Worth It
We had the
biggest snowfall of the season so far this week. Of course, snow falling means that it needs
to be cleared away from the driveway, the mail box (especially now at Christmas
Card season), and the back patio. Clearing
the back patio is important for two reasons.
If you would ask the birds, and if they could answer, they’d explain
that it is important to keep an open path to the bird feeders, so they can be
refilled regularly. The other reason (
and I don’t really want to get the birds all riled up about it, so I won’t
provide a rank order of importance) is to keep access to our grill.
For many
people the outdoor grilling season runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day. They would no more think of grilling out past
Labor Day than to wear white pants. I
guess white pants are a thing, and that wearing them into autumn is taboo. I know that I never have, but that is mostly because
I never had a pair of white pants.
I developed
my taste for grilled food as a child. My
father grilled chicken for many Sunday meals during the summer. On a few occasions we would have pork chops. The only other meat he would grill would be
bratwurst. In Wisconsin, it is a
requirement to grill brats. I don’t know
what would happen if someone would not like brats and would refuse to cook
them, because I never heard of anyone not caring for them.
As much as I
thank my father for introducing me to grilled meats, he was limited in his
approach. First, he followed the summer-months
only restriction. And he also limited
what he grilled to a very short list of main courses. But every generation hopes for more for their
children, and so I think he would be both surprised and pleased to know that I believe
it was our first summer together as man and wife, while enjoying a grilled brat
on Labor Day weekend that I asked the question out loud to Michelle, “If this
tastes so good, why don’t we grill all year long?” True wisdom always comes, not from the right
answer, but in discovering the right question.
I have also
opened up the variety of what I grill.
Just in pausing for a moment while writing this paragraph I came up with
at least twenty-two different cuts of beef, pork, lamb, venison, fowl and
seafood that I have grilled over the years.
And that doesn’t count numerous types of vegetables.
And I can’t
write about grilling without at least stating that for me, to call it grilling,
you have to use real charcoal. I know
that gas grills are handy and quick, but to me, the food doesn’t taste
substantially different than being cooked indoors on the stovetop or the oven. Besides, I know that the smoke from my lump
hardwood charcoal wafts out over the neighborhood announcing to all that a
dedicated griller is keeping the tradition alive. I don’t expect my neighbor on either side to
fully appreciate that, as they both use gas grills that are put away in their
garage for the winter.
No, it’s not
a male thing. It’s just recognizing that
appreciating a great dinner, at times, requires a little extra effort to shovel
out the patio, and to be willing to venture out into the winter cold. And, the birds will appreciate when you use that
cleared pathway to keep the feeders full.
His Peace
<><
Deacon Dan
Comments
Post a Comment