MelissaH

Mimi Sheraton has a chapter on hospital food and other institutional food in Eating My Words, her memoir. MelissaH

Here's the post-mortem report. A good dinner was had by all. A little surprising, especially to me! I never did get my nap yesterday. The first friend arrived shortly after 1 PM, and by 2 I was back in the kitchen working on making =Mark's sauce. The shredded meat went in the crockpot with a splash of water, to be warmed. My husband made his Belgian cheese dip and guacamole (two separate bowls!), and I cut up veggies to go with. I also made one of the apple cakes from Richard Sax's Classic Home Desserts and, when that came out of the oven, recrisped the rolls I'd made on Sunday. The meat wound up moister than I had originally thought when I pulled it early Monday morning, and when the stuff from the inside got mixed with the stuff from the outside, the amount of smoky flavor was just about perfect. =Mark's sauce was the hit of the afternoon; we put it in a tiny crockpot to stay hot throughout. And the coarse cornmeal I'd used in the bread was a nice touch; one friend said the bread was the best part of the meal. We completely demolished the guac, and very nearly finished off the cheese dip and veggies. I liked the cake also, which is a good thing because it was really easy to make. And most of the right teams won the games yesterday. We have lots of leftover meat. Some got mixed with the tiny bit of leftover sauce, and packaged to be our dinner tonight. The rest just got put into one large container, and tonight when we're more awake and are not staring at a large mountain of dishes, we'll parcel it out into more appropriate portions for the freezer. I'm having visions of things we can do with it: as a base for stuffing peppers or enchiladas, into omelets, non-barbecue sauced sandwiches, alongside potatoes for breakfast... But there's still a phone call or two to be made, because I didn't really want to buy a cold smoker. So no, I'm not entirely happy with the performance, but the end result was fine this time. MelissaH

Continuing the saga: For some reason I didn't sleep all that well last night. (Maybe because I was worried about the hunk of meat quietly incubating in the oven?) I went to sleep at about 11, woke up at about 2 and checked the temperature (174, if I remember correctly in my current besmoked mental state), went back to bed, and was awakened at about ten minutes to 5 by my thermometer alarm (which I'd set for 190). I turned the oven off, pulled the roasting pan out of the oven, pushed the foil down a bit tighter, and went back to bed for 45 minutes. Then I put a cutting board inside a cookie sheet (secondary containment again) and got out a big bowl, a couple of forks, and a pair of gloves. At this time, I noticed that the faulty probe thermometer was reading 68 degrees. Which sounds like a normal room temperature, except that we keep our house pretty cool, especially during the middle of the night, and another more trustworthy thermometer said it was only about 60 in the kitchen. Something's still not right there. I moved the meat onto the cutting board and peeled the skin off. It was nicely browned, but pretty soggy from spending all that time under cover. I also was able to pull off a bunch of fat from right under the skin. And I started pulling the meat into little pieces, mostly with my fingers. It pulled pretty easily, although one side was definitely a bit dry. (I'm wondering if that's due in part to the brining leak fiasco, although I'd be happy to blame some of it on my miserable oven also.) I definitely noticed that as the meat cooled, it got more difficult to shred. By 7:30, I had all the meat off the bone and shredded, except for one edge that got really dried out and which I just cut away. It tastes pretty much like...ham. My husband said that it tasted like pork roast to him. There's definitely a smoky flavor, although it's not completely through the meat so I think it depends on what piece you happen to taste. The house still has a strong aroma of pig and smoke, but it's too cold out to open the windows and air. Also by 7:30, the roasting pan (into which I was tossing back all the inedibles) was cooled enough for the fat in the bottom to solidify. The bowl of meat got a covering of plastic wrap, and it's now sitting in the fridge until later when I'll reheat it. I moved the solids into a garbage bag, and pulled out my little scraper (a gift from my fellow dishwasherless friend Anne) to help me remove the fat into the same bag. A piece of browned hardened goop on the bottom didn't like being scraped, and bit me on the knuckle. It drew blood. I scraped on anyway, and got most of the goop removed. I put a couple of squirts of dish soap in the bottom of the roaster, put the rack in upside-down, and added hot water to the grease mark so the whole thing could soak while I washed the forks, cutting board, and other stuff I'd made dirty this morning. After its soak, the goop in the bottom of the roaster scraped away easily and I didn't even destroy my scruffy cleaning the roaster properly. Since then we've made a run to the grocery store for a couple of limes (and I'm sure my bitten knuckle will appreciate a squirt of lime juice right now ) and a few other things to go with the pig. My rolls from yesterday didn't turn green or fuzzy overnight, which is a good sign; I'll crisp them in the oven this afternoon. We also got some Portuguese rolls (on sale this week) which can also be crisped, for anyone who would prefer a sandwich a little larger than 1/24 of a 9 by 13 pan. My husband has cottage cheese draining for a Belgian cheese dip, and I have cukes, peppers, carrots, and celery to cut up as dippers. (Radishes would be traditional, but they didn't look good at the store this morning.) We have little potatoes, which can be steamed and smashed to go with this dip also. We have chips and salsa, and guacamole-making materials. I still plan to make the mustard barbecue sauce, especially now that we have lime to add a la =Mark. And I have a bag of apples that can be turned into sauce, pie or other dessert...or nothing at all because I'm really tired and ready for a nap about now. Should dream about that one a little. I'm thinking my next attempt will be on pork belly: homemade bacon, cold-smoked because that's what I seem to be able to do on this smoker in the winter. But not until after I make a phone call tomorrow. MelissaH

