Rekindling an Old Flame

Tonight we did something we haven’t done in a very long time. We used our grill.

I know! Exciting, huh? And not at all what you thought this post was going to be about, is it?

Jake bought me this beautiful grill for my birthday in 2004. And then we discovered that in the summer, our patio is hotter than the seventh circle of hell from about 4 p.m. until after the sun goes down. The grill has an internal thermometer and I’ve gone out to heat up the grill before, only to find that without the gas on, it’s reading at 300 degrees. Ouch. Needless to say, we don’t do a lot of grilling in the summer. In fact, before tonight, the last time we used it was when I was pregnant and had an overwhelming craving for hot dogs made on the grill.

But we eat much better when we grill - how can you not? So I bought some steaks at the store and vowed to get the grill ready to go by this evening. It wasn’t easy. Our grill tends to get blown around quite a bit when it’s windy outside, and we’ve found it blown into the grass more than once. So in order to get it ready, I had to scrub it, clean the grill plates, use the shop vac to get all the grass out of it. I was quite legitimately concerned about how much it might ignite when the flames came up. It took a while, but it was spic and span (almost) and ready for cookin’ by dinner time. I made some yummy roasted potatoes and zucchini to go with the steaks.

I estimate we can grill a few times a week until probably May and after that, we can only grill during the day when our backyard is shaded until September or so.  Then we can maybe grill through November.

I love living in Texas.

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