Recently in smokin Category

it's silly but it works, and it works damned well.

i haven't been a cigar smoker for long, and even now it's only one a week at most (hi mom!). when i started i got myself a high quality (supposedly) but free lighter as part of a package deal. it never worked well. i also bought a pipe lighter, which didn't work well. plus another one, which totally failed to work, so i returned it. but my cigar lighter can't be returned any more, and the maker wants me to pay for expensive shipping to have it repaired under warranty. it doesn't make sense to pay for a repair to a free lighter. so i resolved to use a match.

but then, the pastry lighter was out and about, for some reason. i bought it years ago for browning the top of a crock of french onion soup, but then i stopped making french onion soups.

so when cigar club rolled around, and spu's lighter failed to light, i whipped out the pastry torch and passed it around.

we all agreed it was the best cigar lighter we'd ever tried. score one for repurposing!

i highly recommend "up in smoke" over "american me".

after "american me", the "frisking the nuns" scene in "up in smoke" is perhaps a little less funny, but at least you can eat during "up in smoke" and not throw up.

to dopealope for the incredible hospitality this long weekend.

i say "basically public" because only 3 people read this crap, and only dopealope comments on it...

anyhow, thanks, that was awesome, and here's a little thank you link:

a little thank you link.

for the rest of you, hops and i spent the weekend in slo, with one minor bike ride for exercise and baked goods, one trivial bike ride to retrieve a car left overnight at a restaurant because nobody was sober enough to drive it, one respectable 32 miler through wine country, and a quick flip-flop/barefoot hike up to the top of bishop's peak.

i'm ashamed to say that i've never hiked bishop's peak until now, but having waited this long, at least i did it in style, which is to say, covered in dirt, largely barefoot, and swathed in a bitchin sweat soaked linen shirt.

though i'd hardly call directv "functional", we did watch more tv than expected this weekend, including marathons of TNG, BSG, and I Love Lucy. It's ridiculously difficult to find anything to watch on directv, unless there's some trick I've missed, and hops and i were stunned at the number of commercial interruptions. still, the atmosphere didn't seem right for reading, especially at 3am when an after-lunch espresso woke me up.

on the way out of town we stopped at the splash cafe where i was shat upon by a bird. seeing the drop of yellow turd on my arm, i turned to the folks at the next table and said, "i think you squirted me with some mustard from your sandwich!" hops said it was more likely bird crap than mustard, and my optimistic illusions were then shattered. i honestly had thought it was mustard. i am still pretty sure that's what it was.

anyhow, after wiping the mustard off my arm, we plowed through a clam chowder bread bowl with seafood topping, calamari (undercooked, yecch) and chips, smoked salmon tacos, and a whole lot of lemonade. that was actually one of the larger meals of the weekend, and i enjoyed it all the way back home in the car, thanks to the chowder burps.

on hops demand, we went to pismo beach saturday afternoon. i warned her that the water would be cold, and feel three times as cold as it actually was since the memory of the caribbean was so fresh in our minds. i sure was right. i don't remember the california pacific being so cold, but then, i haven't been in it in a decade, probably because it's so frigging cold. 30 minutes later we were acclimated and had a fine time, but it's still no comparison to the caribbean, and the beach was crowded with people, dogs, lifeguards, and vehicles, in stark contrast to the near-deserted beaches of martinique.

anyhow, i can't go comparing every place i go to martinique, that's just not fair.

we had a fantastic weekend, and though tomorrow we must go to work, it's good to be back. i think. we'll see.

i had a pretty good cigar today, a la aurora maduro in torpedo shape. it was also a "ruby", which is a good omen for me, being the name of both a departed dear relative and my preferred programming language. i've had this cigar before, though not in this form factor. eventually i'll get around to trying the connecticut wrapper, upon which i should have insisted today.

in my rather limited experience, the hallmark of a good cigar is that it is enjoyed mainly hours later, in tantalizing hints of savory memory; flashes of real or remembered flavor bringing the mind back to the earlier experience. i do not find this to happen with pipe tobacco. in this sense, it was a great cigar. the company wasn't bad, either.

it's been about 2 weeks since i've played a video game. the reason is simple: the in-laws are here. even when they're out for a bit, i can't get into the frame of mind that i need to enjoy gaming. that is, i can't immerse myself in the game knowing i'll be interrupted at any moment. and one thing that my mother, hops' parents, and hops herself all have in common: they do not understand that many/most parts of a game are non-repeatable, and when you talk over them, especially to tell me about how you just discovered some wonderful new piece of lint in your belly button, or whatever thing it is that could wait an extra 30 seconds until Link stops talking (ha ha ha, link never talks, but you get the idea), I will miss an important bit of plot development (frequently, in a game where plot developments are few and far between), and I will probably get upset. especially if you interrupt me during a metal gear cutscene (ha ha ha, no really, wake me up when it's over).

besides the interruption of the cutscenes, the talking over important dialogue, and the peering-over-my-shoulder feeling, i just don't really like to game when someone else is in the room. it feels anti-social, and clearly, i have no anti-social tendencies.

