Peepaw's Brisket

This week I was looking through a cookbook hoping to find Mother's banana pudding recipe when I came across a typed recipe entitled, "Peepaw's Brisket." It read as follows:

Peepaw calls this the GUESS & HOPE method for cooking brisket--GUESS at what you are doing and HOPE for the best! The acrostic was created by Brenda and Sit with in-put from Peepaw.  April 16, 2002.

Get a brisket--11 to 12 pounds feeds about 10 people.
Unwrap and wash meat.
Eliminate all excess fat, removing with a sharp knife.
Salt and pepper entire brisket.
Start fire in Bar-B-Q pit and place brisket on grill when coals are ready.

Have a spray bottle of water to douse flare-ups from coals.
Open lid of Bar-B-Q pit and check progress occasionally, not often.
Pierce meat with fork to check for tenderness near end of cooking.
Estimated cooking time: 5 1/2 hours.

The recipe brought back a rush of memories because it was created on our first big family gathering after  Mother's death.  She had died the end of March of that year, the Saturday before Easter Sunday, after several months of a battle with cancer.

When Mother died Daddy (Peepaw to the grandkids) expressed concern that the family wouldn't want to get together again since there was no one to cook for all of us.  Someone wisely suggested to Peepaw that he cook his famous brisket.  After he eagerly agreed to do that, the rest of us volunteered potato salad and all the other trimmings.  I'm sure someone brought a cake or a pie or both.  And, of course, we made sweet tea.  We gathered on April 16, 2002, according to the recipe, in an attempt to establish a new normal.

Sometime in the afternoon, before people began leaving or maybe it was when everyone had left, Brenda and I had the idea of writing down the recipe the way Daddy cooked the brisket.  I'm not sure who came up with the clever acrostic, but I hope I did.

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