What a novel exercise form! :)

Last night when I was shopping at the high-end grocery (lots of organic and bulk items) I found some relatively inexpensive fresh wild salmon. It's coho, not the highest salmon in demand, but this looked nice and was a big enough fillet to brine and smoke. This morning I boned and cut it into pieces and made my brine (wine, soy sauce, sugar, salt, seasoning) and it will marinade all day and overnight. In the morning I'll pull the pieces out of the bowl and set them in a single layer on a plate in the fridge so they can dry a bit. The sugar in the brine will help it form a kind of skin or surface layer that it needs to absorb the smoke well. I have appointments tomorrow until early afternoon, and when I come in after that I will see if it is ready to go in the smoker for a few hours.

From there, they'll be individually wrapped and go in the freezer. This is one of my holiday gifts for the kids. They've been asking me to smoke some salmon for the last couple of years, and it was a problem of finding the time and the fish. I have about 3 1/2 pounds in there, just one large bowl full. But it's enough to give them plenty of fish eating pleasure and the "value added" aspect of my smoking this fish makes it a very nice gift. (It's like buying the fabric and making the garment or buying the wood and building the cabinet - all the better because it has some of you in it!)

For accountability, I walked the dogs again last night, and each evening we'll push the walk a little longer until we're out for about 30 minutes. They love walks this time of year because there are lots of acorns on the ground. They munch their way around the neighborhood and these dogs know the location of every red oak on each street we regularly traverse. So far we're not finding any pecans worth paying attention to. :)

SRS