The End Of Indoor Soccer, Cincinnati Zoo, The Perfect Pork Shoulder

The End Of Indoor

T’s first season of indoor soccer season is over. He really loved the experience and I think we’ll do it again next year. This is also the last team I will coach. I am going to transition my volunteer time to focusing on being Cubmaster going forward. Although B’s soccer journey is just starting too, he will go forward being coached by my good friend Rob as long as he plays for Independence Soccer Club. I’ve already met T’s ISC coach for spring and he’s great so all are in good hands.

I honestly won’t miss this, I felt the losses probably worse than they did and I look forward to being a sideline parent and not being so emotionally invested in the outcome. I also think T performs better when I’m not watching over him so I can give him more space too which I think is a good thing.

Cincinnati Zoo Visit

We had a wonderful early morning visit to Cincinnati Zoo. The weekends where I live are cursed, so whenever it is nice you need to get outside. We knew it would be gorgeous outside so we visited early in the morning, and glad we did because it did get really busy afterwards. I suggest early mornings, especially when it is cooler, and go straight to Cat Canyon. That’s when they’re really active.

We also lucked out in that we were there during the morning feed, so a lot of the animals were out and about. The zoo doesn’t publish these times, so you kind of hope you are there when it happens because that’s when they’re most active. In fact, I got one of my best pics of a Malayan tiger who came out to eat his turkey leg breakfast. We also saw a very active gorilla troupe too and that was great. In retrospect I really, really wish I would’ve brought my DSLR because I missed out on some great picture opportunities.

The Perfect Pork Shoulder

I keep working on my meat preparation and it is getting better. I do a lot of pork shoulder, mostly because it is so inexpensive. Perhaps I will try a brisket in the future because I’m starting to feel more confident. The best pork shoulder though should be cooked to 195, which is higher than the 165 you typically get pork at. There’s something called the “stall”, which is basically this lull in the pork shoulder for it to get up to temp. For some reason it seems to stick and then start going back up again and you just have to be patient and let it do its thing.

195 is the best temp I agree, it really gets the meat broken down and some of the best “pulls”, aka removing the shoulder bone, come when I hit this temp and I get the best feedback also. I’ll be making two of these for about 40 people at our next Cub Scout camp, and after the success I had at our Christmas Dinner with the pork tenderloin, I am really trying to get this right.