Makin' Bacon

I awoke at 6:30 on Saturday. It was still cloudy but with just a slim chance of rain, so I went out to check the gauge. In the past two days, we had just under one inch of rain here in Redford.

While I was out there I harvested five grape tomatoes from the topsy-turvy planter and, back inside, ate them with a touch of kosher salt for breakfast. Delicious!

I shaved and showered and then left at 9:15 AM for my haircut. It was almost 10:00 AM when I got done. Next I stopped at the Feed Store for some much needed bird seed (I haven't fed the birds in three weeks). I had him load it onto the back seat of the car, BTW. Then it was on to Westborn to restock on fruits and veggies.

I stopped at Meijer's for the rest of my shopping (it's not really "food" I need, you see. It's more like cleaning products, zip lock baggies, etc.). I was doing okay and even found a checkout lane with only two people in it! The old couple checking out were just about done and the guy in front of me had his few items on the conveyer, so I unloaded half of my items and put them up there too.

That's when everything went wrong...

The checkout girl overcharged the old couple for something. But, before she realized it, he'd already paid with a credit card. So, she had to call a manager (who took her own sweet time getting there), refund his account, (he disputed the amount she refunded, by the way, so they had to walk him through the arithmetic), take out his items (fortunately just a few of them), rescan them and so on.

I was standing there having one of my hot-flashes, so I was feeling nauseous and faint, with sweat pouring out of me. If my items were in the cart, I would have just moved to another aisle 10 minutes ago, but putting them back in and waiting in another line seemed too much at that point.

Finally, I got out of there. I did stop at the bank to refill the cash stash at home and (speaking of home) got there just before noon! I unloaded the car (except for the bird seed) and got the bags into the kitchen. I had bought three items that required refrigeration, so I dug those out and stuck them in the fridge. Exhausted, I left everything else and went to take a two hour nap.

When I got back up, I put everything away. Then I started on one of my ToDo list items for this weekend. I took off the stove's grates, drip pans, etc., and washed the top of it with Soft Scrub and a sponge. Then I washed each individual piece I'd removed with a Brillo pad. I dried them all with a towel and reassembled my stove. It took overly long (but everything seems to, these days) but finally the stove was clean!

I went out to get the mail and found a lovely sympathy card from Carla's mother. She had also left me a voicemail when we were at the funeral, too. Thank you!

The clouds had given way to a sunny, but windy day. So, about 6:00 PM, I rolled the grille outside and fired up the charcoal chimney. I had put the sweet corn I'd got at Westborn into a stock pot filled with water when I brought it home, so all I needed was to divvy up the three pounds of ground chuck. I used one pound to make four patties. I seasoned them with just salt and pepper and let them come up to room temp.

When the coals were roaring, I dumped them onto another layer of fresh charcoal, put on the grates and let it bake for a bit. Then I scraped the grates, oiled them and put the corn on. While I waited for the sides of each ear to char, I sat in the rocker on the front porch. Since the wind is coming from the west and my porch is on the east side of the house, it was quite pleasant.

I stacked the corn on the cool side of the grille to keep warm while I did the burgers. But, before I did that, I had an idea (not a good one, as it turned out). I had eight strips of thick cut bacon I'd thawed to make Pasta al a Carbonarra I never used. So, I thought I'd try to grill them and top my burgers with them.

Unfortunately, as soon as I put them on, the melting bacon fat dripping on the burning coals created a firestorm. Before I could get them off, I just had eight bacon charcoal chips. I think this could have been done using the cool side of the grille, however. But, today that was filled with corn so I will have to experiment with this concept another day. Has anyone ever heard of grilling bacon?

When the coals died down and I cleaned up the mess, I put on the ground chuck patties. I shucked the corn and put it on a half sheet pan. When the burgers were done (medium-rare), I put them on it too and put everything in the oven on warm.

I took a phone call from a friend and we chatted a bit. After hanging up, I fixed a burger and buttered two ears of corn for my dinner. I ate it watching TV (nothing much on). When I was done, I put the rest of the burgers and the corn in baggies and into the fridge.

I watched a lame movie and then went to sleep.