My Homemade Meat Smoker

This is another post in a similar vein to the one before it. That is to say that it is a post about creativity. In this case, the creativity of myself and some friends in building a meat smoker. In case you missed the previous post and are too lazy to go back and look at it, the summary is that we are creative because God is creative and we are made in his image. I thank God for his creativity not only in my own case, but especially for the creativity of the man who came up with the supremely God-like idea to smoke meat (and I think that the odds are pretty good that it was a man).

A while back (a couple of years ago now) some culinarily adept grad student friends of mine and I came up with a somewhat harebrained scheme to build our own meat smoker. The basic idea is that you take a metal trash can (new, not used), put a hot plate in the bottom with a box of hardwood chips on it (soaked in water so they last longer and steam as well as smoke), put some meat near the top, and let it cook for several hours (ideally somewhere around 215-225 degrees Fahrenheit). I think it's just about the best way to cook meat. After building it, I sort of inherited the smoker and have used it periodically to cook ribs, pork loin, and several turkeys.

Of course, the details are a little more complicated than the simple picture painted above and over the course of the years, there have been some necessary adjustments to the smoker. Here are two pictures of the smoker (top on and top off):



Some of the first things to notice are the temperature gauge on the top (you need to know how hot it is in there - there is a second thermometer on the side), the door at the bottom (for adding more wood chips without lifting the lid and losing all the heat and smoke), and the wood blocks on the side (they are attached to the screws that hold the brackets that hold the grill grate - otherwise there would be screws sticking out of the side of the can). You can also see those brackets and the hot plate in the second image. There are two levels of brackets so that you can put a pan of liquid underneath to keep the meat from drying out or to put the meat closer to the heat if need be (the temperature is usually 20-30 degrees warmer at the lower brackets).

Warning: From here on out, the post may get a little technical. If you're not interested in the details of how to make a smoker or the technical challenges involved, you can just stop reading.

Now that we've lost all those boring, non-technical people, lets get to the interesting part. All of these things were in the original smoker design. The changes have all happened to the hot plate. It turns out that hot plates are not designed to be kept on for long periods of time in enclosed spaces. In fact they are designed to shut off if the temperature gets too hot (this is also how our hot plate was designed to regulate the heat). This is, in general a good thing. For a meat smoker, it is a bad thing. There were a couple of different variations we tried on bypassing the switch before settling on the simplest solution of directly wiring the plug to the hot plate with no other internal components whatsoever. This means that to "turn on" the smoker, you plug it in and to "turn it off" you unplug it. One of these days maybe I'll put in a switch. We also took out the body of the hot plate and mounted the heating element onto one of those metal wiring boxes (the kind that light switches are mounted on) just to make sure that there was no plastic to give off strange fumes.

This was more or less the way the smoker stayed for a couple years with one small, recurring problem: The wires just underneath the hot plate would periodically get brittle and break from the heat, effectively turning off the hot plate. If you really care to know, copper wire apparently has some oxygen in it (unless you pay a lot of money for pure copper wire). This oxygen when heated, reacts with the hydrogen in the air to form water which in turn evaporates into steam, leaving behind small holes and weakening the copper wire (end science lesson). It was never a huge deal, but whatever I would be cooking at the time would have to be finished in the oven. Now that I have time on my hands, I decided it was time to solve this problem. Being unemployed and on a tight budget, I also decided to solve the problem with whatever I had on hand.

So here is the task: I need to get the electrical current from outside the can to the hotplate without using copper wire (at least inside the can). My solution: use steel bars instead of wires and connect it using the wiring used for electric fences. Of course, this creates some other complications, mainly keeping the steel rods from blowing a circuit by touching the metal trash can (or each other). The only steel rods I had were rectangular (about 1" x 1/8"), so I had to cut away some of the metal box on which the heating element is mounted to give the rods a little room. I also ran them through a couple of pieces of wood (hardwood so that any smoke won't hurt) so that they wouldn't touch the bottom of the can or each other. On top of those pieces of wood, we placed a piece of glass to shield the bars from any dripping that might cause similar problems, (my father-in-law cut the glass for me). Here you can see some of that work (the slant of the glass is intentional to keep the drippings away from the steel):



On the left you can see through the door of the smoker to the hot plate and the pieces of wood and glass behind. You can also see the bar magnet in the foreground that keeps the door shut (it's sticking out of the right side of the doorway). On the right, you can see the underside of the hot plate where most of the electrical box has been cut away to make room for the steel bars.

