Learning the Fine Art of Grillery

So, it comes down to this. After forty some-odd years on this planet, having others cook food and present it to me for my consumption, my wife has said that I must, from time to time, act like a damned man and learn to cook on a barbecue.

Well, she's got a point. I just am not that much of a man, despite having hidden my lack of manly talents by being a US Marine about two decades ago. I don't watch sports on TV, I don't care about fishing or hunting, and have about zero interest in gardening or cooking things on a grill. I'd much rather take photographs of flowers and ... Oh, nevermind.

She's been more than fair with me. For the past several years, she has cooked and cleaned and only recently have I begun doing dishes and picking up after myself a tiny bit around the house. Urgh, I suck, come to think about it.

So last Friday night, we went out for dinner. And afterwards, Mrs. Wiggy drive my sorry ass over to the Lowes hardware store. Where they sell barbecue grills. Well, ain't this just a fine howdy-do.

We look at the grills. There certainly are a lot of them. Big ones, bigger ones, really really big ones. They range in price from a small car to a small country, or at least a large politician. I'm seeing entire kitchens transported out-of-doors here. No mere table-top charcoal grills are these, no sir. They are huge, they are shiny, they take delivery guys to bring them and set them up. You need building permits and additional insurance on your home to buy one of these suckers, for crying out loud.

I beg. I plead. I whine. I think the whining finally got her attention, especially since I was doing it over the store intercom system. "Oh, puhleeeeze, can we just get a cheap charcoal grill?" I don't need any bells and whistles and dials and levers. They'd just confuse me, and I'd have to press all the buttons and pull all the levers and then we'd probably end up at Defcon III and the president in a secure undisclosed location or something like that. Just a simple charcoal grill. A twenty-dollar charcoal grill. Something to be proud of, to show off to the neighbors.

And so it came to pass. Behold, the cheap charcoal grill (and the Too Much Coffee Man T-Shirt):



And by the way...bolt-cutters are in no way required on a grill of this type. But it is a manly tool, and I have one, so I got it out and tried to figure out how to use it. Well, I had been into the beer again.



And the dogs thought I was mistaken as well.



Well, the grilling gene that I did not inherit seems to have finally made it into my DNA somehow. Perhaps it was due to the severe threatening I got from Mrs. Wiggy. Hamburgers were eventually achieved, and they didn't taste at all the like charcoal briquets I singed them into. I think they're supposed to be crunchy in the out-of-doors.



The next night, I was made to do ... BBQ chicken. I know, I know. The horror. The horror.

This is the end, you know. I am a home-owner. I mow lawns. I fertilize, for God's sake. I plant shrubberies and I've joined various and sundry fraternal organizations (the sillier the hat, the better I like it), and now....Oh God...I cook.

I knew all this watching Alton Brown on the Food Network would come to no good. I just knew it.

Today, I grill. Today, I am a man. I guess. The world sucks. I wish I had a beer.

Keep Flippin' It,

Wiggy