Firepit Cooking: Don't tell me this isn't barbecue

Even though it was rather hot yesterday, I couldn't get the idea of barbecued pork steaks out of my head. Since the propane grill is non-functioning at the moment, that left the firepit unless I wanted to turn on the oven. And I didn't want to turn on the oven. Firepit it was. Since I'm too much of a cheapskate, at present anyway, to spring for real firewood, I burned some of the many sticks in the yard the first time around. I was a little afraid I wouldn't have enough large pieces to get some significant heat and fire this time around, but I did manage it. I'm sure wood fire cooking purists would be absolutely horrified that I am just scrounging whatever sticks I find and using them to cook food. I suppose that there is a mixture of elm from next door, mimosa, maple and my mystery tree that is some sort of ornamental cherry (maybe, I've never been able to identify it).

Whatever the wood is I've been using in the firepit, it really does make food taste good. Since I was using so many smaller pieces of wood, I had a lot of embers really quickly so I placed separate foil pouches of potatoes and broccoli down in them to get cooking. I got a little thrill from seeing the packets swell up with steam; then I knew it was all cooking! Very exciting! (Yes, cooking vegetables gets me excited. What about it?) When it was time to cook the pork steaks, I gathered up my biggest pieces of wood and added one to the fire. I liked the idea of cooking the meat over actual flames and kept the fire stoked until the steaks were nearly done. After I basted them with sauce, I let the fire die out so the sauce would caramelize gently and slowly.

The potatoes and broccoli were both seasoned with canola oil, salt and pepper. I added garlic to potato packet and after the broccoli was done I splashed on a little lemon juice and dusted with parmesan cheese.