I am anxiously awaiting the visit of my nephew and his friend tomorrow—they are on a whirlwind trip from New Mexico and are going to be logging a lot of miles over the next 2 weeks or so.  Chris and I were thrilled that he wanted to stop here and the really weird thing is that his mom, my sister, is also here!!!  Now we just have not had a lot of visitors here in Iowa since we have been here.  I can count them on 2 fingers.  Yep, in the 4 years since we have been here we have had a total of 2 visitors.  Our sons have not even come except for the summer we moved when Aaron actually moved and lived with us for the summer.  So suffice it to say I am excited!!!   I usually only get to see Thomas once a year, if that, so I am so happy that they are stopping here for a few hours.

I was trying to think of what to have for lunch that could just be easy and not too much fuss. Aaron has a recipe for BBQ that is so good and I asked him for it this time I visited and he kindly obliged by sending it to me.  All was well until I went to buy the meat.  The recipe calls for pork shoulder.  That sounded easy enough.  Until I went to shop for it.

This is what I could find.  A closer examination of the product showed more info on the label….

I was really confused. Was it a butt or a shoulder?   My friendly HyVee butcher was walking by and asked if he could help.  I told him I was confused.  I was looking for a pork shoulder but all I could find was butts.  What was the deal?  He went on to explain to me that it is the same….kind of.   Well, not really.  I guess they are changing the wording of things and where HyVee is calling it a shoulder, Hormel is still calling it a butt.   He told me that this piece of meat would work for my BBQ .  I told him that my butt and shoulder were not the same thing and hoped that he was right.  He assured me it would be fine.

I went home and looked up the cuts of pork. This is what I found.

It STILL looks to me like the butt and the shoulder are two different things.  Maybe I am just not getting this whole pork thing.  I would really love some clarification if any of you are experts on butts and shoulders out there.  Regardless, the BBQ is cooking away and the smell is inviting.  I hope it turns out as good as Aaron’s.

I think we will have plenty so if you are around and hungry Monday stop on over….we will make sure you are fed.   Will let you know how it all turns out!