Grillin'

In case you're in the market for a BBQ Grill, a few words of advice-

• 1. Get it at least a week before your event so you can use it at least once and season the cast iron grill grates.
• 2. If you get it less than one week before the party, like, oh, I don't know, the night before (like I did), buy it pre-assembled. Trust me.
• 3. Crank all the burners to high to heat it up, then you can pretty much turn it all the way to low. The internal temp hovered closed to 400F.

I nearly got one that was advertised in last Sundays's Home Depot circular, but good ol' dad said to check Consumer Reports. Behold, they recommended one that is similar to the HD one, and the same brand but available from Lowes- heat was more evenly distributed and it was cheaper too! (woohoo!) So dad and I picked one up after dinner.

I thought it'd take me say 1.5hr to put it together. Nope. Took me a loooong time. I finally successfully tested the grill at 2:30AM Independance Day. Cleaned up the packing materials, then got on-line to check for some recipes to use later at my party.

I saw this e-mail from boltnut55, sent July 3 11:41AM:

So... did you get your grill?

(She was bringing vegetables to grill, so was seeing if I'd actually got one.)

My response, sent July 4 2:39AM:

um ... yeah. I _just_ finished putting it together. haha.
see you in 10 hours!

Her response, sent July 4 12:05PM:

How funny! We went to bed at 3:30, so we woke up about 30 minutes ago. D was marinating mushrooms about a minute ago and asked, "are you sure you're supposed to bring raw veggies?" I told him that you were planning to buy a grill and that I emailed you last night about it but "surprisingly" you didn't answer. D deadpanned, "He was probably busy putting the grill together!" Now I'll have to tell him he was right!
In case you are checking emails now, we're leaving now... 12:05.