May Day

A chimney is a mental cylinder that is roughly half a foot in diameter and a food long. It is the best and cheapest way to light charcoals.

In the US, you buy bags of charcoals from the store. They are uniformly shaped black objects each the size of a baby’s fist. Vendors, such as Kingsford, heat up woods in the absence of air, pulverize the charcoals, and form them with molds.

In US, Labor Day is always the 1st Monday of September. This is the unofficial end of the summer and I usually celebrated with my world-famous BBQ.

We would rub the ribs with garlic, soy sauce, salt and pepper. Wait few hours.

Have one chimney of charcoals, light a piece of newspaper under, and wait patiently for 15 minutes until the smoke becomes blue.

Divide the hot and ashed charcoals into 2 piles and push them as far away from the center — leaving a long rectangular of space.

Carefully position the ribs to be exposed to as little direct heat as possible. The job is pretty much 95% done.

Close the lid, open the beers, play few catches with kids, or chase dogs around the backyard. Do nothing to the meat. Watch the smoke.

After about 45 minutes, the smoke thins out. Time to act. Open the lid, move the meat away, add charcoals, mix them up, divide them to the sides again, throw a big lump of previously soaked barks into the center, put the meat back on.

Wait! Don’t close the lid. Stick a hand on top of the meat and try to count to 5. If can’t, it is hot enough.

Close the lid. White smoke churns out from the vent and that is beautiful.

About 40 minutes more, time to call the kids, and take the order of which BBQ sauce they want. I offer 3 kinds: the standard bottled BBQ sauce, pure honey, or my secret recipe: lemon juice, honey, and pepper.

The most popular one? Nothing. The rib will be golden in color, the meat will be falling off from the bones, the smoking gives a wonderful aroma, the meat exhibits a layer of reddish darkened color. I usually sample few pieces to make sure everything is right. Man, they are finger licking good.

It turns out May Day is the International Labor Day. Contrary to what I thought, it is not a communist’s celebration. In 1886, US workers, demanding 8-hour work day and other protections, had a large scale strike in Chicago. Eventually, this concept became part of the social norm around the world. Funny that as the world celebrate this day that originated from the US, it is largely ignored or more associated with the call of distress when an airplane faces imminent danger.

My regular readers will notice the new banner on the top. I stitched together few pictures taken when I was in ShunXin. I was in fact trying to redo my blog site completely, but Roller is harder than I thought.