I feel about as inspired as a white 3×5 index card. With nothing on it. Not even a stack of cards, just 1 card, laying in a pile of clutter. Yeah, just like that. Sitting down at Meathenge is about as easy for me these days as ridding the world of all known diseases at a glance. Heck, at this point I’d be happy with just curing cancer, ya know?
Well, ol’ CB stopped by the other day and said I should either go on a Meat Adventure (regular gas is at about $4.50 for 9/10ths of a gallon as of 7:14 am this morning), so that’s out. Or fire up the grill?
I can do that, I know how.

Years ago I lived with my uncle for a bit, needed time to heal after shattering my pelvis in 4 places. While he did, and still does, live in Richmond, his backyard was peppered with fruit trees (there’s even more today). Peach, apples, pears, a cherry, lemon, oranges and a few others I cannot remember. There was always tree leavenings laying about and found its way in to my grill at every turn. Oh man, great times. I was attempting to go back to school at the time, my afternoons mostly spent grill side with 15+ buddies hanging around, causing trouble and whatnot.
“Uh, Guy, how’s school going?” he’d ask.
Times change (yeah right) and years passed, logs of wood were replaced by chips, shavings & dust. Sure I use the best hardwood charcoal I can find, but logs o’ fruit haven’t played a role in quite a while. Until I found a bag of unopened cherry wood that I’d purchased last year at the Suisun Family Farm Days.

The flavors one receives from this cannot be reproduced in a gasser, nor with wood dust. Taylor knows, it’s how he smokes his ribs, wood logs baby!
What’s the bad news then? It isn’t as easy as one might think. Cooking with uncharcoaled wood requires more air circulation than briquets, charcoaled wood and even smoking chips. This is compounded if you use a kettle type grill (a weber ya foo), they’re way too efficient and make this type of grilling a little tougher. I love my old, leaky, non-kettle grills, it makes it so darned easy to toss a log on there and get the results I want. So, when using such methods, just make darned sure the smoke coming off your logs ain’t brown. That right there is that bad ol’ creosote and will cause your food to be bitter, splech!
Look, you can even grill yer vegetals!

Yeah, I know. Not very adventurous with my vegetals, surprised?
Aaaand, what goes with grilled flank steak tacos?

Heeyah! A case of Jarritos lime flavored Mexican sodas, that’s what. Thar’s real sugar in that beverage, yessir. Liquid crack, so says Kate and I agree.
To sum it all up it was a devilishly nice Tuesday evening’s meal and hope to repeat tonight as well.
Got wood? I do and I know how to use it pal.
Biggles
ps – Don’t worry too much about it being seasoned or not (3 to 6 months). Most of your commercial smokers use green hardwoods anyway. It’s more about combustion anyway.