high 50s with sustained 20mph wind. I turned the grill up to 225 degrees.

I spritzed the meat a couple of times with a sprayer filled with 12 ounces of beer mixed with 3 ounces of apple cider vinegar and a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce. At 9:30am I checked the internal temperature of the meat with an instant-read thermometer. It was nearly 170 degrees. I took the HOF off the grill and double wrapped it tightly in foil, spritzing it generously before I closed up the foil and put it back in the smoker/grill. I let it cook for another four and half hours, checking it again just after 2pm. I think my instant-read thermometer reads a little high. I’ll have to check it in boiling water. It showed the internal temperature of the thickest part of the brisket at 210 degrees. This was a little higher than I expected.

I took the brisket off the grill. With it still wrapped in foil, I rolled a towel around it and put a second towel over it. I stored it in the microwave oven to keep it in an airtight, confined space so it would rest and slowly cool.

While I was smoking the brisket, Donna went with our friends Iain and Kate to a church in Pacific Beach where they volunteered to prepare a meal for the homeless. They came back just before noon and started decorating the RV park clubhouse for our Christmas potluck.

Our friend from my school days, Carole Sue Bringas, joined us. She brought two Julian pies to share with the group. We had happy hour at 3pm. Around 4:15pm we set up the food buffet. We had a lot food for a group of twelve people. I retrieved the brisket from the coach and unwrapped it at the clubhouse. After resting for two hours, it was still steaming hot.

Kate cooked a turkey breast and enlisted Hector to carve it.

The conversation and wine flowed as we enjoyed our Christmas dinner. Donna’s sister Sheila joined us just as we were beginning to eat. Kate and Iain brought traditional British Christmas Crackers. These are cylindrical cardboard poppers – you can see them in the photo of Donna’s dinner plate. You hold one end of the cracker while your partner pulls on the other end. It breaks with a pop and one side has a gag toy in it plus a paper crown. We had fun popping the crackers around the table.

We sat and talked, then we played a crazy game called Cards Against Humanity. We wound things down and cleaned the place up around 9:30pm. The full moon I saw setting in the early morning was rising in the east by now.

Today we’re expecting clear blue skies with the temperature reaching the mid 60s. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. We really enjoyed ours.