The chicken hit 170 degrees F, my thermometer beeped, and so I took the chicken out of the oven. (I never did get downstairs to remove the water pan: read on.) It cooked beautifully, and turned a nice brown, and I moved it to a different container so the pig could go into the big roaster. But as I started removing the meat from the chicken bones, I realized that this is obviously not my day. Part of the bird might have hit 170, but pieces of chicken meat that had been near the skin or on the underside of the thigh were dry and leathery while other pieces closer to the bone were slimy and stuck tight, obviously not cooked through. So nobody's eating chicken tomorrow, because I don't want to kill off even any Notre Dame fans. Back to the pig: I poured the schmaltz from the big roasting pan off, to dispose of later. Then I put the rack back into the roaster and took it down to the smoker. First, I turned off the burner so the rig could start to cool down so I could bring it inside for the night. I still had some smoke coming out, but had no trouble at all grabbing the hunk o'pig off the grill grate with my bare hands to plop it into the roaster. And I didn't even have to move the pig quickly, because it was barely warm to the touch. When the pig came inside, first thing I did was take the thermometer that had been in the smoker all this time, and insert the probe into the meat to get a gauge. The temperature reading said 176 degrees F, which certainly didn't sound right to me. My husband gave me a questioning look as well, so I washed the other thermometer probe, stuck that in, and got a reading of about 80, which sounded far more realistic to both of us. Into the oven the pig went, where it is right now. (It's been in I don't remember how long, maybe a bit more than an hour? and the temp inside is now up to 110.) On a hunch, I took the thermometer and probe that had been outside, and fired up the kettle. When the water boiled, I stuck the probe in and got a reading of 212, about what I'd expect to see for boiling water in degrees Fahrenheit. But when I put some cold water and a couple of ice cubes in a cup, let it equilibrate for a while, and then took its temperature, I got a reading of 113. I don't know what temperature scale that is, but it's not one that means anything to me. Tomorrow when I have both thermometer bodies and probes available, I'll do some more experimenting to see whether we have a blown probe, a blown body, both, or just a bad combination. And although this thermometer seems to do OK at the 200ish range, I'm now questioning whether I actually got an accurate reading of the temperature inside the smoker all that time: was it really at 210 or 215 degrees? Or was it reading artificially high all those hours? I'm frustrated! At this point I'm just praying that the pig comes out of the oven in an edible state. The smoker rig should be cooled down enough to shovel out the wood chunks from the firebox and move back inside for the night by now, and I still have a cooler to scrub out. I think I'll do that first, so the hot water supply will be completely recovered by the time I'm done moving the smoker inside so I can get a long hot shower. I'm also just hoping that I don't discover something disastrous about my rolls tomorrow. I can cook just fine most of the time, really! MelissaH

About six inches, I think. Too hot to get in there and measure at the moment. The biggest issues for me are not that charcoal is offensive, but that it's yet another thing that needs to be kept on hand somewhere out of the way yet not so far out of the way that it's a pain to get at and use, and that it's horribly messy. I'd hoped to avoid the need to acquire a whole separate set of equipment to use for smoking, but rather to maintain some overlap, like the propane tank with its multiple uses, and also the 54,000 Btu burner (I assume that's its output per hour; I got that number off the Web site) that has other uses for us as well. From what I've read, and from my little bit of experimenting on a friend's kettle this summer, I thought it would be easier! MelissaH

I should still leave something there, like maybe the bowl emptied of its water, to catch the drips, right? MelissaH ← Yeah, the empty (foil lined) bowl will make for a lot less mess to clean up. ← OK, then, I'm off downstairs to dump the water bowl and replace it.

