Friday evening, the work week is behind me, and the air is sunny and warm.  My little salad patch is looking good, but not yet big enough to pick from.  The area near the storage shed in the back is piled with debris from trimming the hedge and clearing up fallen limbs from all over the yard.  I decide it would be a good time to fire up the old barbeque grill in the back yard.

One of the really nice features of my home is a permanent, brick grill, suitable for burning wood.  I uncover it, rake the leaves from around it, and prune back an enthusiastic bit of escaped hedge.  (Someday I’m going to identify that hedging plant, right now I just call it “hedge”.)  The grill is much as I left it.  There is a thin skim of ash in the bottom of it, the grate over the top could use a little help, but is pretty much still intact.  Four bricks, and two stray grill tops complete my cooking surface.

I collect some paper trash from the house, and shred it in a little cone shape in the front edge of the fire bed.  I then erect the traditional teepee of sticks over the paper.  I brace a couple of large sticks over the structure to keep it from tumbling down and putting my fire out when I begin to add larger peices of wood.

I use an ordinary kitchen match to light the fire.  Lighters and I don’t get along, and I really don’t like their odor.  It blazes up nicely, and I add some slightly larger peices of fuel.  When I have a good fire going, I place four bricks on the primary grate over the fire.  I then place a rectancular grate on top of the bricks, and top it with a circular grate with handles.  I then lay a peice of foil over the top grate, and load it with four hamburgers–two for my roommate, one for me, and one to give bites to the puppies who watch wistfully through the kennel fence.

This arrangement allows me to move the hamburgers back and fourth above the fire, avoiding the classic syndrome of burgers with a charred exterior and pink middle.  While the burgers cook, I open a can of pork’n'beans, and set the can directly over the heat.  I know, I know…perhaps not the best practice.  But it sure saves on dish washing.