Hilltopper39

Here's a great recipe for smoked pork chops that I got from Cooks Illustrated. I'm a huge fan of Cooks Illustrated, if you like to cook at all I would highly encourage subscribing to their magazine or their online web site. They basically cook a dish over and over again until they perfect the recipe and then publish their results, which are usually flawless recipes. They also do equipment reviews( that are completely unbiased since the publication has NO advertisements),and have a lot of great general tips and techniques for all kinds of things around the kitchen. Enough of my Cooks Illustrated endorsement allready lets cook some meat over fire! This recipe was written for a Weber Kettle Grill but it's pretty easy to adapt the recipe to the Green Egg, so here goes! Start with 4-6 bone in rib chops, the thicker the better! 4 bone in rib chobs, about .5-.75 pounds apiece Cut 2 slits in the fat, this keeps them from shriveling up when they cook 2 slits in the fat cap on the outside of the chop Basic seasoning, salt, pepper, and a little Tony's (I throw a little Tony's on everything! Skewered the chops through the meat and close to the bone You want each chop to be about an inch apart to allow for circulation of smoke I started the Egg using the same methods described previously in this thread before beginning the preparation of the pork chop skewers. I also soaked some wood chips and wood chunks (mixture of apple and hickory I think) for the smoke. The set up for this cook is indirect heat with plenty of smoke. After you smoke the chops to around 120 degrees internal temperature I want to glaze them with some sauce then cook over direct heat for a few minutes on each side. So to do this I placed my plate setter legs upe with a drip pan ONTOP on my cast iron grate so I could smoke the chops at around 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, then remove the plate setter open the damper and then grill each chop over direct heat for a few minutes each side. I soaked the wood chips and chunks for about 10 minutes while preparing the meat and heating the egg Here is the setup for this cook, indirect heat with the plate setter installed feet up, and a drip pan under the chop on the top grate. Here the set up in the egg, again indirect heat with plenty of smoke Lid shut, I regulated the temp to around 350 The goal for internal temperature during the smoking part of the cook is around 120 degrees. I was busy cutting up a pepper and onion and cooked mine a little long to around 135, but they still turned out pretty good! After about 45 minutes of smoke, and around 120 degrees internal temperature Remove the chops from the smoke around 120 degrees. The smoke really changes the color and texture of the meat (and adds a ton of flavor)! Apply a little barbecue sauce to each chop Sauce on all of the chops Tent with foil while setting up the grill for direct heat I had the plate setter sitting on top of my cast iron grate, so I could just remove that set up and go right into a direct heat cook. Some peppers and onions while the grate is coming up to temp Grill each chop sauce side down for a few minutes on each side until the inter temp is around 140-145 The final plate, let's eat ! Dinner is served!

That is a decent looking little FEC, too bad it's in the middle of freaking no where. I've never been one to go too far out of the way for a kiddie coaster credit but more power to you if that's what your into. Pretty decent looking steak, especially for an amusement park/FEC.

I'm kind of surprised that Kings Island has higher attendance than Cedar Point.

Great Report Scott, that canopy tour looks awesome. I did my first canopy tour in Jamaica at Mystic Mountain (the same place that has the mountain coaster) and wasn't all that impressed with it. It was fun, but I don't think I would do that particular tour again if I am ever back there. This canopy tour however, looks great! Looks at lot longer with more zip lines. Is this place open in the winter? Probably not, but that kinda of tour through snow would be beautiful.

Here's a few pictures of my dog, lexi, she's a 3 year old Shiba Inu. Being lazy as usual Go Cats! Taking up all the couch Lexi probably doing what she does best, begging for food

39- Tenacious D "39 Year old lady, young enough for me"

FTW This new ride is clearly going to be themed to Zalinsky Auto Parts.

Yeah I would be to, I filled out the survey and thought the questions were pretty darn generic. Don't really know what your trying to accomplish with this but good luck!

If that is indeed the general layout I kind of like it. Yes it is partially over a parking lot but the potential interaction with the entrance plaza is a great concept. If nothing else, the B&M Wing Riders visually are VERY impressive in person and walking right under one upon entrance to the park would be very cool. With the proper track length and right number of trains I'm sure this thing will be a reliable capacity monster, which is always welcome at Cedar Point.

Any chance they re-use some part of the Disaster Transport structure for the station/que line/ maintenance shed etc? A lot of times it's just as easy (and cheap) to completely level a section and start fresh from the ground up but some recent projects have successfully reused and re purposed old stations and buildings (see Verbolten and Cheetah Hunt). I would imagine a building as large as Disaster Transports could somehow be partially re-used to some degree, but we'll see what they do with it.

^^Exactly, and I feel like with a multi-park ticket you get more for your money at Disney than Universal, just a better overall quality of experience. Heck, the whole reason I used to visit Universal to begin with was because it was cheaper than Disney, that and IOA used to be one of if not the best theme parks in the world. It's amazing how much damage a little wizardry can really do....