Now that I've got it back together and working, there's a pork tenderloin in the fridge that's just asking to be smoked. We'll see how the new wiring holds up.

On Creativity

So it’s that time of year that we are still trying to remember not to write the previous year on the checks when we pay the bills and hoping that spring will be coming soon. It's also the time of year in Northern New England where the excesses alternately of salt and snow turn driving and parking into exercises in modern relativism: We are free to interpret lanes and parking spaces for ourselves as long as our interpretation doesn't directly contradict someone else's. And like modern relativism, it is just a practical implication of there being actual lanes and parking spots, which just happen to be difficult to see in the present circumstances. To see the underlying reality, it is only necessary to see what happens when trying to find your own lane where the snow plow hasn't defined it or where someone else is trying to find their own lane in the opposite direction.

Of course, it's not only a good time to make fun of modern relativism; it's also the time of year that my research appointment comes up for reevaluation. This time around, as I've known for a while, the project is coming to a close, which means I'm looking for a job. Of course, it's not the best time to be out of a job, but I'm not in charge of those decisions and not too worried about it. God has provided in the past and He will provide in the present and the future. As an interesting coincidence (if you believe in such nonsense), we just found out that we're done paying for our heat for the winter. Since we're on the budget plan that budgeted for oil to cost about five dollars a gallon for the year, we have enough money paid to the oil company that we're set until July. In fact, their note says "We only wish Wall Street and the investment bankers had been as smart as our customers." That makes me smile.

In the meantime, I have some time off to be a househusband and to be creative. In my first week off I made a light box for photography (shown below, think of it as a miniature photo studio), not only having fun with power tools, but spending almost no money (if I had had enough clip lights I wouldn't have spent anything). The next week I made some garlic-herb baguettes and it was the first time I'd made bread without the assistance of a bread machine (it turned out very well). Last week I made a rather experimental recipe of Apple Strawberry Nut Bread (which was delicious). I'll probably post more on some of those later, but I thought it was a good time to talk about creativity.


So why am I creative (or anyone else for that matter)? The short and glib answer (which is in this case also true) is that "God made me that way." In Exodus 35, the Bible speaks of a particular artist, saying "[God] has filled [this artist] with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship." So I create because the Spirit of God is in me; because I was created in the image of God. To make my point a little clearer: I create because God is creative; the overflowing love of God has created a world in which his creativity is on display not only in the beauty of creation, but also in His ability to create creative beings.

To this end, our church just had an art display with pieces from a handful of artists in the congregation to celebrate the creativity that God has given us. I had some photos there and so did my lovely wife. We'll post pictures online soon, when I get around to making the page.

A Review of the Lord of the Rings movies

      I have to confess that I never thought that I'd actually be heckled for not updating my blog more frequently than I do. Apparently I was wrong; the world is indeed stranger and more fantastic than I ever imagined. Now that I've been heckled by a certain Tim, who shall remain nameless (no, not you, the other Tim). I have waited a couple months longer to update my blog to prove that such heckling is fruitless. You have to be firm with these Tims (not you either, the other other Tim). In keeping with my theme of procrastination, I am going to talk about a subject that is more than a little overdue: The Lord of the Rings movies. My wife and I recently watched through the extended versions of all three and all the special features as well (it has taken a couple months). Then I recently had a discussion with a friend who is a self-proclaimed Tolkien snob. On the heels of that, I want to put down where I think the movies went right and where they went wrong. In the end, I'll argue that when they went wrong, it was because they didn't understand Tolkien's Christian worldview.

