Hours of Daylight – 14:54

Yesterday we spent money. We now own everything for the preparation of food, aside from a professional quality stove, that we will ever need. We added a quality toaster oven and, wait for it, a Weber propane-fired grill. See, this house, the one in Boise, is the first “house” we’ve ever owned and really the first house, aside from our parents houses, that we’ve ever lived in. It’s a nice house… sort a “toy” house in that it’s brand-new construction and does not yet have all the squeaks and warped floorboards that i’ve come to think of as normal for a house.

But because it’s new construction it has many features older houses lack. For example this house has no fewer than ten (10!) double wall plugs in the kitchen. That’s 20 outlets! Are there even 20 things you could ever want to plug in in the kitchen? I have my iPod, a nifty Tivoli radio, my coffee maker, a waring blender, a hand blender, and now the new toaster oven all plugged in. There’s six outlets spoken for. In our 561 square foot apartment in Minneapolis there was one double plug… (1!) behind the refrigerator. The fridge took one plug, i plugged a 12 foot yellow heavy duty extension cord into the other plug and ran it across the floor to a teeny counter where we would then swap whatever tool was needed at a given moment. The coffee maker took precidence most of the time. But the idea of having more than one or two electric appliances was not only impossible, but seemed downright silly. Now in this new place having those additional appliances seems almost required.

The grill was an addition i’ve wanted for many years. No kidding, years. I mean, of all the places i’ve ever lived what has been the outdoor grilling opportunities? We had a charcoal grill on the fire escape of 36 Bergen street, but considering the building was sheathed in asphalt siding, and there was a tar paper roof directly below the grill where an errant coal could cause all kinds of problems, our grilling experience was limited. We added a marine-type propane grill to the wrought iron flower box outside the kitchen window of 191 Clinton Street, but the orientation of our building and the next building over caused a bit of wind tunnel effect and either blew out the fire, or blew the cooking smoke back into our kitchen. Again, an experience of limited use.

In Minnesota we quickly learned the grilling season was limited sharply by A) Weather, and B) mosquitos. Near the end of our time at 3527 Pillsbury Ave. the caretaker allowed us to use his propane grill in the side yard which we did a bit more often than he anticipated. What can i say? I prefer my foods grilled over fire. Like Clive Owen from the largely icky movie “Closer” i too am a caveman. Only my focus is food rather than what my wife has been doing with other men.

Here in Boise i’ve found outdoor cooking nirvanna. Seriously, the weather here is next to perfect for all things outdoor. Ok, the sun is a bit brutal, but in the shade the air is mostly cool and pleasant. So, i predict many hours of operation of the new Weber. It’s a Genesis Silver B… in basic black. It comes with a green hood or a blue hood, but those colors are special orders and really not all that important.

I know, i know, it’s propane-fired and therefore it’s “grilling” but not “barbecue.” Honestly i do prefer foods cooked over wood fire and we’ve been using a little Weber Smokey Joe nearly every night for over a month. But it’s just too much of a thing to get the fire going every time. Plus there’s ash disposal, charcoal to buy, lighter fluid (i know i should use a chimney) and then there’s the very limited size of the grill. We like to skewer vegetables, but our skewers are longer than the diameter of the grill. Plus i’m assuming i’ll eventually find a regular job here, so the instant on ignition and quick heating will be a plus when my home time shrinks.

But now we’re done. We’ve bought just about everything we’ve ever wanted for food preparation. I suppose the trick now is to not transfer that buying motivation to other “things.” We need to stop here with the things we’ve actually wanted for a long time.