I should still leave something there, like maybe the bowl emptied of its water, to catch the drips, right? MelissaH

Timing. I can put together a beautiful main course (cranky smoker not withstanding). I can do a nice side or three. I make a good salad. But I just cannot get them all ready to go at the same time, no matter what combination I choose. Even if I have stuff pre-made so it only has to be heated in the microwave oven, I still can't seem to get everything on the table together. My only hope is to plan for a one-dish meal, like soup with bread, where it won't matter if I need to delay things because the bread didn't bake as fast as I'd wanted it to. I'm sure there's a trick somewhere! MelissaH edited to fix punctuational error

I have somewhat better news to report. At about 4:00 this afternoon, I finally got the temperature inside the smoker (as measured on my instant-read thermometer probe dangling just below the top rack) up to 200 degrees F! To get there, I basically had to keep the burner on, more or less at full blast. I tried notching the burner down a bit, to conserve fuel, but when I did turn it down, the temperature dropped precipitously. The thing that seemed weird is that at no time did the top cover ever seem to heat up to the point where I couldn't comfortably hold my hand against it. In fact, even with the burner maxed out, it's downright cold! Today was on the warmer side: in fact, the temperature's been rising steadily through the day and evening and is now all the way up to 34 degrees. It was also remarkably wind-free, especially for Oswego: we had a little bit of gusting at about 5 PM (just as the sunlight was completely vanishing) but other than that, pretty much nothing. Anyway, my anadama rolls baked, and are now cooling. I pulled the chicken thighs off the lower rack of the smoker. Just for hoots and giggles, I stuck my thermometer probe into one of the larger thighs. (Couldn't do it earlier than this because I needed it for the bread.) Temperature inside the thigh: 80 degrees F. This after being on the cooker for over six hours. The chicken is now on a rack in a roasting pan in my 375 degree oven, with the thermometer alarm set for 170. When it comes off, the oven temperature's getting turned down (that'll happen anyway as soon as I open the door) and the pig's going on the same rack in the same roasting pan, covered with foil, for the duration. I'm hoping it will trip the temperature alarm by midnight. More disconcertingly, especially wrt woodburner's last post, when I removed the bird pieces, the water pan was still about as full as it was shortly after noon. This is telling me that although I'm generating smoke, and although my thermometer is reading a warm air temperature, I'm never transferring enough heat to actually boil the water in the pan. I'm not sure if an insulating jacket would help with this, especially at this time of the year, or if the whole concept of a propane-fired smoker is just a dud. I'm willing to give it another shot or two, especially if I can find an insulating jacket, but on Tuesday I'll be calling both the place I got the beast from as well as the manufacturer, to find out if there's something (key concept or actual physical piece of the puzzle) I'm missing. Here's hoping I don't kill anyone tomorrow, regardless of allegiance!

