Fire in the hole!

"I think I'll make mac & cheese with hot dogs in it for dinner tonight," Joey volunteered sweetly on the way home.

"Oh. That's very nice of you. But....the hot dogs give me a stomach ache, can we think of something else tonight?" We buy organic mac & cheese, but once you add the hot dogs...ugh. I can usually only handle Joey's special creation once a month, and then it pretty much has to be on the weekend.

"How about grilling out instead?" He suggested.

"That's a winner!" I said, and as soon as we got home I set out the hamburger patties I'd frozen last month. It was a beautiful evening, so we walked around the block with Henry before coming home and starting the coals.

While Joey fiddled with our Smokey Joe that we keep on the balcony, I cut up and steamed veggies to marinate and then grill. (We're really getting into grilled veggies and definitely plan to make them when my parents come down to visit in May.) I decided to experiment with a potato this time, so as I was scrubbing and slicing it I called "How's it coming out there?"

The delicious smell of Joey's charcoal was starting to waft into the kitchen. With the veggies on the stove, I set about toasting the buns (which were really freezer burned, but I have discovered that toasting them masks that)

"It's not going well. The charcoal got wet in the rain we had a couple days ago and it's not starting well."

Coulda fooled me, it smelled really good!

Joey walked through the house and came back with a paper REI bag which he began putting the inert coals in, then he re-stacked the charcoal chimney with dryer coals from the sack. Not taking any chances, he squired the evil lighter fluid (that stuff's toxic, you know!) onto the coals and they lit right up.

But then something red and glowing caught my eye. Something that was not on the grill or in the chimney.

"JOEY!" I shrieked, "The REI sack is on fire!"

He lifted his foot to stomp it out but, just then, something in the sack really caught fire and the flames began leaping up over the edge of the sack.

"We're going to burn down the apartment!" I wailed, and ran into the kitchen to fill up something with water to douse the potential blaze. When I returned to the balcony, the entire paper sack was consumed with fire and, somehow, Joey was holding it by its handles over the grill and away from his body. He set the sack on the grill and - POOF! - the flames shot up over the balcony walls and gray smoke billowed from the grill.

"We are so evicted..." I whimpered.

"Naah, we're fine." Joey insisted as the flames slowly began to die down. (When I say "die down" I mostly mean that they were no longer licking the balcony walls and shooting 3 feet in the air.)

Then I went back into the kitchen and discovered that I had, once again, forgotten to put water in the bottom of my pot for steaming vegetables and I'd very nearly created a fire of my own. I quickly added some water and the veggies began steaming like I had originally thought that they were.

Out on the balcony, Joey quickly got the coals going just right and, before I knew it, he had grilled the burgers, bacon and veggies and we were sitting down to eat.

Suffice it to say our house smells like smoke. Badly. So we left the windows cracked open to try to air it out, and now we're having sleet and freezing rain today, maybe even snow. Poor Henry is going to be a frozen pupsicle when we finally get home to warm things up!

Dinner, however, was delicious.