My old Bradley finally went out in a smoky blaze. After about 12-13 years, even regular cleaning apparently didn't remove all the flammables from all the nooks and crannies and it caught fire during a tri-tip, sausage, and pork extravaganza Friday morning. I'd already pulled everything but the pork and smelled the fire within a few minutes so I even got to save my butt (so to speak). The smoker, however, is history. I move it a good "social distance" from everything else when I'm using it so nothing else caught fire. It was a sad day but it wasn't a disaster.
As it happens, the oven on our kitchen range burned out a week or so ago and the new range was delivered today. Kinda like what we had but with a convection oven which I've never used before. Decided to try out the "convection roast" setting on stuffed pork chops (couscous, spinach, garlic, & pepper jack cheese) and Hasselback potatoes. Purely experimental so no real expectations. Turned out better than either of us expected - might not have been as elegantly plated but definitely fine steakhouse quality.
We're sold on the convection thing and SWMBO hopes it will distract me for a while before I replace a redundant deceased smoker with something I don't really need. We'll see what we see.