I'm very glad I did this today, not tomorrow when I have a crowd of hungry people around. I'm thankful for secondary containment. I love the sanitizing powers of bleach. Wireless home networks are good things. I think the wrath of the heavens may be descending upon my head, in return for Nice Jewish Girl Daring to Cook Pig. So, I woke up this morning at 5 AM, for no good reason other than the cat deciding that something was alive under the covers. Kicked the cat off, went back to sleep until 8 AM. My husband was already downstairs, checking out this week's grocery sale flyers. I stumbled down and asked him about the best way to light the burner. He brought it into the family room, and I sat the base of the smoker onto the burner's pot support ring. Yes, sat onto and not into. Turns out that something didn't get welded straight, and it took a judicious application of dremel tool and hacksaw to get the smoker to sit inside the burner enough to be stable. (While he was doing that, I lined one of our bowls with heavy-duty Al foil, so I wasn't being totally useless.) Eventually we got that obstacle bypassed, and screwed the regulator hose into the burner. We brought the burner and our spanking new full propane tank with the acme valve outside, added a bunch of wood chunks to the bottom bowl resting on the screws, put the lined bowl on the clips and dumped about 1.8 liters of boiling water (our electric kettle is Canadian, and measures in metric), added the rest of the apparatus, and went on a hunt for our long-handled lighter. After finding the lighter, we got ready to light the burner. Nothing happened. Eventually it lit, but it was acting like there was too much air in the mix and the damper adjustments didn't seem to do anything. We eventually cut down on the airflow by using a couple of pieces of masking tape to cover the airholes, and the burner finally lit. By then, it was nearly 11 AM. We kept the burner on for about an hour. Nothing happened, at least as far as smoke went, and the cover stayed cold. Eventually we got disgusted enough with the lack of smoke to pull the cover and middle ring off, remove the lower rack (cool enough to do with bare hands), take out the water pan (ditto), and dump the wood chunks out of the pan and directly onto the bottom of the smoker itself. Bingo! Within three minutes we had copious amounts of hickory smoke billowing out. So at about 11:30, I went upstairs to get the meat out of its brine, to bring downstairs. I also readied a fresh kettle of boiling water. First step: put away the clean dishes and wash the others that were waiting in the sink. Everything fit on our supplementary drying board, far enough from the sink that there would be no risk of contamination by splashing. Then I went out to the upstairs walk-in to retrieve the meat. When I opened the cooler on the deck, I was confronted with a pool of pinkish brine: the pig bag had leaked. Only the bottom half or so of the meat was still underwater. Oh well, no time to do anything else, and the rest was still shrouded with plastic so it at least stayed moist. I pulled the chicken out of its container and into a baking pan for transport downstairs. I then opened up the pig's bag, and removed that into our largest roasting pan, for transport downstairs. I brought both of those, along with the kettle and a probe thermometer down to the smoker. I dumped the water into the pan before the chicken went on the lower rack, the pig up above (thank heavens, the cover closed!) and the probe thermometer laid on the top rack next to the pig. After I closed everything back up, and waited to see what the thermometer would do. It topped out at (are you ready for this?) 86 degrees F. I think today, at least, I have a cold smoker. Never mind. I took the two pans back upstairs and cleaned them. I was also ready to clean out the cooler, but I want to do that in the bathtub, and that was occupied at the time with my husband. So I just dumped the brine remnants into the sink, added enough clean water to come up higher than the brine spill, and a good tot of bleach to kill any nasties. That's still waiting for me to get back to it...but it can sit until my husband gets back home to watch the fire. Read on. Then I got ready to combine yet more boiling water with cornmeal for my anadama bread. But when I grabbed the container, the lid popped off and half the cornmeal spilled onto my kitchen floor. Couldn't find the full-size broom, so had to use the whisk broom and its dustpan from the laundry room. Got most of it, but left just enough to act like ball bearings under my shoes. Didn't go on my butt before I grabbed a damp paper towel to wipe up the rest of it. Eventually combined cornmeal and boiling water; still waiting for it to cool enough that it won't kill my yeast when I add last night's poolish and the rest. About the time I came back downstairs, my husband suggested that I kill the fire and let the wood continue to smoke on its own. I complied. He also announced that he was going into the office for the first time since before Christmas, to deal with the backlog of e-mails. I came upstairs to start writing this. When I went downstairs to check, the temperature had fallen to 65 degrees and the smoke had quit, although there was plenty of wood. I fired the burner back up, and within five minutes the temp was back up, this time over 90. I've been running to check every two minutes or so, and as soon as I get this posted I'll be turning the laptop on. I think I'll either have to figure out some sort of insulating blanket, or just resign myself to continuous burner firing, to see if I can get the temperature up to even 200 degrees. My thoughts: I probably don't have to worry about not getting enough smoke flavor into the meat because it got too cooked too fast. So I'll just keep babysitting the smoker with the burner on, at least until the propane runs out. (Last time I checked, the temperature on the rack next to the pig was up to a whopping big 105.) When the propane's gone, the meat will get transferred back into the roasting pan, although this time on a rack, covered with foil, and baked at low heat until it's good and dead, and then allowed to rest before getting pulled. As far as the chicken, I think I might see if I can convince the grill to ignite, and finish those off on the grill. I'll also be making a phone call first thing Tuesday morning, to see if the manufacturer has any suggestions or thoughts. There's definitely a learning curve, but I'm not giving up! MelissaH

