Leftovers

When I lived in Texas, I fell in love with genuine Texas BBQ, and smoking in general. To learn how to make it myself, I took a master BBQ class from Rockin' Ronnie, Canada's BBQ champ a number of years back, but did all of my smoking on borrowed smokers. In July, I picked up a cheap smoker from Canadian Tire with dreams of getting back into smoking pork butts, briskets, ribs and other delights.

My first project to test out the smoker was a pair of pork butts -- which are forgiving and always good. So I was up at 4 AM to light the thing, and it cooked all day.

In action

However, I quickly learned that a $60 smoker from Canadian Tire isn't a $300 Weber Smoky Mountain Cooker (the gold standard of home smoking). I had problems keeping the temperature up, problems with the charcoal pan size, problems with leaking smoke, etc, etc. While the finished product was OK, it wasn't the greatness I was used to. But I ended up with a LOT of leftover pulled pork, which fortunately freezes well.

Since July, I've been experimenting with various uses for the leftovers, and to be frank, the pork leftovers re-heated have always been better than they were when they were fresh. More tender. Better smoke flavour. So far I have made a pulled pork hash (awesome), pulled pork hash browns (very tasty), and pulled pork on home fries (so good, and so good for you).

Yesterday I pulled out my slow cooker and threw together an African influenced pulled pork stew. It seemed ideal for us on this cold (12°) rainy August weekend.

The ingredients

I put in:

• Diced red, green and orange peppers;
• Whole baby red potatoes;
• A chopped up golden beet;
• ½ a Walla Walla sweet onion, sliced;
• A handfull of quartered ushrooms;
• Carrot chunks;
• A tablespoon of Robertson's Chakalaka spice powder (see the bottom of this post to find out about that stuff), plus some salt and pepper

...then covered it with a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes. I poured in about ½ cup of "BBQ Spray" (an equal mix of apple juice, maple syrup and Jack Daniels, which I use to spray the outside of the pork when smoking) so to add liquid. I suspect apple juice alone, water or white wine would have also worked.

Ready to rock

I cooked that on low for 5 hrs, then added 12 oz of defrosted leftover pulled pork. I stirred it all up and left it for 3 hrs more on low.

The finished product

I didn't get much chakalaka flavour, but I got a lot of smoking flavour, and it was pretty darned good, hitting the spot as we sat in front of the fire listening to the rain fall (and hoping the basement didn't leak).

Happy to hear of other suggestions for leftover pulled pork that doesn't involve sandwiches. I still have seven 12 oz bags left, so have lots of room to experiment.

June 24: King Ridge

When I was up Mt. Lawson back in September 2011, I drooled over getting up King Ridge, which is directly across the valley and overlooks Highway 40 and parts of Peter Lougheed Park. So on a sunny day in June, we decided to explore.

We were not alone. A pair of nice young ladies from Okotoks and their (on leash) dogs were heading up, too. Without much guidance other than some Instagram photos, they had started off wrong. They headed up King Creek, which is where you park to climb the ridge. They had crossed the creek 5 times before turning back. So we pointed them to the trailhead and gave them a general description of the route (that I gleaned by reading Gillean Daffern's books and looking at the Gem Trek map), and off they went.

We met them on the trail ~15 minutes later, already taking a breather. No, this was not an indication of their fitness level. King Ridge climbs over 500 m in less than 2 km. Straight up. Whoever designed the trail hates switchbacks.

On the bright side:

• Heading up at the same pace as them made us puff and pant but didn't kill us. It was actually quite reasonable as we were not in a hurry.
• The higher you go on the open slopes, the better the views get.

Mt. Lawson, South end 

Looking back to the lakes area 

Lower K Lakes comes into view 

60% of the way up. You can see the grade. 

Lower Lake 

Upper and Lower Lakes

After a steady 2 hrs of climbing, we popped into the trees at the south end of the ridge, getting our first glimpses of the Opal range behind.

Gnarly rock

The ridgetop is reasonably flat but tree covered at this point, with nice but limited views. For some reason, our hiking companions chose to eat lunch in the forest, and never climbed higher.

They missed out. Because in the next 2 km, while there is a climb of another 200 m, it's a non-grade on grass with ever improving views both south and north to the ridge's north peak. It took us just an hour after topping out in the trees.

The view south west from the trees 

Looking back down the ridge. The spike is Mt. Wintour 

The lakes plus 

Looking across Upper Lake to Mt. Sarrail & Foch 

Not a selfie, actually. Karen held her pole to my camera 

Looking north to the Fortress valley 

The top of the grassy knoll 

Clear sightline back across Lower Lake 

The verdant backside of Grizzly Peak Ridge 

North. Lawson on the left, Fortress in the middle and Grizzly on the right

We thought the uptrack steep and that we would have difficulties descending. Not really; there were a couple of marbly sections, and one place where the trail braids that we didn't notice on the way up. We turned around at the ridge's north end after 3:45, hit the top of the steep descent in 40 min, and were at the car in 2 hrs after leaving the top (including confusion time at the braids).

