little black journal

I’ve often wished that Shane had more of an interest in meal preparation, and yesterday I discovered the secret to stimulating his enthusiasm for cooking.  We’ve been talking about buying a grill for a couple of years, and yesterday we took the plunge and picked up a great four-burner gas grill to call our own.  The fact that Shane was up until midnight last night assembling all 4000 of the grill’s pieces told me that he was excited about the prospect of playing the role of backyard chef.

We decided to take the easy route for our first grilled meal and threw some bratwursts on the grill for lunch.  I wrapped a couple of ears of corn in foil and put them on as well.  Grilled meal #1 was a success.  For dinner, we stepped up our game a bit and put a nice thick filet of beef on the grill, along with some potato wedges brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with rosemary, and wrapped in foil.  This was trickier – a steak is so easily under or over-cooked.  We decided to err on the side of rare, but after we’d brought the meat in, let it rest for a few minutes, and then sliced into it, we found we’d erred too far – the steak was far too rare in the middle (“still mooing”, as some would say).  But the edges were perfect, so we at least got to enjoy a few tender, juicy bites.  Lesson learned.  Tomorrow we try pork, then fish later in the week.  Looks like this is going to be one heck of a meat-filled summer – I better start Googling those recipes for grilled vegetable skewers…