Raising my Ebeneezer!

Hi, friends:

How many of you have ever heard the church hymn, Come Thou Found of Every Blessing? In the song there is a verse where it says in part, I raise my Ebeneezer.

Well when I first heard the hymn I didn't quite know what the writer meant. How many of you know what Ebeneezer means? All I'm saying is that I'm in 4th grade and how should I know? That's a pretty advanced word and I can say for sure that it hasn't appeared in any of my AR spelling tests!

Well I finally found out what Ebeneezer means only a few weeks ago when my pastor at church used the word in a sermon. A synonym for Ebeneezer would be cairn. Does that make it any more clear? Well the word Ebeneezer means a physical marker that you would use to guide your way. Think of it as if you were hiking and you didn't know exactly how you were going to get to where you needed to be. What you would do is look for a marker -- an Ebeneezer -- to guide you and direct your path.

Ebeneezers -- or cairns -- are constructed along hiking trails so as to be markers for you to follow, even if you don't have fancy technology to help you find you way.

Well yesterday I went for a hike together with a few friends and dads from church. We hiked along Barton Creek here in Austin. Because we haven't had much rain lately the creek was fully dry, but the bed of the creek was full of cool stones in all shapes and sizes. Well of course we had to take the opportunity to raise our own Ebeneezer. Here we are:

I wish you could have joined us on our hike. You would have enjoyed the fresh air and the get scenery as well as making an Ebeneezer with us!

But for this time I'd say, don't come and take it. We all need our Ebeneezers as markers from God to guide us at school and in our other involvements like our neighborhood (and for our parents needing guidance at work and home!).

See you soon my friends.

--James

Salmon!

Hi, friends!

So my mom sometimes says that eating too much red meat isn't so good. So as much as I love traditional barbeque like brisket and ribs -- not to mention steak -- I have to try different things. Last weekend we had some fantastic ribs, and next weekend we're planning to have hamburgers and hot dogs on a camping trip we have planned with our scout pack. So this weekend we tried the Cornish hen, and then some salmon.

I've tried to barbecue fish before. You might have seen my earlier post on the Drum fish. That was a bit of hard work -- you try working with a 7 pound fish! -- and this time I had a salmon fish to work with. I thought to keep the rub simple again, just some salt and pepper, with lemon juice and olive oil (the same as I put on yesterday's Cornish hen).

Here's me getting the salmon ready for the grill:

And here I am getting it on the grill:

And the finished product:

It was pretty good. Fish is good on the barbecue, and you can both smoke it as well as grill it. I was technically grilling the salmon. With some rice and caesar salad that my dad made up (from scratch!) it turned out to be a great supper.

Come and Take It!

Your friend,

--James

Cornish hen!

Hey friends!

We found some new things to try on the bbq this weekend. My dad and I picked up two items at the grocery store: Cornish hen, and salmon fish. The Cornish hen was smaller than chicken that you might ordinarily try, but what makes it so great is that it might even be a bit more tender and sweeter than chicken.

What I did with the Cornish hen was to put a small amount of salt and pepper rub inside of the skin, and then to use a small mix of lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper on the outside. It looked pretty good to add to the grill, once we got the barbeque hot, about 300 degrees F.

I kept the Cornish hen on the grill for about 35 minutes. Here it is once I pulled it off the grill:

And how did it taste? Let me just say, my brother and I thought, thumbs up!

Come and Take It!

Your friend,

--James

dad by the White House

Dear friends:

Even though this week is Spring Break my dad still had to work. He got to do something fun: a trip to Washington, DC. Here he is in front of the White House, for proof!

I wish I could have gone with him too. It would be a great experience to visit our nation's capital.

Your friend,

--James

back to some great ribs!

Dear friends:

This week is spring break here in Texas. So me and my brother have been out of school and playing around the neighborhood with our friends.

Of course we had to barbecue! Today I wanted to smoke some ribs that we had in the 'fridge. This time I made a new rub, a Memphis, Tennessee-style rub. Here I am putting together the rub ingredients:

Then I got the charcoal ready. I made sure to keep the temperature between 200 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Finally the charcoal was hot enough:

How does that look?

I left the ribs on the grill for a very long time, almost five and a half hours. Sometimes I've put ribs on for as short as four hours. Wow the ribs turned out so tender! I put so much spice rub on the ribs that they turned out a little too spicey however.

Y'all are welcome to Come and Take It!

--James

Drum fish bbq!

Dear friends:

We were grocery shopping at our local HEB and they had a fish we've eaten before but have never had a chance to barbecue. It was called Drum and it is fished out of the Gulf of Mexico. We've eaten it in Louisiana and it is pretty good.

So we wanted to buy one of those Drum fishes. We went to the counter and the smallest one they had was 7 pounds. Between you and me, that's a pretty big fish. Check it out!

My dad also had the idea to barbecue the Drum fish on our fire pit in the backyard. So here we go:

We probably grilled that Drum fish for a few hours. It looked pretty good on the grate on top of the oak wood and charcoal:

But I have to admit the finished product needed some extra work. It was hard to grill evenly, what with the very large size of the fish. We ate some of it, and then had a ton of leftovers. We ate some for fish tacos the next day, and then my dad took the fish bones and made a fish stock. Yum!

Come and Take It!

--James

Scouts Pinewood Derby!

Dear friends:

We had our Scouts Pinewood Derby race-day a little bit ago. I got to lead our Pack's honor guard to march in the Texas flag:

And I got to race my car. Here is the track behind me:

See you soon, my friends!

--James