An Okie in Boston

 People who know me in real life knows full and well that I am not just an Okie but a Proud Okie. It does take a bit of bravery to wear an OKC Thunder t-shirt around Boston Celtic fans or put on an OSU sweatshirt when Boston College is playing a game but a guy has to do what a guy has to do. This line of thought brings me to something that is genetically ingrained in me simply from the Oklahoma red dirt having leached into my DNA, the red dirt slowly alters a person and transforms them into a proud Oklahoman. Since the pride actually comes from your DNA even if you move that swelling pride of being an Okie always stays with you.

This brings me to the subject of what it is like to be an Okie in Yankee Land. In the Boston area there is a dearth of REAL college football, a breeze is considered a major wind storm and tasty smoked meat, BBQ and other meat requirements simply pale to what I am use to having back in Oklahoma. It is not all bad, I love living here and can handle watching OU and OSU on TV and I still chuckle to myself when my friends and neighbors are scared about the 25 MPH wind gusts but the thing I had the biggest problem with was finding great meat. In Oklahoma I never had to cook it myself because every neighbor, family, friends and most restaurants were pretty adapt at it. Once I moved to New England I was left alone in the wilderness with no help.

This problem set me off on the next part of the saga, I had to become a king of the grill and smoker myself. I tried remembering back to the days I was a kid and watched my dad cook but after trying my hand at some chops and having neighbors over who were pretty sure it was made from raccoon or skunk meat I decided it was time to get a bit of help. I did what any modern guy would do that is to embarrassed to ask people who could actually help them..... I googled it.

Now, I am not knocking Google but I ran into more sites that had no idea that meat was supposed to taste good. There were ones that every recipe required 5 pounds of sugar and a burger with a 1 inch crust of sugar just is not right. There were others that were hip and cool and bragged that they were Californian, please remember that in California tacos made from fish are not only acceptable but considered good eating.

I finally fumbled across a site that was perfect, it gave great directions, it had real recipes for real guys and simply was something that worked., after telling my wife about the great site I found she looked over it and laughed...... it is ran by a guy in Oklahoma. I now understood why it was great, he was an Okie and understood great meat.

 I am now the kind of New England guy that while a Nor'ester is blowing through I have my smoker and or grill going. I might have to keep shoveling a path out to the cooking meat but I finally feel like I belong here. I can now love New England and still have my meat. I can even smoke lobster tail now.

I want to be VERY clear, this is NOT an advertisement, I was NOT paid to write this, I actually emailed Jeff to see if it was OK for me to write about his site.

If you want to checkout the site yourself it can be found at www.smoking-meat.com