Back to the Allotment Blues

For an all too brief time (like Norwich's lead over Arsenal this afternoon) we had what felt like the first day of summer today. Unless I missed it we missed out spring this year. We dashed to the allotment to plant our spuds, far later than in any of the seven previous years on the plot. Or rather the first lot of spuds, we have two more to do.

Not just spuds. A few beans went in, which like second marriages shows the triumph of hope over experience. It was a clearing up from last year day too, so a load of leeks, purple sprouting broccoli and Brussels sprouts were harvested. All of which changes my thoughts about the weekend's food, but then bounty like that is not to be wasted.

The tidying up included chopping down the last six feet of the pear tree we had lopped a few months back. I was busy with a handsaw for ten minutes, then a kind neighbour came over with his petrol-driven jobbie and had the thing down in about ten seconds. But I did saw up some of the trunk into smaller sections to dry off and bring home for the burner - and the new smoker. I collected a bag of the apple logs and logettes that had been drying in the shed over the winter with an eye to making some wood chips for the new toy.

Then it rained and ended both our plans to use the smoker - smoking food in the damp is apparently a waste of time - and the fleeting flash of summer.

With true male logic having a smoker means we need to do more fishing trips, to catch things to smoke, especially mackerel. They'll have to be local, as mackerel don't keep at all well. At the supermarket yesterday I had a look for the fish in case they had some good ones I could experiment on, but their stock had the dead eyes and skin tone of a heroin user.

What Are You Smoking?

I just bought a ready-made home smoker, wimping out of making the design I had in my head for a garden incinerator topped with a dustbin (both new of course) fitted with rods and racks. One motive is simply wanting to give it a go, another something of a V-sign to the food fascists, eating more than a single slice of bacon every six months apparently risking Death's instant scythe.

The third is my fascination, or is it obsession, with the wood for free from our garden and allotment. I have a stack of pear logs in the allotment shed, and in the front-garden wood-store a similar stash of apple wood. They were cut with the intention of burning them in our stove, but from all accounts they smell divine when alight and we would miss that if the wood-burner's door is closed as it should be.

Sadly the weather has turned damp and drizzly, not it seems the ideal for smoking food. But watch this space (if anyone is reading this at all) for reports on progress once it brightens again, and I have laid in a stock of salt and salmon.

FYI the smoker is a telescopic thing, supposedly good for cold- as well as hot-smoking, 29cm wide and when extended 92cm tall (if memory serves), complete with a rack, hooks and drip tray, not cheap at just shy of £100 but it is well-made. They provided a starter-pack of sawdust, which will be added to with our own hardwood stuff as and when, plus I intend splitting pear and apple logs down to the thinnest possible slivers and cutting those into chips, ideally not covered in blood from my fingers. A man can dream.