Anyhow, so to pass the time I've cleaned out my office closet, laced up and used my new climbing shoes, fixed up my bike a little (but alas, not enough, it seems), finally put the cleats on my new carnacs (even though it seems the cleat receivers have been lost? or did I just not get any? i don't know, they still work well enough), brewed a lot of japanese tea, and returned to pipe smoking.

the return to pipe smoking, in particular, has been a great success. i am tasting the tobacco far more intensely, and appreciating a much larger range of flavors in each smoke. i have several guesses as to why this is so:

1) i no longer drink coffee. i suspect that coffee was deadening my sense of taste.
2) i drink lots of tea and pay very close attention to the flavors. i think this attunes my brainses to paying attention to flavor details. now, i did this before with coffee, but i drank coffee only once a day versus continually throughout the day for tea. i also usually paid close attention when smoking. this point may be moot.
3) i'm only smoking once or twice a week.
4) i took a 3 month break from smoking.
5) i'm smoking out of the same pipe each time, and it happens to be my most high-end pipe.
6) i haven't smoked anything with latakia, only Va, VaPer, and VaOr blends.

as a science-minded person, i'm intensely curious to know why tobaccos seem so much more flavorful of late. as a lazy person, i won't bother to set up an experiment.

i contracted with an award winning photographer to snap some photos of my new pipe. here it is:

and here it is with extra chins:

it's actually bigger than i was expecting (though it looks small profiled against so many chins), and while i don't think it reaches the level of perfection of my other dal fiume, i also paid a lot less for it. i have noticed something about my smoking habits: my favored tobacco category flip-flops when i buy a dal fiume. witness:

going into chicago, my favorite tobacco style was straight virginia, or virginia/perique blends. i bought my first dal fiume from the man himself, intending to use it for Va and Va/Per blends. I smoked a couple such bowls in it, then didn't touch it for 3 months, having switched almost entirely to english blends.

Then I realized that I didn't have a nice Dal Fiume pipe for English blends, so I bought this new one for exactly that, smoked one nice English blend in it, and then promptly switched back over to Va and Va/Oriental blends. I call this the sainttoad Dal Fiume paradox.

i made a promise the other day: i won't buy any pipe that costs more in dollars than i can deadlift in pounds.

that settled, i decided to buy a dal fiume that had been offered on marty's site for far too long. marty, who is more or less local for me, made me a bitchin deal that kept the cost under my deadlift.

so now i'm the proud owner of two dal fiume pipes, one for english blends, one for the rest.

out on the porch enjoying some abingdon in my gourd calabash. a gardener's truck pulled up, i guess to adjust their garbage bin. one of the gardeners said he liked my pipe, asked me where i got it. "the internet", i said, truthfully.

then he asked "you smoke mota in it?"

"nope," i said, "tobacco only".

then, he asked, "oh.. what do you smoke your mota in?"

the correct response being, of course, "i don't smoke mota, especially not in this pipe."

"oh," he said, "me neither, it hurts my lungs."

all right then.

the smoked carrot is nearly "just right" - heavy smoke flavor, but does not taste like a cigarette, as hops observed of the asparagus.

i only had a small cold sample, haven't even had the full lunch portion yet, but i must say: when i do tri-tip, i outdo myself.

my smoked tri-tip recipe is my own invention, more or less. it has the following advantages:

1) it takes about 2 hours including all prep and cleanup. compare to 8-9 hours for pork spare ribs.
2) it tastes friggin great. compare to pork spare ribs : d'oh, no advantage here!
3) tri-tip is leaner and thus healthier than pork spare ribs. okay, another point for tri-tip

most of all, it tastes friggin great and it's easy to prep, easy to smoke. i've been pondering an attempt at a smoker/grill hybrid recipe for steaks (e.g. new york strip steak). it will be a whole lot of work, with a high risk of ruining the steak.

perhaps if i were used to a charcoal grill i wouldn't consider it much work, but i'm a propane guy for steaks.