For better or worse (mostly for better), I’m not long for the suburbs. More on that will likely follow once I hit the point at which moving and the moving process dominates my life, but for now, here’s a sandwich I made and ate at home in Westchester yesterday:

That’s smoked chicken with barbecue sauce, pickles and mariachi peppers. The roll is what Shop-Rite calls ciabatta, though it was way softer than most breads I’ve had with that name.

We had a package of chicken thighs in the freezer that I wanted to get rid of, so I thawed it out and smoked them over a mix of oak and cherry wood chunks. Before they were finished, I brushed on some store-bought, mustard-based barbecue sauce to give ’em a little bit of a glaze. When they were done I sliced them up to better distribute them across the roll.

The pickles I made from cucumbers from our garden a few weeks ago. They have aged well.

The peppers also came from the backyard. I chose the mariachi variety over the others we have because a) they’re really good — sweet, flavorful and a touch spicy, b) they’re the crunchiest of the peppers at my disposal and I wanted to give the sandwich some more texture, and c) apparently they are about the highest-yielding vegetable imaginable and I have to find something to do with all these mariachi peppers.

The sandwich was delicious. The chicken was moist with a strong but not overpowering smoke flavor. The sauce, pickles and peppers added the right balance of sweet and tangy flavors and crunchy texture. The bread was merely passable, but did nothing to detract from the sandwich at large.

I have spent a good deal of my free time the past couple of years endeavoring cooking projects enabled by the outdoor space we have for smoking meat and growing vegetables. Since we’re unlikely to find a place with a backyard in Manhattan, I imagine I’ll have to give up homemade sandwiches like this one.

It’s for better, like I said — there’ll be a shorter commute, way more things to do, places to eat that are open after 9 p.m., and sidewalks. But I figure I should spend the next few months making the best food I can with the equipment I will soon no longer have at my disposal.