  from Catherine, at http://berlinblog.blogspot.com Kiss the Cook Yesterday, my husband instant messaged me with this: "The basic underpinnings of a gas grill are really quite simple: First come burners to create heat. Above them you'll find some type of system to disperse the heat from the burners. Above those lie the cooking grates. Let's look under the hood to get a better sense of what you should be looking for. " What hood? "Do you want gas or charcoal," he continued, using the psychology of a parent who avoids a "no" by not allowing "no" to be a choice.
"Charcoal," I thought. I could see bricks glowing half white. Matches and lighter fluid. Sooty hands. No scary gas grills with propane tanks that explode and result in warehouse fires. No dials that go "click .
. . click . . . click" like a bomb.
Why do we even have to get a grill? Can't we do take out all summer? Work hard and come home to someone else's home cooking. Sounds like summer to me. Or how about a blender? We could get a blender instead.
But what I said was, "Well, I prefer charcoal, but if we get gas, we can use it all year round, even when it snows. " This grill attraction is such a guy thing. Why not get as excited over the prospect of making long-cooked oatmeal at the kitchen stove? Heat, food, utensils. It's all the same, and safer and no flies or mosquitoes. So I raised the subject in the office.
"Hey guys, what do you think about cooking outside? " urlLink Bill said all in one breath and without a pause: "You know what kind you want get a big one but don't fall for the external burner and don't go nuts with accessories I bought the cast iron box for wood chips but chips wrapped in aluminum foil packages work better you want a brush with a long handle but those forks and spatulas are pointless. " okaaaaaay. Other responses: "Don't ask me. I don't grill. I burned pasta on the stove once.
I dropped one pre-cooked piece of spaghetti into the burner, and the flame travelled up the length of the piece and caught the rest of the pasta sticking out of the too-small pan. The sink was full of dishes. I had to put it out in the bathtub. " "I had a hamburger catch fire in a toaster oven once. " "When i was about five, we had a beer keg that my stepfather rigged up and we used as a grill. After grilling for dinner, we played dodge ball.
Running from the ball, I tried to hide behind the beer keg-grill, and put both palms on it to duck. I spent the next 4 hours in the emergency room with second degree burns on my palms. " "We never grilled. My dad drank instead. If he ever got close to a grill, I think he would have caught on fire. " It sounded like the set of News Radio. 