      First, they did a great job on a number of fronts. Obviously, the special effects were amazing. The battle scenes (and the software written to do the big battle scenes) were phenomenal and all the orcs, fell beasts, oliphaunts, and the rest were marvels of modern digital wizardry. Similarly, the scenery, sets, and music were perfect and made amazing backdrops for the story. In terms of characters, they nailed several: Sam, Gollum, Boromir, Merry, Pippin, Gimli, etc. They made appropriate cuts in the story to fit it to film (Tom Bombadil, the burning of the shire) and interweaving of the many divergent storylines (especially in the last two movies). Watching the special features made me appreciate that in many ways the making of the movie was nearly as epic as the story itself.

      There is more to say about the things that they missed and I will do so by starting with how I think the writers misunderstand Tolkien's Christianity. First I think they miss the hand of divine providence and Christian unity and leadership. In the books, there are many providential moments. Merry & Pippin stumble upon the Ents who then take it upon themselves to attack Isengard; Frodo & Sam stumble across Faramir and gain help and counsel. There are also several points where "the good guys" band together to do what must be done. Aragorn leaves Rivendell with the sword of Isildur with the intention of eventually claiming his rightful throne in Gondor. The people of Rohan hole up at Helm's Deep to weather the onslaught of Saruman upon the advice of Gandalf; Faramir sends Frodo & Sam on their way with no desire for the one ring; Gondor lights the beacons and Rohan comes to their aid; Frodo & Sam never lose sight of their agreement that the ring needs to be destroyed.

      Instead of emphasizing the providence of circumstances, the fellowship seems to be fighting the circumstances to bring about the desired result. Merry & Pippin have to trick the ents into attacking Isengard and Frodo & Sam have to convince Faramir that the ring needs to be destroyed. These instances rob the ents of their wisdom. Merry is right in his assessment that the ents are part of the world and that being neutral is being on the side of the enemy. It also makes Faramir turn a second Boromir who can't see the truth of the deception of the ring. There are those over whom the temptation of power has no influence and Faramir should be one of those.

      Similarly, there is much discord about what to do and much questioning of leadership. Aragorn runs away from his claim to the throne of Gondor; Gandalf, Aragon, and the rest try to talk Theoden out of taking refuge at Helm's Deep and then grumble about the choice constantly in front of Theoden's men; Faramir uncharacteristically lusts after the power of the ring; Pippin has to light the beacons behind Denethor's back; and Aragorn has to convince Theoden to answer the beacons; Frodo sends Sam away childishly.

      Most of the time, this is done for suspense, but at what cost? Aragorn becomes a man who has commitment issues; Gandalf becomes a bumbling advisor without insight (Helm's Deep) or respect for authority (Theoden & Denethor); Aragorn, Gimli, & Legolas uncharacteristically undermine the authority of Theoden before a major battle; Theoden becomes a stubborn, crotchety old man; and Frodo becomes a whiny addict without perspective. Gandalf openly mocks Pippin's selfless oath to Denethor, ruining the beauty and innocence of the act and then shows no restraint in arguing with Denethor. In general, few of the characters are able to keep the big picture in mind that there is an evil that needs to be fought that is bigger than any one person's ego.

      Aside from those big thematic issues, I also wanted to mention a problem in a very particular scene: The Mouth of Sauron. Aragorn's response to the taunts of the mouth of Sauron in the movie is to kill him in cold blood. Now Aragorn is no different than Sauron himself who kills because he is displeased. They went through all that earlier with Frodo and Gollum and now they carelessly miss their own point here with Aragorn. The bad guys are bad for the means they use to get to their desired ends as well as for the ends themselves (perhaps even primarily so). My friend the Tolkien snob also argued that they missed the wisdom of Gandalf and the others in seeing that Sauron must not have the ring, even if he did have Frodo since he had not yet taken over the world. I am not convinced that they didn't realize this in the movie, but they certainly didn't make a point of it.

      There are more issues, but these are the biggest in my mind and very Christian in their nature. God doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called; sometimes Christian action means acting taking up the authority that God has given you and sometimes it means submitting to the authority of another person, but it never means grumbling about it or running away from it; contemplation and good counsel lead to wise action; stick to your principles because they may be able to kill you, but only you can lose your soul. As Dr. John Hannah recently said, "I used to think that bad people did bad things for bad reasons, but now I realize that good people do bad things for very good reasons."

