Ever since we moved here, almost five years ago, there's one of those GFI outlets that would sometimes work and sometimes not work. I would plug the smoker in, wait for it to get hot, put the meat in, walk away, come back in an hour to check on it and it was off. After a while, it got to where it wouldn't work at all so when I wanted to use the smoker, Vince would bring a long heavy duty extension cord from the shop, plug it into the smoker, drop the cord down to the patio below the deck and plug it in down there. So, any time I wanted to smoke meat, I had to have Vince bring the big cord from the shop.
We've had these ribs out for a few days. I knew that Vince didn't want to deal with dropping that cord down to the patio and having it plugged in down there if it was raining so I've been putting it off.
Today I figured I was going to have to roast the ribs in the oven because it was raining off and on - drizzling mostly. I told Vince . . I'm going to cook those ribs in the oven so we don't have to use that extension cord in the rain. He said "The outlet has been changed and it works now!" Huh? We have a couple of Mennonite guys that we can get out here every now and then to do some work. They've been here fairly often recently - they put a metal roof on the patio after the hail storm. We had shingles but I had originally wanted metal so after the hail damage, Vince decided to put metal so they did that. They changed out the French doors in the sewing room on another trip but I forgot that they came and replaced the outside outlets that had not been working since we had a lightning strike and while they were here, Vince had them replace all the GFI outlets on the outside of the house. I knew they had changed the outlets that were struck by lightning but I forgot they changed the others.
I said "You mean I could have been smoking chicken all this time?" Yep! I love to smoke a chicken, eat it one day and then make chicken salad with the leftovers.
Tomorrow I will take a chicken out of the freezer, put it in the fridge to defrost and Tuesday I'll smoke that. Smoked chicken salad with grapes and celery and boiled egg . . yum!
Just when I got ready to get the smoker going, it started raining! We've had the smoker since about 2004 or 2005 and I don't think it's ever been rained on. The only places we've lived where we didn't have a covered porch were both houses in MO. In Nevada, MO, we kept it in the garage and pulled it out to use it. Here, it sits covered on the back deck and we've only used it on sunny days . . til today.
I didn't want rain going down the hole that vents the smoke so I covered the top of a metal colander with aluminum foil, and set a heavy can on top to keep it from blowing off. It worked like a champ.
I'm so happy to know I can plug the smoker in now without having to bother Vince to help me.
