Nothing Like a Barbecue

Yesterday REALLY marked spring for me - I bought a new barbecue and we had our first of the season, complete with potato salad and grilled pork chops....YUM! Of course, it wasn't without incident...

Began shopping for the barbecue grill in the morning - first stop was Wal-Mart, of course...saw a really nice one for $129 with a blue hood on it, made out of what seemed like porcelain on steel/case aluminum, whatever...it was purty...but then I spotted one almost as nice for $79 so kept that in mind. We checked out grills at Crappy Tire Canadian Tire but saw nothing under $200 there, so back to Wal-Mart it was. Waited for about 20 minutes for someone to come with a cart to take it to the cash for me as it wouldn't fit in the shopping carts. A much older gentleman who usually works the garden centre in the summer helped me out, nice fella, and as I went to lug off the new tank, he let me know that Wal-Mart actually sells new tanks that have already been purged and filled - BONUS! so I bought one of them instead, and it saved me another trip.

Got the BBQ home and delegated my father the responsibility of putting it together, informing him there was to be no supper until it was assembled as supper was relying on the BBQ...and if anyone knows my father, this is the ultimate motivation to get things moving along. WELL, I don't know if the book had issues or my father but that poor BBQ was assembled and unassembled (?) 3 times until it was put together properly....and he lost as screw. Thankfully I still had my old portable one and we punked a screw off that one and it fit perfectly...voila!

Then I had to light the grill for a bit to burn off the factory smell and all that...went to check the grill after a bit and it was topping out at 650C...eek! S0 I thought I had best turn it down a little before throwing on the chops...put on the chops, they stuck to the new grill (forgot to oil it!) and got them ripped off without too much damage, and went in the house for a minute to check on mushrooms and onions on the stove and during that minute to 90 seconds, my pork chops took it upon themselves to BURN. Dammit. I'm not used to this much grill power! I have used a portable table-top grill for so many years, and having to wait for nearly 30 minutes to cook the damn things. Managed to cook the chops on both sides, with 5 of the 7 burnt crispy...which incidentally, my mother LOVES and ate nearly two full blackened chops...YUCK, but her favorite part.

All incidents aside, t'was a lovely barbecue...now it feels like SPRING!