I've been wanting to move away from all processed foods and one thing I've been eating for 20 years is frozen burritos for breakfast. It might be weird to think of burritos as breakfast food but I've always liked them and they're convenient. Once I became poor (my current income category) I started looking at making my own burritos for cost reasons but it's really really hard to make them less than 30 cents each which is what I buy them for. Granted they'd be better for me and taste better but oh the agony of labor.

A few weeks ago I boiled about 5 lbs of pork loin with onion, garlic and some other stuff. Once it was just falling apart I shredded it, seared it along with some onion, added pureed roast tomatoes, chilis and garlic then Mexican tomato rice and black beans and wrapped them in a large tortilla. These were surprisingly good and have convinced me that it's worth the effort.

I'm not satisfied with the flavor of the poached pork so this time since I was home working anyway I put the loin in the smoker. It was also an experiment in how long many hours I can get out of it on each chimney of charcoal. I placed bricks from the front yard in the belly of the smoker, started a charcoal chimney of lump charcoal and using the minion method dumped it over a layer of unburned charcoal. I apparently choked the air down too much because 4 hrs later the temp had dropped below 200 degrees.  Lump charcoal seems to want more air than brickettes as the firebox was half full of unburned charcoal. I started a half chimney of brickettes to throw on top of the unburned lump and let it go. I returned from the concert tonight to find my smoker still at 200 degrees! Not bad, I replenished once in 11 hrs and the temperature never fluctuated more than 50 degrees always staying between 200 and 250. Next time I'll give the lump more air to keep it alive and see how long I can go without replenishing. Keep in mind this is all being done with a $99 offset smoker picked up from Wallmart. Ok so it has a few modifications but still.

Tomorrow I'll shred it, combine it with grilled onion, a little sauce, my black beans I cooked today, some roasted tomato and pasilla salsa, my classic tomato Mexican rice and maybe some cheese and throw it in a burrito. I'll let you know how it turns out. The smell is awesome so far.