As every father will tell you, your family in particular  your children are your harshest critics. Triumphs which anywhere else would be celebrated, in the family home are just accepted, however mistakes are cherished and never forgotten. Alas today is one of those never to be forgotten days.

Making use of  food smoker I built in the summer, this year I have decided to give smoked salmon and smoked cheese as Christmas Presents to elderly relations. To my mind a perfect gift. To facilitate this a few weeks ago I acquired a vacuum packing machine, and this weekend was my first time to try it. Now when you look at this paragraph in the context of a normal family, first of all how many do you know with a smoker in the garden ( apart from one that involves nicotine), how many would know how to cure salmon, or purchase a vacuum packing machine. But in our house its just accepted, its what dad does.

Yesterday I cured the salmon, and smoked it overnight, ready to slice and pack it this morning.

The second part of this tale is that when I get the time on a Sunday morning I do like to make some form of pastry for breakfast, and this morning I was up early so I decided to try a new receipe for Austrian Danish Pastries, to  my mind a confusing title, but they turned out well, light and fluffy and packed full of flavour, just what you want for a lazy sunday morning. As a special treat just for me, I made  a couple of pastries with marzipan in, a particular favourite which no one else likes.

Breakfast over, out came the vacuum machine, and I set to work slicing and parcelling up the various edible goodies. Having never seen a vacuum packing machine before, never mind used one I was delighted with the speed and the results, and in my mind all kinds of exciting opportunities to preserve things were revealing themselves, as my pile of edible delights grew.

Flushed with my success I then looked around for anything else that could be vacuum packed, and my eye fell upon the Danish pastries, in particular the treasured marzipan ones,  into a bag they went, every single one. Its only when the vacuum pump kicked in did I connect why the pastries were so light and airy, for the simple reason they were full of air, which had now been sucked out reducing them to a decidedly unattractive flat blob. Needless to the resident experts so full of wisdom after the event, pointed out the error of my ways which  they could have predicted had they been asked. Of course you know that every time I now get out this wonder of a machine I will be reminded of the day I vacuumed a pastry. No wonder I hide my mistakes

thanks for reading

tom