When I grew up (I can almost hear a collective groan as I write these words), my siblings and I had many, many aunts and uncles. For reasons unknown to me, we always called them by their first names – never preceded by “Aunt” or “Uncle.” It was Cork and Jeep, and Elmer and Leona, Fani and Rollo, and so forth.

Conversely, every single one of my nieces and nephews calls us Aunt Kris and Uncle Bill. We never discussed this amongst ourselves. It’s just that from the time that Erik was old enough to talk, that’s what he called us, and the others all followed his lead. The same holds true for all of my siblings. They are Aunt Bec, Aunt Jen, and Uncle Dave (well, that has mostly just been shortened to Unk).

Now there might be some variations. Erik calls me Auntie. Maggie calls me Aunt. Not Aunt Kris. Just Aunt. BJ calls me Anti (as in anti-climactic, which this post introduction is swiftly becoming).

Anyway, that has nothing to do with my nephew Christopher’s ability to cook. It just is something that occurred to me as I thought about my nephews this week. Christopher, by the way, calls me Aunt Kris – no shortcuts.

My brother David is a baker, of course, and a decidedly good one at that. He is also, however, a wonderful cook. He would likely purport to be more of a griller, but he can cook up a good pot of pinto beans and great chili. But he is a master at the grill, learned, of course, from our dad.

And, of course, passed along to his son Christopher.

Both David and Christopher are patient grillers. So was my dad. I tend to always be in a hurry when I grill, so my food is either undercooked or burnt to a crisp. Sounds delicious, huh? Christopher, like his dad, likes to enjoy a cigar while he grills, which I think enhances patience. I just don’t think I’m willing to give that a try, however.

I remember being over at Christopher’s house one day, probably for one of their kids’ birthday celebrations (they have four beautiful children), and he was grilling chicken wings. They were full-size wings, not cut in pieces like most wings. And there were something like 287 wings. That might be a slight exaggeration – well it might be a big exaggeration, WHATEVER! – but my point is there were very many wings. The grill was full of the little devils. I recall that he just calmly stood by the grill carefully turning the wings to prevent them from burning. He had his can of beer at the ready, because he is his Poppo’s grandson after all, and he would throw some beer on the grill when the flames would get too hot. The cigar was in his mouth, because he is David’s son after all, and he just patiently babysat the wings until they were perfectly cooked.

Like Erik and Kate, Christopher and his sisters (for this young man has three sisters, poor dear; for whatever reason, God blessed each of the Gloor siblings with one boy apiece) only saw his Nana and Poppo a few times a year because his family lives in Arizona. I was interested to learn what he remembers about Nana’s cooking, as I was with all of the boys about whom I wrote this week.

He immediately responded that he remembers eating Nana’s artichokes. That made me laugh, because I, too, remember eating my mom’s artichokes. Now, she didn’t do anything particularly unusual in cooking them; it’s just that I’m not sure we had even heard of artichokes until sometime in the late 70s or early 80s. My dad’s sister Myrta introduced them to us. Mom would simply cook them in water to which she added nothing more than a clove of garlic. But they were scrumptious, dipped in melted butter. Yum. I wonder if Christopher makes them?

Anyhoo, Christopher was given a smoker about six months ago. It sat unused up until about a week-and-a-half ago, when he dove in feet first and smoked a pork butt. He planned to serve it at a birthday celebration for one of his kids, but the party had to be cancelled. It was apparently delicious and he plans on serving it to us this weekend at the rescheduled celebration.

I can’t wait! Seriously, my mouth is watering and it’s 6:30 in the morning.

Christopher’s Pulled Pork

Ingredients
10 lb. pork shoulder or butt, or 6 lbs. pork ribs
Dry Rub:
¼ c. paprika
1/8 c. fresh ground black pepper
1-2 T. garlic powder
1-2 T. onion powder
1 T. or more cayenne pepper
¼ c. coarse salt
¼ c. brown or white sugar

Process
Combine the ingredients for the dry rub, and massage the rub into the meat.

Place the pork shoulder, butt, or ribs in the smoker, and let cook for 6 hours. This is what it looked like after he removed it from the smoker:

Wrap the meat in aluminum foil, and cook it in a 225 degree oven for another 7 hours.

Once cooked, pull the meat apart.

Nana’s Notes: Just so you know, Christopher awoke that morning at 4:30 in order to begin the process. That is dedication. Guess he will be doing that again this weekend. I’ll think of him as soon as I awake at around 8:30 Sunday morning.

His father tells me that the entire process takes about 5 cigars. Not sure how I feel about that. Well, yes I am. Yuck.