Boudicca's Voice

He Might Stick with the George Foreman

The Ying and the Yang. The Black and the White. The Good and the Bad. My Boys are cooking AND cleaning up after themselves and one of them almost killed me.

There is a lesson in all of this. It will be at the bottom. I suspect it will be obvious. There may be even... two lessons.

First, yesterday I made my first big pot of chili and it really was fantastic. Ringo hated it, but only because I just realized after 16 years, he hates ground meat unless it's smushed into a circle and flattened, otherwise known as ... a hamburger.

I came home from the grocery store only to find Ringo and Mr. T in the throes of cooking. They had a recipe downloaded from the internet for... BBQ sauce and they were furiously adding a dash of this, a dash of that, stirring, boiling and pouring their concoction into an on old olive oil bottle they had washed and prepped.

It seems that Ringo got home, was hungry, didn't want a sandwich, didn't find any frozen burgers, saw chicken, hated the BBQ sauce I had, so decided to make his own and grill the frozen chicken breast he had found.

Many points awarded here, in particular when they cleaned up their mess,... and they also doctored the sauce a bit. They think it is more of a Rib sauce, but said I could try it on chicken tonight.

Which brings me to my second and last part of the story, the part where I used up one of my nine lives.

My boys started grilling when they reached around age 11. Ringo has been grilling, easily for four years. If I have something in the freezer that can be grilled, chances are it has been, by him, as a snack or for our dinner. Hamburgers are the favorite still, as much as that annoys me, but I'm hopeful that chicken has replaced it for the top spot.

They have always hung out outside while their Dad grilled and more times than not, one of us yells out to the Family room on grilling night, "Hey, someone go turn on the grill!"

I had never thought about the fact that someone may not have actually explained it all to them.

Ringo and Mr T? Yup, they got the info. Bones? Not so much.

And so today he bounded outside for me to turn on the grill while I prepped the chicken.

After about five minutes, I walked outside to the grill and it registered... 0 degrees and I could smell the gas. I opened it and gas came out... but I coudn't see that it had been lit. I put my hand over it, wondering if it was too cold for anything to be registering. I shut it off and I waited a bit for the smell to die down and then relit.

And when I relit it... KA... FLOOM! A big ball of fire came out, I heard a "SSST!" and realized "Holy crap! My hair is probably on fire!" and I quickly stamped out my hair or where I thought there might be fire...

Nobody had ever told Bones that when you light the grill, you light it with it OPEN, and wait for the flame. He just went outside, clicked all four to ON, and the came back in the house.

My hair is singed. I have ... burny patches. I remember as a little girl, washing Barbie's hair and then putting it too close to a hairdryer and watching it crinkle up.

My hair is crinkled.

Right after the ball of fire, it started to rain little black pieces. I was still in shock and figured I'd been sprayed with something from the grill. No. It was pieces of hair. Little pieces of singed hair were all over me... all over.

We have now gone over grill safety with Bones and as of now, he's banned from operating it. Holy crap.

Lesson 1: teach your kids about how to light a grill and don't assume your spouse did.
Lesson 2: Sheesh, you need to wait a little longer than I did when you decide to relight. I think next time I'll wait a full 5 minutes. Good grief.

Posted by Boudicca at January 4, 2012 11:53 PM