Day 33: Fire, Bad; Matt, Good.
So, it’s still cold, but not so terribly cold to be unbearable, and thus, family has decided to begin the grilling season. It’s March, damn it, and a little thing like snow on the ground and wind chill will not deny us our God-given right to put flesh on flame.
What I find interesting is that grilling does not take less time than normal cooking. Prepping the food, using two different sets of tongs and platters, warming up the grill (a bit for gas, a while for charcoal), and then clean-up are all pretty time consuming. So, why grill? Why do I like using the better part of an afternoon (if you want to do it right, damn it) and part of my evening grilling?
First off, it’s outside. I’m there, among the elements, hanging out with my dogs (and sometimes, my dawgs), and taking it all in: the smell of the food cooking, the heat from the fire, the smell of cut grass, or of fallen leaves in the fall. It’s very serene.
Second, booze. Sweet mother hooch. If you’re in a kitchen, have had five beers, and are sticking things in an oven, or sautéing; you’re a fucking lunatic. If you’ve had five beers and you’re working with open flame, butcher knives, and covered in sauce, it’s quintessentially American. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why it happened. But I do know that beer tastes better outside and by fire.
Third, fire. You have to tame it. You have to bend flame to your will and use one of the primal forces of nature to cooks some ground beef. I will never build a dam to re-direct a river. I will never drill into a mountain to build a road through it. I will, however, in the course of my life, consume, roughly, eight million cows and will cook most of them on a grill.
This is the closest I will get to becoming a man.
Fourth, it’s very Zen. Today, we’re expected and encouraged to do a million different things, and have to be in a million places. Right now, as I write this, I am watching a movie, Google chatting, on AIM, and refreshing the forum where I talk comics. As soon as I get down with this, I’m going to proof something I’ve been working on with Buz and I was going to send a week ago (sorry, Buz) while doing all the same things.
You can’t pull that shit when you’re in front of a grill. You can’t even really listen to music,* because A.) it’s kind of weird to be all alone, in front of a grill, and singing along to My Morning Jacket,** and B.) you need to listen in case of flare-ups, unless you’re grilling burgers or hot dogs where scorched isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker.***
*unless at a party
**may not actually be a band. I heard it on a Patton Oswalt DVD and I didn’t know if he was being ironic and making fun of hipster bands. Either way, just so we’re all on the same page, I’m being ironic
***you know where you’re going to be cooking a lot of burgers and dogs? Party. Plus everyone there should be sauced, so who cares?
Grilling takes all of your attention, and being able to strip away everything else, and just concentrate on one thing is sort of liberating. If life is a series of moments, then for these, you are required to simply be excellent at this one thing. Give it your full attention, for one misstep, and the whole thing is ruined, and then those moments are wasted, but at the same time, you are fully engaged on your task. You know the path you are being expected to walk, and you just have to set off on it.
This one kind of got away from me.
Matt