We're underway! I mixed up a brine consisting of 1 cup of very coarse Korean sea salt (weight: 7 ounces), enough boiling water to dissolve whatever's going to dissolve, and then cold water out of my kitchen faucet to make a total volume of about 1 gallon. I did this in a round plastic container with a yellow plastic lid, made by Rubbermaid, that I got from the restaurant supply store; I use a couple of others to hold various types of flour, keep one empty for letting bread dough rise (it's got poolish downstairs in the nice warm family room at the moment; the book said 70 degrees F and the rest of my house is closer to 58 right now), and have a spare for times like this. I donned a pair of disposable rubber gloves a la Alton Brown, took my chicken thighs out of their package, placed them in a "large" oven bag that I'd draped into a good-sized Rubbermaid container, and added about 6 cups of my cooled brine. I also sloshed about a half cup of brine on the counter, down the edge of the cabinets, onto the floor, and spotting my shirt. I twist-tied the top of the bag shut, put the lid on the Rubbermaid, and put the container in the walk-in. (This is the upstairs walk-in, the deck, as opposed to the downstairs walk-in, the patio where the smoker will reside tomorrow. It's 28 degrees F on top of the meteorology building at the moment, so I'm not concerned about things staying cold enough.) Then I took off that pair of gloves and put on a fresh pair for the hunk o'pig. My initial thought was to use the container I'd mixed the brine in as secondary containment, so I transferred the remaining brine into a couple of 8-cup measuring cups with spouts. But when I tested the still-wrapped pig part to see if it would fit, it didn't: too wide for my container. My next thought was my 6-quart pot, which is plenty wide. Unfortunately, though, what it had in width, it lacked in height, and about the top third of the meat would have been above the top of the pot: not so good for secondary containment. So I finally just hauled the cooler upstairs, bagged the hunk o'pig in a turkey-size oven bag, put the bag in the cooler, poured the rest of the brine into the bag, pushed out the air, knotted the top shut, moved the cooler onto the walk-in, and then put the Rubbermaid of chix inside as well. We do have critters in the area, hence the need for robust secondary containment, but I don't think any of them have yet tried to open a cooler that's been left out. My butcher had tied the hunk o'pig into a nice neat round, and I think I'm going to leave it tied throughout the smoking process unless that's not a good idea, according to those of you who have done this before. Next: fill a bucket with water, add some wood chunks, and set in the garage until morning. Can't just leave it out, because one of our cats is very much a water kitty, and I've cleaned up enough wet stuff today already. And I'm afraid that a bucket of water without much stuff dissolved in it will freeze overnight. Hence, into the garage it goes. I plan to leave the meat outside chilling until tomorrow morning. Then I'll fire up the smoker and let it go without food for a little bit to be sure anything nasty inside is either burned off or coated in. My goal is to get the pig on the smoker just after listening to Will Shortz do the puzzler on Weekend Edition, about 8:50 AM. I'm thinking hunk o'pig goes on the top rack of the smoker, with the bird parts underneath, as lancastermike suggested. The only thing that concerns me with doing that is height: this smoker's top doesn't quite dome quite as much as a Bullet does. So a little testing is in order tonight, to be sure that's possible. (If my round food-service Rubbermaid won't fit, I know the hunk o'pig won't.) I figure that if the meat is on the smoker by 9 AM, it will all be ready to come off the smoker by 7 or 8 PM, which means that I'll be in bed at a normal hour and on the day of the event, I'll only need to make up the sauce, cut veggies, finish the bread (poolish tonight, dough tomorrow, bake-off Monday), reheat the meat, and maybe do a batch of brownies or an apple pie or something like that. No worries about timing, and I'll actually get to see the football games too! Further updates as needed. Happy new year! MelissaH

I now have 10.3 pounds of bone-in, skin-on fresh ham in my fridge, along with 4.4 pounds of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. I also have the ingredients for a batch of =Mark's South Carolina Mustard Barbecue Sauce, or at least everything except for the juice of the lime that he added but wasn't listed in the ingredients. (Any of you who have made this, did you add the lime? I wasn't planning to go out again, but I could certainly request that someone bring some along. They have their uses, after all! ) For the chicken, I was thinking I'd do a rub similar to what I use on a beer can chicken: mainly a base of Penzey's jerk for pork combined with a bit of salt and some brown sugar (and whatever else I feel like adding). The chicken is destined for tomorrow's dinner, since tonight's plan is gorgonzola pasta with arugula salad on the side. But here's a crazy idea: would it be out of the question for me to put BOTH on the smoker tomorrow, assuming it all fits on the two grates? I have plenty of time to brine overnight tonight and get wood chunks (hickory) soaking now, and I'd only use one firing's worth of propane. The biggest issue: would the hunk o'pig be irreparably damaged by getting cooked ahead of time? That way there would be no worries about getting stuck in the dreaded temperature stall when everyone's starving and the Fiesta Bowl's long over. Is there a mystique about pig fresh out of a smoker (OK, fresh out of a smoker and well-rested) or is it like a stew where it gets better if it sits for a day? Is it appropriate to consider reheating any leftovers (planned or otherwise) in a crockpot? Educate me, please. MelissaH

