The First Grilling Of The Season!

Hoody-frickin’-hoo! I’ve just finished eating the meal I made for the first grilling of the season. Bacon, tuna steak, and sliced carrots.

I love grilling. I don’t know if I’ve made that clear, but I really love it. Living in the frozen tundra of Da Nortland though, I don’t get to grill often enough. Most of the time, it’s just too honking cold outside to stand there flipping burgers.

Today was gorgeous though. I’m sure we’re in the beginning stages of some bizarre global-warming-fueled mega-disaster extinction level event that will culminate in a year and half (stoopid Mayans), but that’s not going to effect me TODAY. I mean, why worry about tomorrow, amirite?

So, I was primed and ready to go when I got home from work tonight. There was thawed animal flesh in the fridge, I still had 2 bags of charcoal from last year, and I was hungry. The universe was trying to tell me something!

Time to get busy! First though, just to make it to the grill, I had to move aside all of the white-trash paraphernalia cluttering up my back porch (plastic tub of root beer bottles, cooler from last year with rotting food in it, canoe paddles, etc). Then I had to go find a snow shovel to scoop all the dead leaves off my porch. “Dang, I really should have cleaned those last year”. Next, the big canoe taking up half the porch had to be moved. Only THEN could I pile the coals on the grill.

I have one of those coal-starter chimney things. The problem is, you need to start it with something easy to light, and then it focuses the flame on the coals, so they start in turn. I only needed a minute to think of using the dried leaves on the porch that I still hadn’t snow-shoveled yet. That’s what 10 years of being a Boy Scout will getcha.

Speaking of my Boy Scout mad skillz… How did the fire starting go? Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing it was so windy today, or I might still not have eaten yet.

Now that I had the fire going, I could concentrate on the rest of the grill. Opening the lid, I was a wee bit grossed out. Some type of shiny, slimy stuff around the edge, dried leaves had blown in, and the removable grill grates were caked with rust. Oh, and I could only find 2 of the 4 grates. I have no idea where the other 2 are. There was about 3 inches of wet ash slop in the bottom of the fire box. *thumbs up* Sounds good! Let’s get to work!

The rust will eventually flake off, right? And the slimy stuff should dry in the heat, right? The dried leaves burned right off, and I’ll get the wet ash slop later. Let’s cook some meat!

Ok, to be honest, I didn’t actually use the rusted grates. Well, I did use them, but I also used my cool Pampered Chef grill basket on top of them, so my food didn’t actually touch the grates.

It felt great being out there, next to a fire, with the smell of the food cooking, and the smoke in the air. This is why I grill. It gives me a chance to just stand there, focus on the fire (I REALLY like fire, did I mention that?), and find my Zen.

The Morning Star had a good time too. Once she figured out we were cooking meat on the porch, she lost her mind and did that run back and forth spazz-out thing she does. Meat and dad, what could be better?

The food turned out great. I dumped it all into a large bowl and just grazed. I sat on my porch and ate some food that I’d just cooked. Nice evening…

Regards,

p.s. In the comments, tell me one of your cool grill stories! Let’s hear ‘em!