Barbecue Mastery in The Devil Beneath My Feet

Where cooking is concerned, I'm usually not very skilled. I don't have that natural ability. I can follow a recipe well enough, but to just whip something up out of leftovers isn't something i'm capable of.

However, somehow that seems to disappear if i'm behind a grill. I like grilling.

Yesterday we had a few people over. During the most recent thunderstorm, two more trees fell into the yard. They had to be cut and chipped, and Eric recently bought himself all manner of climbing gear so he was anxious to try it out. I despise tree work. Yard work is fine, but tree work specifically, I cannot think of anything that would make me want to do that. Not to mention, i have put in my time with this shit, I've chopped up enough trees and loaded enough branches into stupid wood chippers, i am done. So i offered, "How about instead of me doing tree work, i instead go to your parents house, borrow Boobie's grill, grill up some food and keep the dog out of everyone's way?" Eric seemed to like this idea quite a bit, so it was on.

I didn't bother asking anybody what they wanted, because i'm stupid, and by the time i realized this everyone was busy with a chainsaw. So i figured i'd just make a few burgers, a package of hot dogs, and some chicken. I called my aunt to ask if they wanted to swing by for some BBQ and she offered to bring a pie. By now i was excited, this was turning into a fun bbq.

I had about 6 chicken breasts in the freezer, so i thawed them in the microwave and then put them in a bowl to brine. The brine i used wound up being perfect, and i was very worried about the chicken because it was my first time making/using a brine, and i also had no fucking idea what i was doing.

BRINE: For 6 chicken breasts 10 cups luke warm water 2 tbsp regular table salt 1/4 cup granulated sugar Let sit for approximately 30 minutes.

Just an FYI, because the chicken came out really, really good. After they were done in the brine i put them in a zip lock bag full of BBQ sauce and let that sit for a little less than an hour. I'm sure if you marinate them for longer they'll only taste better, but i figured with the sugar that was in the brine about an hour was sufficient. While that was marinating, i made macaroni salad, and went and heated up the grill. Once the grill was hot i cooked everything, including my first experience with grilling corn, and we had more food than i thought would ever get eaten.

As it turns out, i was very wrong, and we didn't have one single scrap of leftovers. I thought maybe everything would be....edible, pretty good maybe. To my surprise everybody seemed to love it, there wasn't one piece of chicken left (i had cut all the breasts in half, i should mention) all the burgers were gone and there was one hot dog remaining that Darby happily gobbled up. There wasn't a single piece of macaroni left out of the macaroni salad, which everyone also complimented the hell out of (i don't know why, it wasn't anything special.) The pie that my aunt brought over was the only bit left over, and that was only because everyone was too full to eat it. Oh, she brought fruit salad too, we still have some of that.

So i was really happy, it went very well. We didn't even have all that many people. My two aunts, my sister, my dad, then Bill, Lysandra and Milo.

We love Milo. Lysandra's boyfriend. Milo and Lys so far are really the only people that we've extended a totally open-door policy to, they're allowed to drop by whenever they like to do whatever they like and stay as long as they like. Wonderful people, and Lys is just the silliest, she's a lot of fun. Also i have to tip my hat in her direction, her boyfriend is hoooootttttttttttt! Hahaha he made for some nice eye candy during the barbecue, considering my own boyfriend was 40 feet up a damn tree for 90% of the day.