The Smoker Incident

In a conversation with a friend, today, I told one of the family stories that still brings a smile. It was one of those that needs to be written down. Allow me to regale you with a most interesting birthday dinner.

It was my 20th birthday and my father had recently acquired a new smoker for flavoring meat. Eager to try it out, he offered to do something special for my birthday and smoke steaks. My father is and was an avid beef lover. At the time, however, it was very low on my list.  This did not register with my father. Neither did him offering me coffee every morning, since becoming a teenager. Every morning I declined and said I did not like coffee.  Now that I'm 37, he has actually learned this and offers me a coke instead, so kudos for that. 

Cooking a steak for my birthday dinner was not a huge enough event to indelibly write the anecdote to memory so much as the smoking of it. When one thinks of smoky flavor, it conjures thoughts of hickory or other flavorful options ... not ... pine. So that was the first interesting aspect of the smoking incident.

The side dishes are where the story gets interesting, because my father decided that they were getting cold waiting for the steaks to smoke. He figured that putting them in the smoker would warm the rolls and the aluminum wrapped baked potatoes. Perhaps that would have been all that happened if he had put the baked potatoes on the top, but they were on the bottom, close to the flame.  The aluminum on the potatoes caught fire and soon the steaks were not only smoking in pine, but aluminum.

This was not common knowledge to those at the table, when dinner was served. My brother's friend, Shawn, was the first to take a bite when he was asked how it tasted. After a strange expression, he said, "I don't know, my tongue is numb." This is apparently what happens when you smoke a steak in aluminum we soon discovered.

I thought surely that the rolls would be fine, not knowing that they too had spent time in the smoker, where they became hard as rocks. I bit into one, and could bite no further, as my teeth got stuck. 

Luckily the potatoes were fine on the inside.  And we were all thankful that I had an ice cream cake, so it didn't end up in the smoker. Poor Daddy, it wasn't his finest hour, but it is a funny memory. It's the thought that counts :)