Melkor, thanks for the vote of confidence. Snowangel, thanks for the link---I've actually been following for about a year, and it's what inspired me to start playing with smoke in the first place. As for the pictures: Here's the bottom of the smoker. I didn't bother to post a picture of the outside of the beast, because it's easy to see in the zillions of other pictures on the Web. But note the flat bottom, designed to rest inside the burner's pot support ring. The "legs" actually fit just outside the burner's pot support, and between the legs and the flat bottom, it's quite stable. Note the loooong metal screws, which hold the legs on, and the clips closer to the top. This is how the bottom bowl fits in, as confirmed for me on the phone by the guy at the place I bought the beast from. Its rim rests on the screws, which have no other reason for being so long. The wood chunks go in here, and the side door allows mid-cook access if needed. Here's the top bowl. It sits on the little metal clips. Water or sand goes here; I'm planning to use water. I also have an electric kettle to boil water quickly, should I need to recharge. And finally, the rack goes on top of everything, sitting on a different part of the little metal clips so it's not touching the bowl. One thing that's still a bit of a mystery is the heat diffuser. The guy on the other end of the phone was able to confirm for me that our disk-with-a-hole is definitely the heat diffuser. But he also said that the heat diffuser is a fairly recent addition to the box. He thought it might be something you use only when you want to grill rather than smoke, and that it wasn't needed for smoking. I'm leaning towards not using it at all, and hoping I don't burn a hole through anything. I am, though, planning to wrap the water pan in foil, to try and cut down on cleanup time later. Later today, I'll be going to pick up the hunk o'pig. We'll also be getting something small to try on the smoker tonight or tomorrow (maybe some chicken thighs?), to see if we're totally off our rockers and if we should plan to use the oven instead. We'll also need to get a new propane tank, because this beast has an Acme regulator (the kind that needs threads on the outside of the propane tank valve) and neither of the two propane tanks we currently own have those. I've actually been hunting for an adapter, but nobody seems to make them. Our current tanks both have OPDs, but one has an old-style quick-connect, and the other just has threads inside the valve. We have no problem getting the tanks filled, but they don't work with newer devices built for a newer standard. My plan is to brine overnight, probably in our downstairs "walk-in" (aka the back porch; it's now snowing!) and then start smoking (naked) early Monday morning. I don't mind sliced rather than pulled, if that's the way it turns out. (I can't stomach the thought of waking up any earlier than 6 or 6:30, which will give us about 10 hours before the Fiesta Bowl. My thermometer doesn't have a remote read, but I can put it where I'll be able to read it from inside.) I'm guessing I won't have a problem keeping the temperature in the smoker down, considering our weather. I plan to bake up some anadama bread (or maybe anadama rolls), and also make a batch of =Mark's mustard sauce to go alongside, since that's gotten very good reviews. Veggies and dip, a bowl of guac and chips, and whatever else we think of in the way of munchies for during the early football games on Monday, and am I missing anything else? I leave the beverages up to my husband the beermaker. Stay tuned for more details---and my ears and eyes are open for more advice! MelissaH

