Traded A Benjamin For A New Mini, Saved A Dog, And Made A Greek Pork Loin

I came across a new mini egg on Craigslist for a Benjamin. I couldn't pass on it for the price. The previous owner must have won the egg as the thermometer has 3M (Minnesota company) printed on the dial. She had no use for it and brought it out to her brother's farm as he is a part time metal scrapper. Her brother soon found out that it doesn't have any scrap metal value to it and put it off to the side. He got sick of walking around it and posted it on Craigslist. He said that he had one guy come out and look at it but passed because the firebox was cracked. Score for me as I know it isn't an issue. (I'm guessing it cracked during transport.) The guy mentioned that he had 10 other people call on it after talking with me. The person who assembled it must have been drunk. The handle was upside down and the lid opened sideways to where the lower vent was located. Easy fixes.

The scrapper must have kept the daisy wheel outside the egg when stored outdoors. The daisy wheel was coated with rust. So I took the weed torch to it since I was impatient and didn't want to wait and throw it into the lump after the first cook.Since I cleaned up the daisy wheel I went ahead and replaced the rusted washers on the band with stainless.


Before I had a chance to light the mini for the first time my wife and I picked up a 4 month old rescue puppy. Apparently they found this litter in a box along the side of the highway down in Alabama. What I've been told is that the South has dog issues. With so many abandoned dogs in the South, the shelter that they were brought to didn't have any room for them, so the litter was set to be euthanized with the lack of space. A non-profit animal group drove these puppies up to a place called Spot's Last Stop here in the Twin Cities. My wife has been begging me to get a dog since we bought our house 5 years ago. I've somehow got out of it each time she asked. Finally I thought to myself, why the hell not. Let's do it. My wife and I made a pact that we would just go and visit the dog at its foster familie's house and not make any irrational decision when there. Well... you can only guess how that pact worked. We left with a puppy. I've never owned a dog or grown up with one. This is completely new to me. Fortunately, my wife has. The past couple weeks with him have been great. We named him Bo and he's just about the most mellow puppy I've ever been around. He's part lab and not really sure what else since he's a rescue. We think the other part could possibly be German Shepherd. We might get him tested to see what he has in him as tests are more reasonable in price nowadays. So a lot of my time has been with him lately. We are working on training him. Sitting, laying down, shaking, and speaking can wait. He needs to realize how an egg works. It takes patience with low and slow. So I put his half eaten pig on the mini to learn the correct steps.

Stage 1: Prepping 


Stage 2: The wait. Just letting the egg do its thing. No peeking

Stage 3: Pull off the egg

Since I took the back seat to the dog and the egg I finally had a chance to make my own grub. I did a Greek Stuffed Pork Loin. Took a few pics along the way:

I just finished up a glass of whiskey with the dog sleeping at my feet. No complaints...yet