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Andrea got me a water smoker for christmas this year. The cooking principle is a narrow cylinder with an electric heating element or charcoal bin at the bottom, topped by a container to hold water, with one or more layers of cooking grates above that. You can use various kinds of hardwood at the bottom heating portion of the device to achieve that wonderful smoked flavor.

Our first foray in to smoking foods was to do some inch-thick pork chops, which we cooked to 170 degrees F according to our instant read thermometer, but the meat seemd a tad over-done.

Today, we’re trying BBQ ribs with a nicely spicy glaze. Advice I’ve seen indicates to smoke for 5 or 6 hours, but I wonder if the heat on ours is a bit too high, because it seems to be pretty well-done after only 4 hours. I can’t wait to taste these, but I hope I haven’t over-cooked them!

At long last, after an unfortunate lapse in interest or loss of motivation, depending on how you look at it, I’ve finally completed the conversion of our 220v Pavoni Europiccola to 110v. We purchased it at the Fairfax Cook Shop near Swiss Cottage in London in late 2000, ironically only a few weeks before my start-up failed and we entered our wonderful unemployed but paid-for-by-the-severance-package time as tourists in London.

The first step began when we bought our first house and unloaded our household goods. I found an American source for parts for the Pavoni espresso machines, European Gift & Houseware. At the time, there wasn’t a lot of extra information on the Pavoni, so I thought I was getting exactly what I needed when I paid over $50 for a replacement 110v element. With no wiring diagrams to guide me, I had a hard time figuring out that I had purchased an element that wasn’t designed to work with the switch and indicator light on my Pavoni. I should have realized right away they were not compatible, but I didn’t. After a few attempts at putting it all together, including once when I was assisted by an electrical engineer, I put the whole thing in a box and forgot about it for nearly four years.

Target opened a store with an embedded Starbucks, a few minutes away from work. I’ve been running by there far too much. Before Christmas, my excuse for stopping by on more mornings than not was to check if they’d received any XBox 360’s, because I wanted to buy one so I could sell it on ebay for $1000. Christmas is gone for another year, and I’m pretty sure the hype over the 360 will settle back down from its pre-christmas manic levels. I don’t really need or even have time to play a 360 myself, so I don’t really have much excuse for constantly dropping by the Sta^H^H^HTarget.

Obviously, it was time to resurrect the Pavoni.

This time around, my web browsing for technical information on the Pavoni was much more fruitfull. Dr. Pavoni went so far as to provide wiring diagrams of two of the different versions of the Europiccola known to have been sold in the US and Europe. A few minutes looking at my original 220v heating element and the wiring diagrams and it was clear the 110v element I’d ordered in 2001 was the wrong one for my machine.

Another call to European Gift and Housewares and a ten minute telephone conversation with their technician and I had the corrent heating element on order. USPS dropped it off the week before christmas, but I broke part of the old element, the pressure stat, while I was re-assembling the machine, and had to wait another week or so for a replacement part.

It arrived on 27 December and took me about twenty minutes to install. The technician insisted on the use of loctite around the threads of the pressure stat to keep steam from leaking out the bottom of the boiler, but I knew my old setup had used plumbers tape for the same purpose and I had never had a problem with leaking steam, so I used that. I fired it up and it worked on the first try!

Elizabeth got us a Gaggia MDF espresso grinder for christmas, so the final requirement is to find some good decaf beans! What? Yes, decaf espresso beans, but that is a ramble for another day.

After several weeks of having another local wining and dining spot in the Pizza Joint, I have a comment: the sandwiches are very good, the pizza toppings and sauce are very good, but the dough is much too sweet.

I learned the Mellow Mushroom is planning to open a location out our way as well. If they run true to form, they’ll have plenty of taps, too. I like their pizza dough a lot better so I’ll probably go there when I want pizza, but stick with the Pizza Joint when I want a sandwich.