This is a great hike if you can manage the steepness of the uptrack. Bring poles to better control the descent. And on your way up, while climbing through an obvious rocky creekbed, look behind you occasionally so you can find the track down.

June 16: Barrier Lookout/Jewel Pass

For a first hike of the season, I wanted to do something simple, accessible, and not that strenuous. Heading up to Barrier Lookout, then dropping down Jewel Pass and back along the shores of Barrier Lake seemed to foot the bill. A bit long at 19.5 km, but an OK height gain of 660 m.

But, in every grand plan, there lies a flaw. My flaw was in leaving my orthotics at home. We got to the trailhead and I had no orthotics, no footbeds, no cushioning at all in my hiking boots. Plus, I couldn't lace them tight enough to hold my foot from sliding forward. For the first time in years, I got blisters, pus bruised a toenail enough to trun purple after a few weeks. Plus, after 19.5 km, it felt like someone had whacked on the balls of my feet with a ball peen hammer all day. Pain.

Still, aside from that (and the tiny amount of rain we had) it was a nice day.

At the lookout on the way up 

My friend Monty 

Looking down the Kananaskis valley 

Towards the Hunchback Hills 

My house hides behind the mountain on the right 

Back across the prairie 

The lake at the end of the day

We lucked out and saw "delivery day" for the fire lookout, with several sling loads being delivered by helicopter. I like helicopters, so that was OK.

Slinging propane 

Lowering it in 

Placing it in the breeze 

Done. Landing 

Pretty and brand new Eurocopter ES 350

Long trudge down was made better by getting to inspect the section of trail we helped build through the Friends of Kananaskis after the 2013 floods.

Still beautiful

Karen also ran across a few orchids.

Don't know what kind

This is a pretty good early season hike, as it's snow free by early May. But, you take about 2 hrs to get to the first views (it's a disenchanted forest walk to that point), and the first 90 min of the trudge down is also mostly a forest walk (except for the pretty new section we helped build, and the nice waterfall it passes).

Jewel Falls

Plus, the last hour is also just walking along the lakeshore, which isn't that thrilling.

But it sets us up for the rest of the season -- so long as I don't forget my orthotics again...

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming

No, I actually don't know why it took me until mid-August to post about our Africa trip that happened in May. Perhaps it's because I uploaded over 1,300 photos, and they take time. However, if you're thinking of taking the Nomad Adventures safari from Cape Town to Victoria Falls, it was a blow by blow, animal by animal account of life in the truck.

But now we can move on. I was just looking at my hiking stats, and we're off to a slower start than usual, mostly because we both volunteer so much. Last week alone, I was out 2 days servicing wildlife research cameras, plus two days working on trail projects with the Friends of Kananaskis. So that was 4 days of "hiking" that I don't log because it's usually not that interesting to people other than me. My views look like this:

Views of Mt. Rundle while servicing cameras 

The Three Sisters in mist during camera servicing 

My friend Monty working on a trail in Boulton Creek 

Rock hardening of a mountain bike trail at the Nordic Centre 

Female moose and calf in the grass on the way to Boulton Creek 

Spiderwebs in my forest while camera servicing

But we have done some cool stuff, and I'm behind on posting about it.

• We climbed King Ridge in early June
• We got up into James Walker Creek
• We just got back from 4 days camping in the Highwood, and got to Hailstone Butte, Plateau Mountain and Raspberry Ridge, plus got partway up an unnamed mountain

And I promise to post these soon, because to be frank, they were all beautiful.

Glad to be back without Africa posts hanging over my head.

May 29/30: Goodbye Africa

Without confirmed reservations, we headed to the airport in Livingstone, Zambia, just across the bridge and border. Along the way, our shuttle picked up two others from the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge.

They have their own water hole

Then it was time to cross the border. The shuttle driver took us to the Zimbabwe immigration booth to check out of the country. The Zim passport control officer could not understand why I got the form to check out of the country, but he checked me out anyway. The driver helped us through the post, then carried our bags to a Zambian shuttle from the same company sitting on the other side.

From here, the bridge looks very short, and it's obvious it was a train bridge first.

It's a LONG way down, though

Crossing the bridge, we got a glimpse of the fog shrouded falls.

In places, it really is hard to see the falls themselves

Then it was into Zambia (a quick passport stamp with our Kaza visas), a last view of the falls…

There's a reason they call it The Big Smoke

Then into the still-under construction Livingstone Airport. Interestingly, check in kiosks were after security. We arrived at 10:30, but they wouldn’t let us through security until 11. I almost left my camera behind; a kind gentleman brought it to me while I was in the security line.

