Well, I've been good about posting my triumphs, so I figure it's only fair to post my not-so-great results as a warning to others.
Did some Italian sausage fresh from the local grocery store, which turned out fine. But I also thought I'd try a couple of potatoes based on a suggestion from the forums, and at my wife's suggestion, some corn on the cob. All of it went in at the same time, with just over an ounce of Steve's sample hickory wood. Total time was about four hours. As I mentioned, the sausage came out pretty good.
The potatoes, though, were okay, but nothing special. Maybe it would benefit from more time, or maybe I should try some other form of potatoes next time. I might actually take the leftovers and try pan-frying them a bit and see what happens.
The corn was not terrible. But not exactly blowing our skirts up, either. the way we bought it, it had been mostly husked, but the store left half of the husk on for, I don't know, presentation purposes or something. Anyway, I figured I'd put them in husk-side-down, on the top-most rack, to protect from overcooking. The exposed parts came out brown and smoky, and actually didn't taste bad, but again, unusual. The part with the husk left on was a nice yellow, and actually did still have a little smoke flavor on it according to my wife (I didn't notice it as much, but it would definitely have been more subtle than the exposed part). My wife thinks we should try that again with the husk on all the way around.
Didn't bother with any pictures. All in all, everything was edible, but definitely the least impressive effort so far. But that's operator error, of course. The #3 worked well as always.
Next smoke ought to go better--surprising my wife tomorrow night with ribs (her favorite) for her birthday (plus she has a nasty work-related test tomorrow). May take the advice from you folks and try baby backs this time.
