Jonesing for BBQ...

I have a confession to make.

I'm a "foodie". I really do love to cook, eat and drink well. Good food, good beer, good wine.

You've never seen a guy so happy to get a set of All-Clad pots and pans. Really.

However much I love to cook in the kitchen, I really love to grill. It must be a guy thing. My DW just doesn't seem to get it. She enjoys most of what I cook on the grill - particularly the stuffed Portabella mushrooms marinated in balsamic vinaigrette - with the likely exception of baby-back ribs. (OH THE HORROR!) To be perfectly honest, that's really OK with me. :::Rubbing hands together::: More ribs for me!

I have seen people grill in all sorts of strange surroundings.

When I lived in a second and third floor apartment in an old Victorian house, I had one of those little portable propane gas grills. I made a mount for it so that it would sit on the roof just outside the living room window. Mounted to the window sill was a shelf. To grill, you just brought things over to the shelf, opened the window and started cooking. It used to drive the cat nuts.

On a canoe trip in Maine, we were floating down the river enjoying a perfectly beautiful day. We came across another group doing the same thing just around lunch time. The group had rafted up their canoes and in the center boat, they had a board mounted across the gunnels and a portable gas grill on the board. They were cooking burgers as they were going downstream. As the burgers were done, they were using a paddle like a pizza peel to pass burgers and a beer to others in the rafted canoes. Now this would have been a wonderful idea, but they placed the bottom of the grill in direct contact with the board that was across the gunnels and pretty soon it was in flames. I don't think I've seen people move so fast in quite a while!

When in high school, we used to have this strange tradition of New Years's day picnics at a local park. (We'd then go to somebody's WARM house later to play games and have hot drinks.) One year they were not able to get a fire going and were trying to cook hot dogs over the flame of a butane lighter. Interesting. Not truly successful, but interesting.

At any rate, I usually grill all year round. That can be a challenge in New England. Particularly this year. We've had so much snow that I've been unable to get to the grill (the one in the picture above) for months now. I'm now seriously jonesin' for some BBQ.

C'mon Spring!