Big boxes, little boxes...

So on Friday we did the traditional Memorial Day Weekend thing, and bought a grill. It may have come in the Biggest Box Ever; it had to be lifted down with a crane, and wheeled out on a dolley. And there was no way it was going to fit in the car, no, so we broke it open there and then in the loading bay, and the nice man and me manhandled the contents onto the back seat in a single steely lump.

We brought it home, and our neighbour Jerry helped me carry it (or more accurately, I helped Jerry, tho' he probably didn't need the help) through to the clubhouse in the yard. Where it has sat all weekend, while Karen and I did BayCon and barcon and such. I should probably be writing a con report, because we had serious fun and sat on many panels and had guerrilla readings and met some lovely people, all of which/whom deserve mention.

Instead, today is all about the grill. This morning I opened the steely lump and took out a dozen boxes, separated and counted all the separate parts, and spread them out on the lawn beside the path. Then - bless him! - Jerry came around when he was done with his yard work, and we put it all together between us. I could've done it alone, but that would've taken three times as long and been a little fretful. He's ... very reassuring, is Jerry. And we talked about sports and daughters and other things of which I know much, heh. There may have been male bonding.

And now we have a grill, and I am going to go out there and season it with oil and light charcoal and let it smoke for a couple of hours to get a flavour going. I feel all manly man...

[EtA: the chimney-for-lighting-coals appears to be working! Two scrumpled sheets of newspaper in the bottom, no firelighters and no fuel: all the paper has long since burned away and the coals are pumping smoke out into the afternoon. Yay! Just call me Prometheus...]

Great Ghu, but I'm good

So this morning, as noted, Jerry and I built the barbecue.

This afternoon, I seasoned it: a coat of vegetable oil to the interior and a couple of hours' slow burn-in.

This evening? I grilled burgers and sossidges and portobello mushrooms, and we ated them in sesame buns that I baked my own self, to a recipe mildly adapted from Peter Reinhart. As I hadn't made the burgers nor the sossidges, and a mushroom is a mushroom more or less, you will not be surprised that I was most pleased by the buns. Oh, and the serrano chilli that I flung on for the last couple of minutes and munched whole alongside. But everything tasted good (particularly the mushrooms, I thought). There was also a salad of mango and avocado and arugula and cucumber, with a dressing built around our own cilantro and oranges. And then there were grilled bananas and strawberries, where the bananas were a late stand-in for what should have been peaches, but hey.

And yup: it wasn't grand cuisine or marvellous barbecue, but everything worked except the peaches and that's not my fault, so... Yeah. I'm pleased with that. (And Karen liked it, which is actually kind of a definition of "I'm pleased with that.")