I got the message to go over to the butcher and figure out how I wanted to get my beef cut up. A nice young lady went through the list and helped me figure out how to get it cut up to my liking, so it was easy to get it done.
It will need to hang for a couple weeks then they will get it cut up, so I’ll just have to wait a bit.
VA
As long as I had the time I drove on over to the VA place to try and talk about getting some treatment soon. Friday afternoon wasn’t the best time, but I persisted and got an appointment setup for Oct. 2. That’s a ways off, but they said to start there and hopefully I can get a canceled appointment later, so I settled for that. My corn problem is getting worse as now I also have eczema full body. When I eat or drink anything, it makes my whole body inflamed and it itches real bad for around 8 hours and is very painful. This is all caused by the corn problem causing me to have what is called a Leaky Gut, which is a hard thing to get cured of.
Costco
I needed a couple things from Costco so I headed for there. Not the best place to go late on a Friday afternoon, but I got in and out fairly quickly.
Nice day.
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I loaded up the firebox with some dry fruit wood and got it going to test out the smoker.
This was to be a dry run with no fish in the smoker. The purpose was to test my wood fire skills and to see how I’d maintain the fire temp and amount of smoke in the smoker box.
Fire
My first mistake was I didn’t build a large enough fire at the beginning so I put more wood in the fire box and let it get burning up to speed.
Amount of smoke
With a good fire going now, I needed to adjust the amount of smoke coming out of the smoker box on the right. I wanted only a little smoke and not a lot of smoke as to only flavor the fish and not turn it black and harsh. There’s a little too much smoke in the smoke box here. I adjust the control in the long pipe on the fire box to control this smoke. Of course, moving that valve also changes the temperature in the smoke box, so I adjust the air intake to the fire box.
I think this is about the right amount of smoke, maybe just a little less would be good.
Thermometer
I used this thermometer to check the temperature of the smoker box. I’m shooting for 150 degrees F. or less for most of the time. It’s ok to be below 150, it will just take bit longer until it is done. It’s also ok to be a bit above 150 as long as it’s not for too long, or the fish will just get done quicker without quite as much smoke.
And of course, one has to keep adjusting the amount of smoke that gets to the smoker.
It’s not an exact science and that’s where the art in smoking comes into play.
Flaking
It’s mostly knowing when it is done. The internal temp of the fish needs to reach 145 degrees F. The fish will flake once the internal temp reaches this temp. If you don’t get the fish to flake, it would be more like eating a smoked piece of rubber, or an uncooked piece of fish. You just kick the fire temp up for the finish if it still needs to flake.
Chickens
While doing that, I’d go for a walk around the yard before checking the temps again. The chickens where resting in the shade under this mulberry tree.
I spent most of the afternoon playing with the smoker so I’d be better at using it when there was salmon in it. I think I got good enough at it to do the job.
Smoke
This is adjusted pretty good here, with maybe just a little too much smoke at the smoker. I’ll have to try it out with some salmon to know for sure on the smoke.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
