What to smoke Wednesday (This is fine, everything is fine edition)

I'm really not sure I can remember a time in my Houston sports fandom life when I felt as gloomy about the future of the general outlook of sports in the city as I do now. I was 6 when the Oilers moved out (f**k Bud Adams) so I'm sure that was a similar feeling, especially with the end of the Rockets' run coinciding with that too, so I'm going to guess that's the most recent time of just "what the f**k is even happening" this city has gone through on this scale.

In other news, my plans to do a brisket this weekend have vanished as rapidly as our playoff hopes this season. My wife's grandfather was diagnosed with COVID (and doing surprisingly well for a 94 year old man who had lung cancer earlier this year) and her father, sister and brother in law are all on quarantine. So, considering our early outdoors Thanksgiving idea was with that group, it got scrapped and so did my brisket making dreams.

But, there is good news. My local butcher got pork belly in for the first time in months, and I swung over there and picked up a 4.5 pound slab as quick as I could. Going to treat it kind of like pork butt, get that fat nice and rendered then toss it in foil to break down further. Things are looking up, at least on my smoker.