Smoked salmon, an aquarium pump and a cocktail shaker

So why did a cop follow Dean home last week? It involves an aquarium pump, smoked salmon and a cocktail shaker.

I’ve been trying to perfect a salmon smoking technique. I’ve tried using our smoker, but I need to keep the heat very low. When I turn the heat down, it stops smoking. When I turn it up so we get smoke, it’s too hot. We decided we need a cold source of smoke so we can control the smoke and the heat separately. Dean Googled and came up with a cheap and simple way to make a cold smoke generator – drill holes in the bottom of a cocktail shaker, put a pipe on top and hook an aquarium pump to one end.

He picked up a cocktail shaker and aquarium pump, and gave them to a friend who does a lot of HVAC work who was going to make the metal tubing for the top. When he got home from this errand, the first thing he said was, “A cop followed me all the way home. That was weird.” We live eight miles out in the country, so yeah, that was a little weird. Until I figured from the cop’s point of view, it looked like this:

A guy in an eye-catching shiny sports car drives up to a bar, but he doesn’t go in. Instead he gets out of the car holding a small package and walks up to another guy in the parking lot. He holds the bag open, the guy looks inside and nods. If the cop is close enough to overhear any conversation, the words “smoke” and “smoking” are featured prominently. As in “oh yeah, I can get some good smoke out of this.” He hands the bag over and they go their separate ways.

Dean: “Oh crap, he thought he was watching a drug deal.” Just then his phone buzzed – a text message from his friend. “A cop car followed me all the way home – WTF?”

Dean doesn't drive the 280Z every day, but it's the only one in town and it definitely draws attention. He can probably expect to attract some unwanted attention from the cops every time he drives the Z in the near future.