CraBlogged

It's interesting having a blog; the last few months without it, I would find myself pretending to write entries in my head. I'd think of something semi-witty, or something interesting would happen, and I'd write an entry in my head. There's a lot in there now, and the trick is to try to remember them and dole them out one helping at a time.

Most recently, I made my brother Rob proud but he doesn't know it yet. Last weekend Maryl and I went to Canadian Tire, which is a little bit OSH and a little bit Home Despot and a little bit rock and barrel roll. And whilst there, to celebrate the actuality of the ambient temperature being above 0 degrees - to celebrate the snow melting, and the sun peeking out behind his shower curtain, there, there, we bought a little bbq grill.

It was cute, and on sale, and wasn't electric, and we wanted to bbq… in a mini 4-burger charcoal grill. And while I've had many, many bbq burgers and dogs and chicken things and veggies in my life, I've never thought to actually watch and learn how the whole process comes together to create edible food vittles to put in my mouth and belly. It's sort of like driving - if I'm in the passenger seat I'll never learn how to get somewhere, even if I'm trying to pay attention.

I have to drive to learn~!

And drive I did~!

And by drive I mean made an awful mess trying to bbq.

Here is my story~

I like the ~ - it's a tilde I believe. In any case~

There was I were, what with the bbq unassembled, and then~! Assembled, by the masterful hands known as Harry hands (also my mind was put to use dah-hur). A little grill kit sitting pretty and waiting for various things to be put on it~~ but first~ I was in need of actual food!

Well, Maryl took care of that - she made some fancies, but this isn't about her or her preparing delicious meats.

~~ it's about bbqing!

~So there was I were, what with a bag of charcoal and me considering it. I'm used to the image in my mind of a stack of charcoals sitting pretty, doused with special igniter sauce, and burned up with a newspaper until ashen. But there was I were, what with me staring at a bag of charcoal that says, DO NOT REMOVE BAG. LITE CORNERS OF BAG. Really? Seriously? Light this bag of charcoal? Like the bag itself? Seriously?

Seriously~.

~SO I lit all the corners, but it didn't burn much very well what with at all. In fact it just made a lot of smoke and half-burnt charcoal bag paper. ~~ So's I figured I'd go back to basics and stacked it all up, dumped half a bottle of lighter fluid in a mini charcoal grill filled with half burnt charcoal bag paper, stuffed a newspaper in there and TORCH~! It went up in flame~!

So how long do I sit and watch charcoals become "ashen"? Probably more than 3 minutes. But I was hungry, and all the lovely food that Maryl spent 30 minutes prepar--- this isn't about her though.

So the food went on the grill. Four burgers on a four-burger mini grill.

One of the main problems I quickly noticed was that the charcoals were about 2 centimeters away from the meat. There should probably be more room there, I mused, but I figured what the hay. The burgers cooked up nice and fast - burnt on the outside and a little pink on the inside. And by a little pink I mean, I have no idea what the middle looked like. THEN! Then I remembered Rob's sage advice. Something about flows of heat and whatever. SO~ I moved some of the charcoals and moved the burgers to the corner so that they wouldn't have so much direct heat and maybe with some miracle some sort of heat dispension matrix was formed. Dispension is my new favorite word, it’s like dispersion and dissention and dissension and a little bit barrel roll.

Aspra-grass and bo-peppers were added as well. And it all looked extra-good. But was it done? Should I overcook to reduce chance of death? Or undercook to increase chance of not-overcooking to death? It was quite a dye-lemon, let me tell you what.

In the end, Maryl offered to take the first bite, and declared it fit for eating, but that was cheating because the whole deal was that I cook and cook and get no help nor advice especially from her, as was the deal. But and then while there in the end, we worried about our health, what with coming straight from a sickness, which I'll reverse-story-ize tomorrow or another day, so, we put the whole burger ordeal in the oven to smooth out the kinks. Just to make sure it wouldn't kill us.

I agreed - I got the burnt half-burned charcoal bag flavor in the burger; the rest was just good thinking.

And in the end, four burgers were cooked, four burgers were half-eaten (they were the size of two normal burgers which might have been part of the cooking dye-lemon, but I'm not naming names nor making accusatories).

I deem the whole affair a mild success! With relish.