Prep Time: Special Circumstances

We had some luck fishing the other day so I decided to have my first crack at smoking fish. Bullet smokers like mine have a bad reputation for being too hot, but the way I use it with my home made smoker pucks this does not appear to be a problem in the least. I still have not installed my new thermometer so I do not know exactly what the temps are like in there, but I do know that when I keep the door closed my meats do not get an internal temperature anywhere near done, even after 3 or 4 hours of smoking. In fact, with the door closed I get a constant smolder without even having to add wet chips most of the time. And with smoking fish these low temperatures are required.

When I want to kick up the temperature to finish something off to a fully cooked state right in the smoker instead of on the grill, I just open the door and use a hair dryer as a bellows to kick up the heat. Of course you have to remove the foot first before doing that, otherwise you will get it covered in ashes.

A few days ago an old friend asked me to give him my bread recipe, so I did that and also pointed him at my video on Youtube. That is when I realised how terrible my video was, and decided I needed to shoot a new one! This uses my basic dough recipe, which is 600g flour, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tsp salt, one tsp yeast, 1 tablespoon honey, and 350ml water.

I've been using my basic dough recipe the last while and experimenting with different combinations of flour. The recipe calls for 600g, but you can mix-and-match it just about any way you like. I've been on a bit of an oats kick lately, so that has been factoring into my bread as well. Oats are very low in gluten, so I've found that when using 1/4 of the flour as oats, you have to add gluten flour to account for this.

The loaf on the left here is made with barley, and the French bread is made with oats. Here is the basic recipe I've been working with :

• 75g gluten flour
• 125g oat or barley flour
• 250g whole wheat flour
• 150g white flour

I've made cinnamon buns, a fair bit of French Bread, as well as regular loaf bread.

This recipe has made every person who says "I don't like egg nog" change their mind. Note that this is best when it is allowed to sit for at least 8 days.

In our house growing up there was always a jar of mustard pickles in the fridge, and they were always paired with both baked beans and meat pie, which were both something my mom made regularly. A few years ago I decided to make my own, and I ended up being extremely pleased with the results. The main veggies to put in there are cucumbers, onions and cauliflower, but you can also put in stuff like rutabaga, turnip, radish, and carrots. This time around it is just the latter.

After you cut up your cucumbers and onions you have to salt them and leave them over night, to draw as much moisture as possible out of them. I just put them into a food grade bucket and leave them on the side step since it is cool enough at night this time of year that it is about fridge temperature. Then the next day you squeeze as much moisture as you can out of them - either by hand or with a fruit press like we have - and continue on with your recipe.

There we go, the sauce is finally in the canner! This is definitely not a sauce for someone who does not like a lot of work since it takes a good 2 or 3 days to make. First of all, it contains a lot of roasted red pepper, which itself takes a good day of work. Though I roasted about twice what I needed for this recipe and canned the rest. Hmmm, note to self : I still have not written the article on roasting peppers, so please stay tuned for that. Last year was the first year I used roasted red peppers in my Pasta / Pizza sauce, and I liked it so much that I'm doing largely the same thing with a few tweaks.

The biggest difference between this year and last year is that this time around I wanted to use up some zucchini from our CSA, so I decided to toss a good sized one in there. I also have a 2 or 3 pounds of heirlooms tomatoes in there this year as well - just to use up ones from the CSA. I did not measure either, but I did measure another zucchini that was about the same size, and it was 650g. Heirloom tomatoes about 2 or 3 lbs - together after cooking it down for about an hour they made up exactly 2 litres of puree that went into the main sauce.

This year we were looking for a bit of a change in how to use up Zucchini, and a bit of googling hit upon this recipe for relish. A quick read and it sure sounded yummy - and now that it is in the jars I can verify that indeed it is! It is one of those recipes you have to prepare a day in advance since the veggies soak in brine overnight - somewhat counterintuitively so as to be able to get much of the water out of them. Of course, a fruit press like this one that my wife bought me for Christmas a few years ago helps in that goal too, but you can do it the old fashioned way by squeezing handfuls of the mixture.

For chopping the veggies I used a manual food processor with a crank handle on top. We hadn't used it in years mainly because it had gotten put away somewhere out of view, but when my wife was going to sell it at a yard sale in the spring I set it aside because I knew I'd use it again. It made fairly quick work of the veggies as long as I only about half filled it. The zucchini alone was literally about the size of my leg from the knee down! I did a double batch of this recipe.

We were at Costco yesterday and I was looking at some of the various BBQ sauces they had in stock, trying to decide between Tony Roma's, Bull's Eye Original, and some other "Kansas City Style" that I'd never heard of before. I wrote off the last one pretty easily because I wasn't even aware that Kansas City had its own style of BBQ sauce, but I was familiar with both of the other two and really like them both. Oh decisions, decisions.

Then it struck me - what the heck do I need to buy this stuff for? Surely I can make something every bit as good as these! I took a quick look at the ingredients and agreed with myself that yes, indeed I could do as well! Though I had not the slightest clue at that moment exactly how.

We made our way back home, and around noon my wife got called into work unexpectedly. Shortly after she left I had an epiphany! We had all sorts of pickles of various sorts in the basement - stuff we'd canned up over the last several years. I was betting that some combination of those with a good tomato base would be awesome! Little did I realise at the time just how right I was! The base for most BBQ sauces is sweet on the one hand, and vinegar/sour on the other hand. This is also the base for most home pickles!

I started doing this a little over a year ago when I tried bining my bird for the first time at Thanksgiving. And I liked it so much I keep doing it, whether I'm deep frying the bird as I was back then, or roasting it in the oven the old fashioned way. In fact, I've since done a lot of different meats brined, and they are absolutely terrific! Salt's basic function in food is a flavour enhancer, so in controlled amounts it can be very beneficial in the overall enjoyment of a meal. And as the salt gets drawn into the meat, it takes with it some of the rest of the herbs, spices and sugars that are dissolved in the solution, so be creative but at the same time use caution with ingredients like pepper, and spicy ingredients and when in doubt use less the first time. But onions, garlic and many herbs like oregano and the likes would be pretty difficult to have too much of.

Mix the lower amount of salt in this recipe for a light brine that even at a 24 hour soak will probably not be a "sodium explosion" for anyone who otherwise knows where the sodium in their diet is coming from. For me, I just don't worry about it since I don't eat any packaged foods at all, so the only salt I get is direct. Or most of it anyway - the bakery certainly puts salt in the bread we buy.

For people like my wife who are actually under doctor's orders to get more salt in their diets, use a full brine for 48 hours to make meat for stews and boiled dinners.

It's canning time again! Yesterday we were supposed to go over to friends' place for supper, but Melissa and I ended up sick (she a lot worse than I) and so yesterday morning we unfortunately had to cancel. After I had a few cups of coffee into me, I decided I wasn't going to let the day go to waste, and headed down to the end of the street to the farmer's market to pick up a bushel of roma (plum) tomatoes. I figured if I was going to be cooped up in the house all day feeling crummy, the very least I could do was something useful. And canning always makes me feel better.

I started processing the tomatoes before I actually knew what I was going to do with them. At that point my head was pretty thick (and no, not from beer for a change) and all I knew was that I needed to put down some form of tomato. I just wasn't sure which form. Pretty much no matter what you do, you have to plunge them in boiling water for 1 or 2 minutes, peel the skin off, cut them open, scoop out the goop from the little chambers, then boil down the flesh. How much you boil it down depends on what you are making. If just canning tomatoes, you just boil it a half hour or so. If making pasta sauce, you have to boil to half it's volume which takes a heck of a long time especially in a big pot with a smallish surface area.