OK, so we (actually my husband) today put together the propane-powered smoker we acquired last month just before we both got completely swamped with end-of-semester school matters. It's more or less a propane-fired version of a Weber Bullet. (Why propane? Because we don't do charcoal in any way, shape, or form, but we always have a couple of propane tanks around, so it made the most sense to us.) You fire up the burner as needed to keep the smoke going and the temperature where you want it, but you supposedly don't need to keep it lit at all times. (We'll see what happens here in windy Oswego.) My wonderful husband had already dismantled the burner and taken the dremel tool to its inner workings to get rid of the burrs etc. that inhibit smooth gas flow and most efficient burning and then given it a fresh coat of high-temperature paint, the way he did for his homebrew burner. Today he actually put the smoker itself together, which turned out to be quite a job because the instructions that came with the beast were the instructions for a different model. I think I have most of it figured out, but I have some questions about specifics, since nobody I called was answering their phone today. Parts of assembly were obvious (handles, grate supports, legs), even without proper instructions. But I'm not sure of other parts. For one thing, there's one piece that we don't know how to use: a flat disk of enameled metal (I think), about 7 inches in diameter, with a small (1/4 inch-ish) hole in the middle and a slightly raised lip all the way around the edge. After looking at the descriptions on the Web, I suspect this may be the "porcelain heat diffuser" but I don't know where to put it. To me, the hole in the middle implies that it's supposed to be threaded onto something, but I don't know what or where to be looking for. Any ideas, besides just putting it in the bottom? For another thing, the smoker came with two bowls that are identical as far as I can tell. I'm guessing that one goes directly on the bottom (maybe sitting on the disk with the hole?) and holds the wood chunks to generate smoke. If it doesn't go on the bottom of the cooker (with or without the disk underneath), the door on the side won't be in the proper place to allow reloading if needed. The other bowl, I'm guessing, goes directly above the first bowl and directly beneath the lower rack, held up by the brackets that also support the lower rack, as a water bowl. Am I guessing correctly? The part that's really confusing me is that the Web site says the smoker comes with "porcelain coated water bowls [plural, emphasis mine], porcelain coated charcoal/wood chip bowl [singular, emphasis mine]" which to me implies at least three bowls in all. I'm wondering if the Web site mis-spoke, and we have the right number of bowls included. I'll be making some more phone calls tomorrow, hoping that maybe the place I bought the thing from will be open. Our plan is to pick up the hunk of pig (a fresh ham, on the bone) tomorrow, so it can get brined on Sunday, and then smoked starting when I get up in the morning on Monday, to be ready for eating by halftime of the Fiesta Bowl about ten or twelve hours later. (Backup plan is the oven, in case we can't figure this out.) Or should I plan to be starting this earlier than that? I'm not necessarily looking for a heavy smoke flavor, and I'm most concerned with being sure that it's completely cooked. I may also be able to post pictures of the beast (the smoker, not the fresh ham) tomorrow when it's light, if my descriptions don't make clear what I'm puzzling over. Thanks, MelissaH

*bump!* The semester is over, our grades are all turned in, and we can start thinking of kitchen again, at least for a few weeks. Looking back through this thread, I still kind of like the last version I posted of the proposed kitchen. We still haven't heard a peep from the designer we talked to way back in August. Either he forgot about us (in which case we don't want to work with him) or he looked into what we were planning to do with the IKEA cabinets, and realized he couldn't touch it price-wise (in which case we don't want to work with him). So, forget about him! I've e-mailed another designer in the area. This one doesn't sell cabinets, which immediately makes me feel a little better. We'll see if we can't arrange a meeting shortly after the new year, so we can get some planning help. I suspect we may be making a quick trip to Philadelphia sometime this spring, since that's where the good IKEA kitchen people are. Our new lights are mostly great, but they'll need to be relocated somewhere in the remodel so they don't cast your shadow onto your workspace. The kitchen cart makes a big difference: much more area than the old semicircular shelves. The glass backsplash is gone: in trying to remove it to clean behind, we shattered one of the panels a couple of weeks ago. We confirmed our suspicion that the glass wasn't tempered. And the faux brick is still really ugly. You might think that in the winter, the drawers and cabinets would work better. But no: we still can't open our utensil drawer without also pulling the cabinet door below open also. I'm really starting to lust after other peoples' dishwashers. My knuckles are cracking, as they always do this time of year. I'm starting to like the idea of a stereo in the kitchen, especially if it's something we can protect from gunky hands. I'm also thinking that an iPod might make a nice kitchen accessory, especially if we set things up so that the speakers project into the dining area. Definitely time to find someone who sharpens knives...or get a system and learn how to do it ourselves. Lots to ponder about the kitchen, at least for a little while until I need to think about my spring classes and the things I've never taught before! MelissaH

Aaah, love the pierogi. That's the sort of work that goes much better with more people around. Reminds me of helping the local Polish Catholic church make them for St. Stephen's Festival a couple of years ago. A couple of people in the kitchen made the dough in food processors. The dough balls would rest for a few minutes, and then get moved outside to the hall where the rollers would roll the dough and cut it into circles using cans. (I like your jar lid idea, though: it looks like it would be much easier on the hands!) The circles of dough would get transferred to sheet pans, and then sent to the tables where the pinchers would sit. The pinchers had not only the dough circles, but also the various fillings, previously scooped into balls onto paper-lined sheet pans and then frozen. The cheese and potato were both relatively easy to handle, but the kapusta (cabbage) were a pain because the shreds had a tendency to stick out away from the ball of filling, and get in the way of pinching. The filled pierogi went back onto a sheet pan, sent to a checker who re-pinched any that looked like they might not have been completely sealed, and then sent back into the kitchen where they were boiled and then fried. Most of them were frozen at that point, and on the day of the festival they were given a quick re-frying before service. The last task of the day was always scooping the next day's filling into balls, so it would be ready to pinch in the morning. Thanks for sharing, and I wish I lived closer to help you...and to find help for me! MelissaH

