Friday Routines - 1/23

It arrived in one piece!

It’s All Delicious is smoking hot!  I hope…

My Emeril smoker arrived the other day and my enthusiasm restored!  It wasn’t dropped or cracked and returning the chipped one was BAM easy.  I’ve read a few reviews and all of them have been pretty good except for the poor soul who must have had his/her smoker packed by the same person who packed my original one. This could add a whole new dimension to the It’s All Delicious kitchen.  I can’t wait to get smoking!

Part of me is beside myself thinking that the days of packaged bought smoked salmon are over but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.  Unfortunately sometimes my grand master plan projects go completely pear shaped…notice how I haven’t mentioned anything about my sad AreoGarden?  Still haven’t sorted out the pump issue, thank god there’s a regular supply of live basil plants at the grocery store. 

Now all I have to do is figure out what to smoke or what not to smoke.  My gut tells me it ain’t gonna be as easy as Emeril made it look.  To get it right I think it’s going to take a few “go’s” and more than a couple shouts of BAM.  The other neat thing about this new kitchen toy is that you can roast in it, use the top as a grill (like I need another one of those) or it can double as a Dutch oven...ditto to that as well.  

On another note there’s a fun weeklong event happening here on Hilton Head.  It’s more of a participate if you want kind of thing…an island wide restaurant taste testing week. 

Special menus from a huge variety of restaurants are offered and I thought this would be a fun time to start a restaurant review page…The Picky Palate.  I’ll take my camera, notebook and young adults with me and we’ll all review the joint of our choice.  That way, I’ll have a variety of opinions rather than just my view of things…hence the name of the new page.  Everyone seems pretty enthusiastic about it.  I think we’ll have some fun with this. 

I made Banana Custard yesterday and will post that later or tomorrow, after I run to the store and get stuff to smoke.  Stay tuned.

The lid is supposed to keep the smoke and flavor in...we'll just see about that