Smoking Meat and ADHD: Lessons in Patience, Diligence, and Hard Work
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It’s January here in South Dakota, which means two things:
My smoker is covered in snow.
I’m craving barbecue food like crazy.
This is causing me to reflect on the barbecuing process and how much I enjoy it. Yes, it is time consuming and messy, but now that I have tried smoking meat, I cannot stop. In short, I love making good barbecue food at home. It is a major part of my life now.
At this point, you may be wondering why an ADHD blog is talking so much about barbecue. Well, I feel smoking meat has helped me with my ADHD. Here’s how…
Growth in Patience
In barbecue, “low and slow” is the name of the game. You cook your meat at a low temperature for a long time. Yes, there are some who cook “hot and fast,” but I have always done “low and slow.” Therefore, my cook times have always been hours and hours. The last time I made pulled pork, it took me basically all day. That was the best I had ever done at making pulled pork. My goodness, it was yummy.
What this tells us is that good things come to those who wait. In short, have patience. That is not easy for those of us with ADHD. We want what we want now, not later. Smoking meat has tested my patience, but I have overcome my impatience. I think the best way to grow in patience is to test it. Put yourself in a situation where you have to be patient. By forcing yourself to be patient, you will grow your patience muscle. My barbecuing adventures have made me more patient.
Increased Diligence
What is the hardest part about smoking meat? For me, it is maintaining the fire and temperature in the smoker. I use an offset smoker. This means I have a firebox where I put my charcoal and wood chunks. I do not use a pellet smoker. Those are too easy to maintain. When I am smoking meat, I have to be constantly checking the temperature in the smoker to see if it is in the right spot. If it is not, I have to make adjustments. That could mean adding more wood to the fire or adjusting the vents on the smoker. It is not easy to maintain the temperature in my smoker (mainly because I bought a cheap one), so I have to check the fire frequently. This takes diligence. I need to be on guard against forgetting about the fire.
Those of us with ADHD are not the best with diligence. We get bored of the details. However, when smoking meat, I am much better able to take care of the tiny details. I have increased my diligence through making delicious barbecue food.
Forcing Myself to Cook
DoorDash is so tempting for those of us with ADHD. Having our food delivered is much easier than cooking. I do not like cooking for myself, so I have to find ways of making myself cook. Where I live (Sioux Falls, SD) is a barbecue desert. We do not have many barbecue options, and the ones we do have are lackluster. (Now, there is a place I haven’t tried yet, so that might be a saving grace of the barbecue scene in Sioux Falls.) All of this means that, if I want delicious barbecue food, I have to make it myself. This provides me with incentive to cook. I much prefer cooking if it results in delicious barbecue food. The reward for going through all the work of preparing food and having a dirty kitchen is good food, food that I love. So, I have found that barbecue is a way to force myself to cook rather than ordering DoorDash.
The Value of Hard Work
When craving barbecue food in the winter, there is only one solution for me. That solution is to shovel. I go out my garage door and trudge through the snow to get to my smoker. Then begins the process of shoveling away all of the accumulated snow. It is hard work, and I usually need the chiropractor afterwards. But, I have freed my smoker from its frosty prison. This teaches me the value of hard work. To work hard at something is beneficial. It is hard to think about that while you are in the midst of the drudgery, but if you can remind yourself what you are working towards, it will spur you into action. When I find myself wanting to give up on freeing my smoker from the snowy clutches of winter, I remind myself of the end result. Yes, I would rather not do the hard work, but I want the delicious reward of doing the hard work. So, I invite you, dear reader, to engage in the hard work of your life and find the reward you so desire.