Grilling on a charcoal grill takes time and effort. Setting up the
coals, paying attention to your food. I'm just starting out in the
grilling business, but I can't imagine doing all that to prepare just
a part of my meal, while laboring in the kitchen to make the rest of
it. I can't be in two places at the same time, and while my grill is
pretty close to my kitchen, running back and forth is a pain! And
there is only so much you can make ahead of time.

The way I see it, if you are grilling, you need to grill your entire dinner!

Make the prep work in the kitchen ahead of time, take it all to the
grill, put it all on the grill staging times if necessary, grill,
drink wine, relax, take it all back to the dining room, eat, drink
more wine, relax some more.

I'm glad I bought a grill big enough to accommodate that. I bought a
barrel grill that can hold a few dishes for a few people. I don't
think a round Weber would be able to deal with that. If I'm grilling,
I wanna be grilling.

So, what would make a holistic grilled dinner? Protein, carbs, fiber,
and antioxidants. Luckily, antioxidants come pre-manufactured in a
nicely shaped bottle with a pretty label and don't need to be grilled.
They can go straight to the table. They can also be consumed while
grilling. Helps with the "relax" part.

The topic of proteins has been thoroughly researched and we'll leave
it out of this discussion.

My favorite carbs source is a whole potato thrown into the ambers the
first thing as you start grilling, while the ambers are the hottest. I
recently discovered that yams works great, too. I'm assuming chopping
the potatoes and putting them is a grilling skillet will work, too.
Maybe mixed with mushrooms, onions, carrots, parsnips, yams, beets,
turnips? Who knows what else. The field for research is great. Another
possible source of carbs could be a paella. Put a smallish cast iron
skillet on the grill along with other stuff to make paella in? I will
definitely try.

Fiber. That's easy. Chop up the veggies, coat with oil, salt, pepper,
spices, put in the grilling skillet and on the grill. I tried it once
and it worked brilliantly. The only issue is to figure out which
veggies to mix with which. Some of them cook longer than others. In
the short cooking group are: zucchinis, asparagus, tomatoes. In the
medium cooking group are: bell peppers and onions. Green beans do not
work on the grill. They become very dry and stringy. I guess they
require moist heat.

So my grilling focus will be on cooking multiple things on the grill
at once, to minimize the work involved, not waste any charcoal, and
have the whole dinner to be ready at the same time.

So, for the first time in my life I bought a house. The main reason I
wanted a house was so that I could grill outdoors. I have never
grilled before. I bought myself a charcoal grill (the barrel variety)
and I spent a couple of weeks learning how to pronounce "charcoal"
correctly. It's CHAR-coal, not chair-COAL. Now I'm on to actually
learning to grill. I've done it twice so far.

I'm gonna have to change my cooking habits. When I cook on the stove,
I'm pretty uptight. I set the right temperature and I have a set of
stop-watches and timers to monitor how long the stuff has been
cooking. Pasta: 8 min. Rice: 6 min. Quinoa: 5 min. Chicken: 15 min
each side. All in the name of consistency. It has paid off. Those
recipes that I have worked out, they come out consistently right every
time. That's nice.

There is no consistency in grilling. I'm not that uptight as to always
weight out the exact same amount of the same brand of charcoal for
grilling. Light it with the same newspaper. Let it burn for the exact
same number of seconds before putting it in the grill. Trying to
achieve the same mound shape in the same spot. I'm a sane normal
person, I cannot do that. Even if I tried, the outside temperature,
the humidity, the wind will screw it all up. The charcoal vendor may
just start making charcoal slightly differently. The phase of the
Moon.

There are two things I need to do to deal with it. Relax. Accept that
it will always come out differently. Buy a comfy outdoor chair and a
cooler. Fill it with wine. Cooking is about the result. Grilling is
about the process.

Second thing is to learn how to tell that the food is ready by just
looking at it. Buy nice tongs and move the food to a colder spot if
it's burning, hotter spot if it's not getting enough infrared
irradiation. Drink more wine. Adjust.

Meat thermometer? You don't say! How did you figure I'm grilling meat?

This past week I have taken 2 different cooking classes at the Central
Market Cooking School in Austin, Texas. I'm starting to understand why
I have not been taking many cooking lessons before and why I will
probably not be taking but a few in the future.

One class was focusing on the techniques of making an empanada. The
other one was more focused on a specific set of recipes for a meal.

I left the first class feeling totally empowered. I've learnt how to
make one kind of empanada, but I can make a million. I was leaving the
class already making up in my head my own empanada recipes, thinking,
"Oh, I need to try this and I need to try that, and I need to try the
sauteed mushroom, and I need to try my favorite broiled chicken
recipe" and so forth and so on. Now that I know the technique, I can
make whatever empanada I want. And I like that.

I was leaving the second class thinking "Well that was fun. I enjoyed
it. I liked that sauce we made." But I don't think the second class
had anywhere near the value of the first. I learnt how to make a
different salad. Whoo-hoo! I learnt a new technique for grilling a
steak. I learnt a different way to bake a butternut squash. It's all
useful and by no means bad. But I don't feel like it was worth $65
bucks. I added a small bit to my repertoire. I'd rather learn this
kind of stuff from a cookbook. I did not learn anything that I can
explore for months on my own.

I'm looking at the schedule for June now and there is one other class
that I feel is worth taking: how to make crepes. That could be very
useful. I tried it on my own with pretty mediocre results. So, I'll be
totally looking forward to this one. But everything else was just not
very exciting. Learn to make a salad! Salmon tacos! Mushroom
Enchiladas!

I'd rather spend this money on a Julia Child DVD. I think I'll learn more.