if you can't take the heat...

Yesterday Bryan got home from school and announced that he was tired and going to bed. He’s been fighting a cold for a week or so. The problem here is that I had planned a dinner which, once prepared by me, needed to be grilled by him. I had already thawed the meat and was marinating it or I would have just declared it a PB & J night. But I’m always up for a challenge (cough, cough, unconvincing smile).

I really don’t use the grill much. It’s not that I couldn’t, I guess. Once when I lived in Colorado and I was still single, my roommate and I bought a little tiny grill (it was the kind college boys use and it was called a Smokey Joe I think) and used it to cook salmon. Or I should say that I used it to cook salmon while she laid on the couch. And the salmon turned out okay but it took a long time for all the hair on my arms to grow back.

Bryan turned the grill on for me before he went to bed, as I don’t even know how to do that. This should have been a flashing red light for all involved. Meanwhile, I finished constructing chicken-pineapple-pepper kabobs. I took them out on the back porch and opened the grill. This may seem dumb, but I had underestimated how HOT it would be. I singed my eyeballs just standing there. And I wasn’t really sure what to do with the skewer part – we have the kind that you wash and reuse. I read the little sticker on it and it said “To prevent damage to skewer, do not place over open flame.” Easy enough. So I put the kabobs on the grill and went back inside to start some rice.

A few minutes later I returned to find that the skewer ends had melted all over the grill. Open flame my foot. They weren’t on open flames! So I needed something to remove the melty things from the grill but all I could find were my kitchen tongs. And those things were short. Picture the tweezers used in the game Operation. My tongs are about half that size. It was good that no one else was around to hear what happened next.

It ended well – food was cooked, was edible, and I retained the hair on my arms. Who knew that keeping my arm hair would some day be a victory?!?