Made the best...

... of a bad situation. Sheesh. All week long I was looking forward to slow cooking a pork butt on Sunday. My wife stopped at a butcher on Friday and my troubles started the next evening:

1. Saturday night I took the butt out of the refrigerator to rub it down and the thing came apart. It looked like a pork version of paper dolls -- 5 different pieces of butt, barely hanging together.

2. Sunday morning I got up early and it was raining. Not a problem for the Egg, of course, but I wanted to hang out in the sunshine drinking beer. So much for that idea.

3. My plan was tie up the butt dolls with twine, but we searched the whole house and couldn't find any. Had to use wooden skewers. The thing looked like a voodoo doll.

4. Went to open the vent at the bottom of the Egg and several inches of the little mesh "spark shield" pulled loose and bent back. Had to cut part of the mesh off and now I can't open the vent all the way.

5. Got my fire going and when I checked 40 minutes later the thermometer read 75 degrees. I calibrated my thermometer two weeks ago, but it's obviously not working now. Not sure why.

6. Bought a new remote temperature probe on Saturday and setting a custom temperature target takes about 9 button clicks. It's ridiculous. I could live with that, but the base unit turned itself off every 30 minutes so I had to reset it over and over again. Garbage.

7. The probe defaults to 160 degrees and once the butt hit about 165 I couldn't even set a custom temp any more. I'd turn the unit on and it would just beep at me incessantly, "Meat's done! Meat's done! Meat's done!" Grrrr.

NOTE: I've done enough low and slows now that I was able to gauge the dome temp by the vent positions and how much smoke I was seeing.

I used an old meat thermometer and pulled the butt at about 200. Let it rest for about an hour. Surprise! It was awesome!! Best butt I've done yet!

8. My wife had several small pieces and promptly got sick. (She's had the flu all weekend.) So I was the only one who could enjoy my little masterpiece.

Ah well, I made a silk purse from a sow's ear. So I guess I can't really complain!