And Disney announces their ticket price increases in 3.....2......1...... This. Seriously, I haven't been to Universal in 2 years other than Horror Nights, and at theses prices it's going to make it difficult for me to want to visit any time in the future. It's not that I can't afford it, I can, it's just getting to a point that I don't think the value from the experience those parks provide is worth the price they charge for admission. As for Horror Nights, pricing for that event is getting to the point that I'm one more average year away from skipping it altogether in favor of Halloscreams.

^ I agree with you 100%, I got a feeling when this project is complete that Fun Spot will end up being a really nice option for the locals.

That would make wait times for most attractions more bearable ever since fast lane screwed everything up.

Just curious, but where do these "legal limits" you're talking about come from? Are they set by the park's insurance agency, state inspection agencies, ASTM, IAAPA, specific ride manufacturers or what? And who enforces compliance with the codes? I don't doubt your logic (it actually makes a lot of sense) I'm just interested because I've never heard of a singular organization that enforces the same set of regulations for all rides at all parks in the world.

That's what I'm saying, a 1 mph difference in speed doesn't sound like hardly a difference at all, but I wonder if they had engineers ride it before the decision to add trims was made or if they based it off of calculations alone (or maybe the thing was meant to have trims all along). Just curious.

Even though the impact of the trims isn't very noticeable (according to reports) I wonder what the calculated difference in physical forces before and after the trims felt like. I saw some figures thrown around a few pages before opening about the difference in -G's with the trims that seemed fairly minimal, but a small figure on paper might have meant a huge difference in rider comfort. I guess what I'm trying to say is I wonder how much more complaining we would have seen had the trims not been installed? For what it's worth I think the ride looks awesome and is easily in my top 5 "want to ride" list in America. Complaints about airtime being too forceful is like saying a beer is too cold.

Thank you! The yard looks a bit like a swamp right now after the storms this weekend but it's a nice view most of the year (except the 5-6 months when it's too humid sit outside longer than 10 minutes). Pulled pork has turned into one of my favorite things to fix on the Egg, it's generally a cheap cut of meat that is easy to prepare and usually turns out really well! I love fixing 6-8 pounds of it on the weekend and having leftovers for the week to make tacos, salads, sandwiches, and pizzas with. It also freezes really well. I've got pictures of some great smoked pork chops and a Kentucky Hot Brown Pizza I did a few weeks ago that both turned out really well that I'll try to get around to posting some time this week. I'm getting hungry just thinking about the Hot Brown Pizza again, it was so simple but so flavorful.

This addition looks great and really gives me a reason to visit Legoland sometime soon. I know they were left over from Cypress Gardens but it's nice to see some larger body slides thrown into the mix of the family park. I know the Legoland water park in California doesn't have any body slides that big and if this park had been built from the ground up slides that like probably would have been excluded but I bet they will be fairly popular for some of the older kids and adults alike. Can't wait to see what they end up adding here in the future, with all of the cool water park technology out there these days I'm sure Legoland will has some creative projects up their sleeve.

Okay so I'm just now getting up to speed on this project, but it looks like the track is traditional layered wooden track with the metal topper track instead of the full iron horse steel rail system like on New Texas Giant. Should be an awesome attraction all around, really excited to see what this thin turns into.

^And thank you for that! It was a great location and property except during our trip they were doing construction on the Green Line's north bound track every night after like 9 pm so that screwed up a lot of our timing but other than having to take a few more cab rides we still had a great time.

I used to think that people that complained about the roughness of Arrow Loopers back in the day were just kinda soft, I guess Intamin Hypers are the new Arrow Loopers . Airtime is to extreme? Give me a break. What's next, Intamin pre-fabs are too smooth and don't count as real wooden coasters? Oh wait.......

Looks like you guys had an awesome trip. I was in NYC for my first trip in January and feel like I did a bunch of the same stuff you guys did, the waffle place, Two Boots pizza (HAD to get a slice of the Dude and it was amazing), apple store, FAO Schwartz and all the tourists buildings, saw two shows (Memphis and Spiderman), ate at Papas Frites (which is F*ing Awesome!), did Lombardi's and Johns Pizzeria (but not on Scott's Pizza tour which I totally regret), and based on the picture from your room I might have even stayed at the same hotel as you (Affinia Dumont ?). Looks like you had an awesome trip and it makes me really want to go back! Sucks to hear that Evita was just kinda average because of one performer although in my quasi limited experience in musical theatre that tends to happen somewhat often (looking at you Phantom and Jean Valjean). Hope it still tours because I've never seen Evita on stage but would LOVE to at some point! Also I don't know a darn thing about Newsies but based on your reviews I might have to check it out if it ever tours near me.

This looks great, can't wait for this to open along with the rest of Fun Spot. With everything in the Cental Florida theme park scene basically being multi-day destination resort these days it's going to be nice to have a "fun spot" like this stop in at for a few hours whenever I'm in town or passing through. Can't wait.

How was Evita? I've never seen it on stage but has always been a big fan of the music. I always kinda thought the Evita movie with Madonna was a little underrated. Hope it was good and hope it tours sometime soon.