We got to check-in, and had no issues with our flights. Business class to Johannesburg. We asked about getting into Business for the JNB – Istanbul run, but he had no way to do that. He warned us that because of the number of connections, he had to double tag our bags, and they might not make it. No biggie.

Once in Johannesburg, we checked with the Turkish Airlines transfer desk about upgrading; he said “no way” based on the fact that 5 of the 28 seats coming in from Cape Town were already occupied, and 23 more had already checked in at JNB. So we were literally in the “back of the bus”, 2nd last row of an A330. Because our next flight was not Business (even though we had come in on Business, and had a Business class ticket), we could not use the JNB lounge. Sigh. Fortunately, the layover was short and JNB is big. 

The flight was OK, with a beautiful and charming young flight attendant. Interestingly, everyone in Economy got amenity kits, something you normally only get when you are in Business. We didn’t sleep much on the flight, so arrived at 5:15 AM in Istanbul somewhat groggy. We figured that if our next flight controlled the lounge access, then we could get in, as we had Business Class tickets to Frankfurt. A quick swipe got us into…

…the most spectacular airline lounge I had ever seen.

The 2 story atrium 

The intimate lower level 

More on the atrium

The place was over the top. It had a pool table. It had a driving range golf simulator.

It had a slot car track (with televisions playing recent F1 races).

It had olive bars, nut bars, 3 grand pianos (all playing automatically), multiple coffee/cappuccino stations, beer and wine and hard liquor everywhere. It had two short order kitchens, one serving breakfasts including omelettes and pancakes and bacon and eggs, and the other a pannini bar, making custom grilled sandwiches. It had a huge kids play area.

You name it, it had it, and at least 5 of them.

And showers. Beautiful, elegantly appointed showers. Just like their regular bathrooms (Karen took this picture, not me).

The sink in the ladies room

We cleaned up (which felt great) then flew to Frankfurt (in lay-flat seats. We would have liked the lay-flat seats on our last flight). Just to add icing to an already good cake, Turkish Airlines has actual chefs on board.

And their in-flight display not only includes route maps but forward and aft facing cameras you can watch.

Following someone down a taxi way

I was very impressed with everything about Turkish Airlines, including the economy service.

We got into Frankfurt desperately hoping for an upgrade. We were going to crash and were hoping that it would be in a nice bed. Plus my cold had progressed quickly and I felt like crap. We went up to the Air Canada transfer desk and got good news: we would probably get upgraded based on space and waiting list, and we could go to the lounge.

Pretty but not Istanbul

Our upgrades were issued at 11:50, we boarded at 12:15 into lovely pods again. We took off, ate quickly, then crashed asleep for 5-6 hrs. By now, my cold was making me feel miserable (I even had a slight fever), and we got some Tylenol from Air Canada that helped. The descent into both Frankfurt and Calgary were just killers on my eardrums, with stuffed up Eustachian tubes.

After about 30 hrs of continuous travel, we arrived home to a house cleaner than when we left it, and a cat who didn’t seem to care that we existed. I think our house sitters did a great job.

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Today’s Africa Travel Tip: Gifts

Wise friends of mine who have been to Africa suggested we take some trinkets to give to kids in the villages we visited; pens in particular were recommended as well as small notebooks. We took ~50 pens to give away, and bought some 20¢ notebooks to give away while we were here.

Our guide Laban wasn’t a big fan of giveaways. He recommended that we give the pens and books to the school we visited in the Himba village, where they could get used. He noted that if we didn’t give them to the right aged kids, they would not add value; young kids would tear up the paper, chew the pens. Older kids living traditional lifestyles didn’t use pens or paper. He noted how some people brought balloons, which was a terrible idea, since to the kids, they would translate “balloons as toys” to “condoms as toys”, which would harm the AIDS problem.

Some on our tour brought hard cover kids books. Not a bad strategy, in Laban’s view, but again, we had to be selective who to give them to. Just past the Botswana border post, there was a little pop and snack stand, with a lady and her 4 year old. One of our truck mates gave the kid a book, and it seemed welcome. Still, Laban noted to us that the kid probably did not yet speak English, as English is learned in schools, and it was unlikely the kid was at school already. Laban knew the lady’s English was limited to pop and chips transactions, so probably couldn’t read it to the kid. Such a conundrum.

After 21 days on the road, my conclusion is that gifts should be skipped. Ignoring the impact they have on you carrying them hither and yon, they are unlikely to have the impact you want. Kids in Africa make toys, like push cars out of fence wire. Adding North American or European gifts probably won’t make their world a better place. But it’s a tough call; think hard about it, and get the right things, and maybe it would be good thing.