I'm stingy with my smoke.

Not in a "don't bogart that can, man" way. Just that if I'm going to go to all the trouble of stoking a hardwood lump charcoal fire, obsessively monitoring its low-'n-slow-ness for a goodly chunk of the day, feeding its greedy gut with beer-soaked mesquite and hickory chunks at half-hour intervals all for the sake of an albeit fabulous brisket or pork shoulder, I'm gonna want a bit more return on the investment.

Here's where foil pans of salt, cherries and lemons come in.

It has been a while, but I was a cigarette smoker. I loved it: the taste, the feel of the cigarette in my hand, etc. I'm not trying to glamorize smoking. I obviously quit for a good reason: it'll kill ya. However, that's the idea behind Cigarettea. You can enjoy some of the trappings of cigarettes without the harmful risks.

It's actually tea in the form of a cigarette. The tea leaves take the place of tobacco, and the filter part takes the place of the string so that you can pull the tea out once it's steeped. I have no idea what the quality level is, but it's an interesting concept that the people over at Inventor Spot found. I definitely recommend this for adults only, as I wouldn't want to encourage smoking for youngsters. For those of us who gave up the habit but miss it, though, this could be a nostalgic bit of fun.

With all the legislation and lobbying we have here in the United States to get cigarette smokers out of all public areas, you'd never think that banning cigarettes from a restaurant would actually be a bad thing.

That's because we're not talking about the United States, where entire states like California have banned smoking not just from restaurants but in public areas.

We're dining out in China.

In Beijing, customers deserted the city's first smoke-free restaurant chain, Meizhou Dongpo, leaving it with the possibility of going out of business. Apparently, the Chinese are the world's most smoking-est people. This is great news for cigarette companies, but a problem for Chinese authorities that want to "clean up" China's reputation in international eyes.

I don't know about anyone else, but even when I was a smoker a long time ago, I never appreciated second-hand smoke in a restaurant where I was dining.

David Lebovitz mentioned that France is supposed to ban smoking in restaurants on January 1st, 2007, though the law would still permit smoking in casinos and nightclubs. As happens in every city, state and country that tried to enact such a ban, restaurant and cafe owners argue that it will hurt business, presumably because they think people want cigarettes more than they want food, but studies have shown that a ban is actually good for business. As David pointed out, tables in restaurants turn over slightly more quickly and virtually all customers and employees enjoy a smoke free environment, where it is easier to even smokers to breathe. One more important reason is that food tastes better in a room with cleaner air, where the taste of cigarette smoke is not touching to tongue at every bite.

France is hardy the first country to enact such a ban and it seems extremely unlikely that their restaurant and cafe business would suffer when it has not in so many other countries around the world.

This is a cookbook for anyone who is serious about barbecue and in it you will find no recipes directing you to simply slap a steak on top of hot coals. Instead, there are detailed guidelines for how to spend hours smoking your meat to perfection. Smoking meat with wood chips is a time honored (and time intensive) of preserving meat and imparting flavor to it. The motto of the book Championship BBQ Secrets for Real Smoked Food is "low and slow" and author Karen Putman is something of an expert in the subject. She has more than 20 years of experience and the title of grand champion from the American Royal BBQ Contest to attest to the delicious taste of smoked 'cue.

By the way, if you're serious about smoking and barbecue, you may want to take Putman's recommendation to use a charcoal grill and not a gas one. It's easier to maintain a proper temperature and an even heat distribution with coal, not to mention that it's a little more practical to keep it going for hours at a time while your meat cooks.