A September Evening BBQ

Last night's BBQ was wonderful. While I hope I'm rather far off the grave, advancing years make each special event like that all the more pleasurable for me: at the very least my son is likely to fly the coop in three years' time post A-levels. The simple joy of sitting with my wife and son eating well on a warm evening is worth celebrating. Ours being a role reversal household I prepared the food and Ruth cooked it, with Joe's help: sausages, thin steaklets, scallops steamed with garlic in foil, mushrooms on skewers plus rapidly prepared hot veg stew (I overdid the cayenne) and warm guacamole. A half-bott of Beaujolais to wash it all down (that it is half-bottles these days is sadly another sign the first flush of youth is long gone). Hardly a mosquito to bother us and still warm, though pitch dark, when we came inside at about 8pm.

Though our neighbours have equally pleasant gardens - not overlooked, nicely leafy and quiet - nobody else had come up with the same idea. Ours was the lone smoke signal.

Sunshine and the Wonders of Bicarb

We Brits have to take our sunshine when we can - generally in recent years April and September rather than what we laughingly call the summer months, and 2011 has pretty much worked out that way again. So tonight we barbie, doubtless with some strange looks from any neighbours observing the smoke signals. BBQs are always a good excuse here for hotting up the veg as accompaniments, so have some guacamole with extra chili maturing nicely in the fridge and paprika-laden tomato/courgette/onion stew bubbling nicely. I envy my former colleague Mike Riefsnyder in the USA who - living in the Carolinas - reckons to do a cookout (two nations separated by a common language) every Sunday, even at Christmas. It is a man thing, though contrary to the Woman's Hour cliche some of us can do a bit more than burn food over charcoal. Man light fire. Fire good. Meat good.

Needing to clean the BBQ grill I ended up doing the oven - how many brownie points is that? - as well, eschewing Mr Muscle and other overpriced lookalikes for a little pot of bicarb, far more effective and it costs pennies. Somehow I feel better about eating stuff cooked in an oven cleaned with bicarb than with more sophisticated chemical concoctions. Ecological and economic.