To my devoted reader

      And I do mean that in the singular, though there is the outside chance that I am underestimating my readership by a factor of 2. I have realized that the longer I procrastinate from writing a blog post, the harder it is to sum up all that has been going on in my mind. So in order to update you on the last six months or so of my life, let me do so in a literary sprint for the sake of space and time (and space-time):

      I got married on 7/7/07 and spent a lovely honeymoon with my lovely wife on the coast of Maine. I moved into a lovely stone house (that we are renting) in a historic neighborhood with my lovely wife and got a new car. We had an amazing time in Michigan with family and an adventure or two getting there and back. We saw Nickel Creek in concert on their “Farewell for Now” tour and it was pretty awesome. My wife went back to school (she teaches first grade) and we settled down into a wonderful married routine that is rather predictable, but not at all dull. We bought lots of furniture, spent a weekend in the wilderness of Northern New Hampshire, and hosted our first Thanksgiving for her parents, her sister, and about 8 college students from at least 5 foreign countries (Singapore, China, Swaziland, Russia, Texas, and North Dakota). I do know that those last two are not foreign countries, but each is more or less half of a foreign country and together should make a whole one. After Thanksgiving dinner we took a walk and then watched “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” That next Saturday we cut down our first Christmas tree and decorated it. Now I’m in New Orleans for a conference and staying in a nice hotel just outside the French Quarter. That is the last six months of my life in a paragraph.

      Of course any one of the above sentences is plenty of fodder for an entire blog post (especially the first one, which could probably be several), but you’ll just have to ask for more details (though I will tell you that the thanksgiving menu included brie cheese & mango chutney, raspberry pepper jelly & cream cheese, Vermont cheddar cheese, crackers, cranberry & pear sauce, salad, green beans, carrots, stuffing, cornbread dressing, blue mashed potatoes, smoked turkey & gravy, pecan pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and homemade vanilla ice cream). In addition to the many things that have happened in my personal life, there have been many blog posts kicking around in my head (“all of them so much more brilliant and convincing than the [blog posts] that I have written” to slightly misquote G. K. Chesterton). In similar fashion to the summary above, I will elaborate on a couple of them, but give each a paragraph rather than a sentence as above.

Blog Post 999 of those I have never written:

      For this post I have to beg the forgiveness of those who don’t live in the shadow of the new black hole at the new center of the sports universe (by which I mean Boston). Between the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics, and the Bruins (though I confess I don’t care at all about hockey), sports in the New England area has become the focus of much national attention and even more local pride. The specific controversy (or controversies) I have been pondering is the phenomenon of the New England Patriots football team. The bare facts run like this: After the first game of the season, the Patriots were accused of videotaping defensive signals of their opponents and fined seriously for it. This year they have been dominating opponents regularly by 40 points, leaving their starters in until almost the very end of the game, going for it on fourth down when up by 30+ points, and generally breaking just about every offensive record known to football scorekeepers. Of course, there is much speculation on what causal connection there might be between the two previous sentences and I don’t want to indulge in any of that. There are two points that I want to make, the first being the most off topic: Most of the talk is gossip created by the media. The Patriots are very professional, play very well, and have said nothing at all about trying to humiliate their opponents, run up the score, or get back at the league for the punishment and the subsequent ill comments thrown in their direction. The media has painted them as a team with an overdeveloped sense of vengeance, a hulk-sized chip on its shoulder, and a burning ambition to be the best football team ever. With this as their literary assumption, the media has taken turns vilified and praising the Patriots for their tactics (“Don’t run up the score on Joe Gibbs, that’s unsportsmanlike” turns to “there’s no crying in professional football, if you don’t want them to go for it on fourth down when they’re up by 37 points then stop them”). The second point I would like to make about the Patriots is that they are to a man unconcerned about what the media or anybody else says about them. They are always respectful of their opponents and yet defeat them with an air of methodic humility that the scoreboard hides very well. I find that a very challenging example. Maybe they do leave their starters in a little longer than other people think they should and score an extra touchdown or three when they’ve got the game pretty well in the bag, but they have a faith in themselves and their coach that affords them a very humble outlook and they do their very best regardless of what other people think. I must confess that I often get by with enough effort to please others when I could easily do better. I also have to confess that I don’t have that much faith in God, though I profess him to be much more in control than the Patriots think Bill Belicheck is. I pray that I can fight my enemies with such calm assurance and humility.

