We’ve reached the midway point in academic summer, an occasional always highlighted by our family’s July 4th celebrations.

This year’s was a little lower key than recent ones. We had no out-of-town visitors this time, so fewer cousins, aunts, and uncles running around. It was as hot as it’s been any recent year, so it was probably good we had at least 10 fewer people in the pool this year compared to the last three.

Our family gathering was on Sunday this year. This was a big moment for me as it was my first time really using my new Traeger smoker/grill. I’ve used it a lot for pretty standard grilling, but this was my first true smoke. In fact, it was my first real smoke in at least a decade, back to whenever I got fed up with the idiosyncrasies of my old electric smoker.

For the holiday I first smoked an 8+ pound pork butt. I read a bunch of different recipes to prepare mentally. Consensus was it would take me 10–12 hours to smoke the pork, and I also wanted to do some chicken after then wrap up with grilling some hot dogs. So my plan was to get up at 5:00 AM to start the process.

In all that planning I forgot one thing: to set my alarm. Fortunately I awoke with a start right around 1:00 AM Sunday and realized I never turned the alarm on. You know how that goes, though. Even after setting my alarm I was waking up every hour or so to check the time just in case. That alarm went off as planned but I was a little wiped when I came down to take my fully-rubbed slab of pork out of the fridge.

After sitting on the counter to warm, it went into the smoker at 6:00 with the temperature set to 225. The smoker temp held pretty steady all day, although once the sun really got hot it ran about five degrees warmer than set. I spritzed the pork with apple juice every hour until it hit 160°, right around 12:30. Then I took it off, triple-wrapped it in foil, and put it back on.

If you’ve smoked you know the time between 145–165° is the longest time of the cook, as the moistures begin pulling from the center and fights the cooking process. That was the case Sunday. It seemingly took forever to get over the 165° hump, and I was sweating whether it would be ready in time for a bunch of hungry people. Fortunately once it got to 170° it took off like a rocket and I removed it at 4:00 when the pork hit 202° and threw it into a cooler to rest for an hour.

I smoked some chicken breasts next. Bone-in would have been best, but we had a freezer full of Costco boneless breasts that I decided to use. I always brine chicken that I plan on grilling to keep it moist. I just forgot about that step in all the other activities of the day, so the chicken came out a little dry. It also didn’t help that I kept the heat very low and then cranked it at the end when the chicken didn’t seem to be progressing. But it’s good with some sauce and we’ll have quesadillas and/or barbecue chicken pizza with it this week.

I turned the Traeger off at 5:45, so 11:45 of total cook time.

All-in-all a pretty successful first experience. I got lots of compliments on the food. The rest of the family added some tasty stuff to the spread and it was a fine family holiday meal.

I did have to take two naps during the day. One 20-minute nap after the meat went on at 6:00, and another 30–40 minute one around 11:00 because I felt like a zombie after the tossing-and-turning from the night before. The second one, and a Cherry Coke Zero, seemed to do the trick.

The rest of the day was solid. As I said, it was hot. We drained and replaced some water in the pool to try to cool it and that dropped the temp a whole degree. But the kids didn’t seem to complain. We had the five local nephews here and they had fun splashing.

Everyone was winding down in their own way well before our planned 10:00 fireworks, so we did them a little early despite it not being dark. We bought our standard, $35 at Target package of fireworks. That was good enough for the kids. Waiting for the year when one of the boys asks why they aren’t bigger and we explain how Aunt S is a pediatrician and hates fireworks and if they want bigger ones they need to ask their parents to take them someone else.

We had planned on having some friends over on the Fourth for another hangout, but Covid hit their house so that fell apart. We sandwiched our Sunday celebration by cleaning out the garage and power washing the driveway on Saturday (L helped power wash) and then cleaned out the pool house and added some new shelving to it on Sunday. There was a trip to Lowes in there. Exciting stuff!

Now it’s suddenly July 5 and I’m already thinking about making sure we order any new school clothes early enough for them to arrive by August 10 and 11 when the girls go back to class.