6.21.2012

My most recent tale of woe

I love me a good grill, probably even more than Husbo the man. So the other day when I bought some nice steaks and wanted to cook them on the ol’ charcoal grill the Husband was being a bum about starting the briquettes. That’s his usual assignment in exchange for a delicious meal (starting the grill that is, not being a bum). But like I said his attitude was all bummy.

I decided to take matters into my own hands. Sure I had never started a charcoal grill before but how hard could it be? Pile up the briquettes. Light it. Let it get hot, then spread the coals out. Boom bam.


Well obviously that’s not how it went because it’s me here. I found some charcoal in the garage that was left over from last summer and they were the kind that didn’t need lighter fluid which was good because we didn’t have any lighter fluid. Luck!

I stacked 'em. I lit the match and threw it on expecting some sort of combustible reaction. Nothing. The match went out. I lit another and another. It was quite windy out so I figured maybe it wasn’t making good contact. I hunkered down and held the match directly on top of the charcoal. Still there was nothing. I started wondering how the Husband did it. Did he just light a match, throw it on, then say a prayer? So I tried that too and I was coming up with a whole bunch of unlit, very un-warm briquettes. I thought maybe it did need lighter fluid but we didn’t have any. Plus the bag said it didn’t need lighter fluid. In fact it warned NOT to use lighter fluid. Well I always follow the instructions on the bag. A half-an-hour and an empty box of matches later I had succumbed to despair.

I started to do some real soul-searching as to whether I actually deserved to even eat these steaks. If I can’t start a grill I don’t deserve such tastiness right? Surely not. So I walked away from that cold grill and made peanut butter sandwiches for dinner instead. That seemed far more fitting.


Epilogue: Seeing as how I was still unwilling to give up on grilling these steaks, the Husband took “pity” on me and went to start the grill the next day. But to my ever-loving humble eyes he couldn’t do it either. The briquettes were old he said and needed lighter fluid. But would he go out and buy lighter fluid? No he would not. Instead he threw in “kindlin” to get the fire started over the briquettes. He also fanned it. He also used a lot of his own hot air. He also got an earful from me. Finally after waiting two hours for the coals to get hot I put those dang steaks on the grill and they were delicious. Boom bam.

3 comments:

Aubry Macbean said...

We had the same problem trying to have dinner and the briquettes were a year old and no lighter fluid. It also took us paper and wood to get them lit and at least an hour and a half before they were ready to use. By which time I had succumed to hunger and we only used the briquettes for roasting marshmellows.

The Atomic Mom said...

Once a few years ago we had the same problem with old charcole. Well we thought it would be a zippy idea to use rubbing alcohol to light that dang BBQ. It wasn't a zippy idea at all. It almost burned the forest where we live down. So now when we want BBQ, we bum invites to someone else's house or go to Burger King.

The redhead said...

Well it sounds like there should be some kind of boycott of these briquettes. They have people looking like fools left and right!

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