Blog Post 42 of those I have never written:

      I have come to the somewhat obvious and probably misunderstood revelation that I am slow. Before you misunderstand my meaning, let me explain. I don’t mean that I am unintelligent (in fact I have a pretty high view of my own intelligence). Perhaps a better way to say it would be to say that I think slowly. John Steinbeck once wrote that he couldn’t just sit down and write about his experiences, but that those experiences had to simmer and stew and ferment in his mind before he could make sense of them on paper. That is what I mean. I mean I am not good at debating or impromptu speaking; I would not make a good politician or courtroom lawyer. In that vein, I have been stewing a couple of thoughts for a while. One such thought I think came from my pastor and it went something like this: “One great misconception that drives our culture today is that the universe is a closed system with a limited amount of resources. The practical effect of this is that there may not be enough to go around, so you’d better get all you can, can all you get, and sit on your can.” The last part I think came much later than the first, but in a relevant context. The obvious application of this principle is in the material realm. We are not generous with our money and possessions because we don’t really believe that God can or will shower his blessings on his people. The less obvious application is that the same idea applies to time and our safety or wellbeing. We act as if God has not put enough time in the day or that he will not work everything for the good of those who love Him. We are so enamored will all the many “opportunities” that we have that we do not trust God to give us the opportunities that we really need; we are practical atheists. Despite the many ways that He has provided for us (from our existence to our talents to our salvation in Christ), we still cannot bring ourselves to trust Him. God is the “I am” not the “I might be” or “I could be.” We need to trust God to be God and to unclench our fists and let go of all those things of which we don’t trust Him to give us enough, whether it be material wealth, time, or choices.

Blog Post 43 of those I have never written:

      If I were to make an entire blog post out of the previous paragraph, I would probably connect it to this other thought that is newly fermenting in my mind: We as a culture think that freedom consists entirely of a lack of all restrictions. There is some truth in that thought in the human sense; we can (wrongly or rightly) restrict and repress our fellow humans and take away their freedom. But I think we wrongly take that small truth and apply it to bigger things than it can rightly handle. We put our freedom in opposition to God’s conquering love and forget that our “freedom” has bound us in sin; we put freedom up as a divinely ordained right and forget that God gave us our freedom by restrictions and separations (we are no longer free to be the dust of the earth, but by insisting on our freedom we will get exactly that). We have forgotten the pleasure and joy there is to be found in the restrictions that God has given us and that rightly define who we are. As Chesterton put it:

      “It is plain on the face of the facts that the child is positively in love with limits. He uses his imagination to invent imaginary limits. The nurse and the governess have never told him that it is his moral duty to step on alternate paving-stones. He deliberately deprives this world of half its paving-stones, in order to exult in a challenge that he has offered himself. I played that kind of game with myself all over the mats and boards and carpets of the house; and, at the risk of being detained during His Majesty’s pleasure, I will admit that I often play it still. In that sense I have constantly tried to cut down the actual space at my disposal; to divide and subdivide, into these happy prisons, the house in which I was quite free to run wild. . . . This game of self-limitation is one of the secret pleasures of life.”

      Of course, there is much more to the quote about pretending the couch is an island and other such self-limiting activities, but if I did not stop there I might just go on quoting the whole of his autobiography. I think Chesterton is exactly right that children enjoy restricting themselves because such restriction is a mirroring of divine creativity; by restricting ourselves with such seeming arbitrariness, we are taking part in the divine activity of creating by separation. If there is that much joy and pleasure in the seemingly arbitrary restrictions, how much more will we find in those that God has built for our pleasure and existence?