Just curious: based on the name, I've wondered if Ho-Hos (chocolate cake, spread with something similar or identical to the white cremey filling that's used in Twinkies, rolled up, and coated in a chocolatey glaze) were a seasonal treat at one time. Can anyone shed some light? MelissaH

The one I'm not quite sure of is mint with ANY and EVERY dessert. Apart from that, I adore the chocolate/raspberry combo (the taste of visiting my grandfather: those chocolate-covered raspberry jelly rings), and I also enjoy chocolate with orange (but it's gotta be real orange, nothing fake that tastes like something I once made in organic chem lab). Hazelnut and chocolate (with or without raspberry) is also terrific in my book, although not terribly original. My husband's enamored of chocolate with lemon, after tasting something like that during a tour of a Las Vegas chocolate factory many moons ago, but I'm not quite sure I'd want to try and duplicate it at home. One of my favorite herb teas is mint with lemongrass. I've occasionally made brewed tea into sugar syrup, and mixed that with lemon juice to make a sorbet. (This is one dessert for which the ubiquitous sprig-of-mint garnish would be appropriate!) MelissaH

I'm showing my geeky side here...but is there any kind of a kitchen vacuum device that you could use to put the jam under vacuum and just suck away the water? That way you wouldn't have the heat. (Don't know about other non-water components of jam flavor, whether you'd suck them away or if they'd be lost during the cooking down process anyway.) MelissaH Proud to be a geek!

Ah, thanks for pointing me to the workaround, Klary. I actually had a whole Web site of our vacation. I'm still working on getting that posted after losing access to the server it was on. Once I get it functioning again, I'll post a link here because it's fairly heavy on the food content. (I hope you don't mind that it includes some time in Belgium as well.) In the meantime, here's a picture of a group dedicated to preserving traditional Zeeuwse dress, dancing, and cooking in the process of making babbelaars. To make the candy, sugar, water, white vinegar, and butter (don't know the proportions) were boiled together to about the soft crack (I think) stage. Then the candy was scraped out onto an oiled slab of marble, allowed to cool momentarily, and then pulled by hand. The woman on the right of the picture was in charge of the cooking, and the man was teaching the girl how to pull the candy. The girl was wearing a pair of yellow rubber gloves like you'd see on someone washing dishes: a handicap to help the rookie, who hadn't yet developed her asbestos fingers! When the candy had been pulled enough (whatever that meant), the puller rolled it into a rope about as thick as a Twizzler, and used the back of a butter knife to mark it into pieces. When the candy had cooled and hardened, a quick tap with the flat of the knife broke the pieces apart from one another. We got to taste a piece each, and I remember it as being quite yummy, not too far from a Werther's hard candy.

I like to use the leftover poaching liquid to sweeten tea. MelissaH

Klary, This is one of my favorite threads of all-time. If you're taking requests: here's another one that dates back to our cycling vacation of summer 2004: Zeeuwse babbelaars. I'd post a pic from our vacation, but ImageGullet's not cooperating at the moment. MelissaH

You're forgiven. But should you ever find yourself in CNY, bring me a side of their hash browns! Please don't tell me you had your wedding in their castle along with your rehearsal dinner? MelissaH

OMG!!!! Mike's Place is less than a mile from where I used to live! It was always a favorite bike ride restaurant destination: I'd leave the house on my bike, meet the gang wherever we were meeting, we'd do our ride and wind up at wherever our breakfast spot was, and then ride back to our start point (if that's where you'd left a car) or home (usually in my case). I hadn't thought about their hash browns in about two years, and then you had to go bring this up and bring back all kinds of memories. Whaddya have to go do that for? MelissaH

Cook's Illustrated also did a pumpkin cheesecake where they pressed the pumpkin between multiple layers of paper towels, to extract water without cooking it any more than it already is and probably will further be. I've tried it myself, and it's pretty amazing how the paper towels remove water and the pumpkin pretty much peels itself off afterward, with very little sticking. MelissaH