Cold-smoked Lox

Kevin loves lox (he's such a Finn) and I found an easy way to cold-smoke it on the internet with wood pellets, a tin can, a solder iron and your own grill. It's going to sound silly but bear with me because it works awesome. You start with a nice piece of salmon. Spend some money, don't go cheap. This piece was twenty dollars at Morey's.Plan ahead because the salmon will have to brine for awhile. I lay the salmon in a glass baking dish, cover it with salt and dill, pour enough water in to cover the fish, put plastic wrap over the top and put it in the fridge for a couple of days. Be generous with the salt, I have never measured it but I bet I use about an eighth of a cup of salt. Brine for at least two days, three is better.Now for your trip to the hardware store. You will need a solder iron. Buy a new one because you don't want lead in your food. Look what it did to Mozart, he was crazy. At some hardware stores they will probably carry these little wood pellets for smoking. I get them at Mill's Fleet Farm in the camping aisle. When the salmon is done brining and you are ready to smoke, find a large can and only open it at the top halfway. Peel the paper off the can, wash it out and pour the pellets into the can. Bend the lid so you can get the solder iron to sit nicely. Put the can on its side in your grill. Plug your soldering iron into an extension cord and place it in your can in the pellets. Put the salmon over it and close the lid of the grill. Pretty soon you should see little tufts of smoke coming out of your grill. There won't be a ton of smoke but that's not what you want anyway. You just want enough to flavor the salmon. If you don't see any smoke, readjust your solder iron deeper into the pellets.The smoking is basically for flavor. You won't be doing any cooking with this kind of smoke. The brining process has "cooked" it and killed any bacteria in the salmon. Let this smoke for about six hours. I usually have to use two of the little cans of pellets. Once the smoking process is done, bring the salmon in and slice it thinly with a large knife. You can get right down to the skin of the fish.I liked to serve this with little slices of pumpernickel or rye bread. You can smear them with some cream cheese and that's even better. Look at that! You made your own lox! It's a lot more work than just buying it but I get a whole lot more satisfaction out of doing it myself.

Garbage Tray

My brother, Lem, was coming over and he eats like a horse. I had a few snack things but as I looked at the table I thought I should probably have more food. But what? Even though Kevin and I are doing fine in today's horrible economics, you get into that mode where you know times are tough everywhere and you need to save. So let me introduce you to: the garbage tray! Now there isn't really garbage on here, I call it the garbage tray because I pull everything I can out of my fridge and figure out a way to use it.

Out came all the cheese and lunch meat I had and I sliced it up nicely and arranged it. I took the year-old olives out and put them in a bowl. I even found about two slices of olive loaf that I cut up in little pieces. I had bought a coffee cake the day before and sliced little, tiny slices of that. I garnished it with some cilantro that was starting to go bad, I just used the best pieces. And viola! I kept telling Kevin he couldn't touch it, after all most of the stuff had already been sitting in the fridge for weeks but it's all about the presentation. He just didn't know he wanted to eat it until he saw how pretty it looked! So if you are going to make a tray like this, just start digging in your fridge and pull out anything you can. If it can be eaten with your fingers, slice it up and arrange it, even if there is only a little bit.

I pulled some grapefruits out of the fridge and thought I should use them, too. To make this drink, I cut a grapefruit in half and squeezed the juice out of both halves. Then I mixed it in a cocktail shaker with amaretto and a little bit of diet 7-up. My brother's wife, Marie, loved it.

Lem and Marie left that week for Oklahoma. I probably won't see him for over a year. He just graduated college and now the Air Force owns him for many years. I hope all his big dreams come true!