After an already busy year cooking up a storm, we were looking forward to beautiful warm summer days, long evenings and countless great meals this summer. We also started two major projects here at home which will make our meals even more epic. Check out my articles on building out a brand new Greenhouse and a backyard Vegetable Garden!

Nothing else quite like a full Newfoundland style Turkey Dinner.

There is no other breakfast quite like breakfast cooked on the Blackstone!

Roast Beef dinner complete with fresh greens (Turnip Tops)!

Sandy's famous stuffed chicken breast paired with mashed potato, mashed turnip and carrot.

In late May it was time to get our outdoor cooking appliances all shined up after a long hard winter. Over time they become coated with dust, pollen and other normal outdoor grime. I also had to install another warranty replacement control board on the Pitboss Smoker. This is the second failure and is probably due to it being stored outdoors all year long here in NL.

Leftover steak or pork chop sliced thin and pan fried with a little extra seasoning is always a great treat for breakfast!

Today I cooked one of my favourite BBQ treats, beer can chicken.

I used Franks buffalo sauce as a delicious binder topping it with Holy Gospel and Killer Hogs A.P..

The Meater+ Bluetooth temperature probe continues to work extremely well, it takes approximately 90 minutes to cook to well done, the Meater ensures its not overdone and never dried out.

Taco Taco Tuesday!

Moose Sausages, fried vegetables, Brussels sprouts and rice.

Today I fired up the Pit Boss Austin XL Pellet Grill to smoke another batch of black pepper encrusted applewood smoked bacon for Bassan.

Today Sandra and I tried our hand for the first time tying up a stuffed pork tenderloin. Needless to say she did a great job and it turned out absolutely outstanding.

In July it was time to make more applewood smoked bacon for ourselves as we were completely out. Unfortunately we had to suffer through store bought bacon for the past couple weeks and its just not the same, not even close.

Tonight I decided to barbeque steaks on the Webber while frying up mushrooms & onions on the Blackstone. This made for a lot less running back and forth from the barbeque to the kitchen.

It was quite windy today which wasn't an issue for running the griddle but the cover kept getting knocked down by the gusts. A quick fix with a pair of vice grips worked out great.

In August the weather finally cooled down enough to tackle a bunch of outdoor painting. The front deck, basement stairs and rear deck were in desperate need of attention.

It was a heck of a lot of work scraping, sanding and prepping the surface before painting but the end results show a massive transformation. Be sure to check out lots more pictures in my Backyard Repairs article.

Steak, hash brown casserole and a feed of muscles!

Taco Salad made with fresh lettuce right from the greenhouse!

On our Caribbean Cruise vacation in September I brought back this nifty little item from Bass Pro. It works with standard size hot dogs and spiral cuts them prior to cooking

I also brought home a couple spice mixes that I haven't seen before. The Yellowstone one while gimmicky is definitely great, but the Lawry's Lemon Pepper is simply the best lemon pepper seasoning I've ever put on chicken wings.

Another beer can chicken this time coated with my new Yellowstone rub.

Homemade Chicken veggie bowl made with fresh cherry tomatoes from the greenhouse and leftover BBQ chicken.

Today I decided to do a back to back test on four barbeque rubs I've acquired over the past few months. On the list was Kinder's Ultimate Steak & their Butter Garlic & Herb, BBQ Emporium's Gros Morne Coffee based rub and the Yellowstone rub we picked up in Miami.

I sampled them all and they were all great. The Gros Morne coffee based rub doesn't read as something that would be awesome but it absolutely is and is still one of my most favourite overall.

In October, Thanksgiving arrived so it was time to harvest some vegetables from the garden. The turnip were still early and not yet touched by frost but I hauled one out anyway for our dinner.

I pulled out a few carrots, again leaving most in the ground to finish growing. I was very pleasantly surprised to see how well they had grown.

Our potatoes were already out of the ground and drying in the garage in preparation for long term storage.

The only vegetable for Thanksgiving Dinner that didn't come from our garden was cabbage. All of ours despite being covered in netting were ruined by caterpillars.

As usual, we set up the pot to boil outdoors which keeps all the steam and mess if it boils over outside. Needless to say dinner was a hit, it was an amazing feeling to have been able to share with friends a meal made from our own vegetables. It was the ultimate finale of a summer's worth of very hard work and dedication to the plants in very challenging conditions. 

In mid October I decided to throw a pork butt I had in the freezer on the smoker to make some epic Pulled Pork.

In November I was running low on moose sausages and I had promised Dad I would make some for him as well since he was completely out. I thawed out a total of approximately 40lbs of ground moose and pork and set about doing four batches of four different flavour sausages.

If your curious on my process for making sausages and the equipment I use be sure to check out my article How To Make Homemade Sausages.

I started by thoroughly mixing together half of the ground moose and half of the ground pork, then dividing that mixture into two equal quantities for the first two batches of sausages. Dad really liked the sausage flavour kits from Outdoor Pros so that's what I made starting with a traditional NL staple: Honey Garlic. I mixed the recommended amount of seasoning and water according to the instructions then test fried a sample to ensure the flavour was correct.

My Princess Auto 5lb stainless steel sausage stuffer continues to work flawlessly making the job of stuffing sausages single handedly an absolute pleasure.

Little Scooter lending a hand as usual!

Next up was Mild Italian.

My favourite flavour kit by far is Wild Game, which is essentially a combination of Salt, Pepper, Garlic and Onion Powder. It's simple yet absolutely delicious.

For the fourth and final batch I took the Wild Game flavouring one step further to make Wild Game - Jalapeño - Cheddar Cheese moose sausages sausages. These are simply the very best sausage made, just absolutely awesome. Today I used fresh Jalapeño's and smoked white cheddar cheese.

Once cut to length, all of the sausages were vacuum sealed, labelled and placed in the fridge overnight to season before freezing the following evening.

Since I had all my equipment out, I decided to make a batch of moose jerky. This kit calls for two lbs of lean ground meat, moose being a perfect candidate.

I also got to try out my new jerky gun which made this process an absolute breeze. Previously I used my sausage stuffer to lay out lines of meat then flattened them out by hand on parchment paper.

The jerky gun with the flat tip quickly and easily laid out strips of perfectly formed jerky just as easy as laying down a bead of caulking.

I put the racks on the Pitboss Austin XL for about 55 minutes so they were fully cooked.

In December we took advantage of an amazing Black Friday sale and ordered up this Commercial Grade 15" vacuum sealer. This unit features a double piston pump which will create up to 28" of vacuum, and is designed for continuous use with no waiting for the unit to cool before sealing the next bag.

The big feature for me is the 15" width capacity. All other locally available sealers are only 12" which is fine for 90% of the work we do. Where this extra width will be helpful is when we place a full pork belly in brine and store them in vacuum sealed bags for 14 days in the process of making applewood smoked bacon. It's always a struggle to get large bellies into the narrow 12" bags, this set up will be a huge help!

Since parts for this machine are not available locally, I decided to add the maintenance kit to my order, this kit includes a full set of replacement foam gaskets.

The unit came with a starter roll of 15" wide bags, I also added another box of 15" x 50' bags.

Needless to say I'm excited to put this unit to work. We've gotten lots of use out of our old Nesco Vacuum Sealer which continues to work well. We've been sealing all of our own moose, moose sausages, home made bacon and more for years now. With meat prices ever climbing we buy larger quantities and vacuum seal meal size portions with that machine as well. It's an important and very well used tool in our household!

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2025 Michael Smith