Thankgiving 2005

My wife and I had my parents over for a traditional Easter dinner consisting of grilled hamburgers and a homemade cake. While I was out mastering fire on the back patio my wife was reminded of our BBQ experience over Thanksgiving last year.

Every year since we've been married, my wife and I have made an exodus to the High Desert in California to visit her mother and her husband, who interestingly enough has, the same first name as me. Unlike the stereotypical relationships with the in-laws, I like her mother. She has a lot of sage advice and has overcome much adversity to get where she is right now in her life and career.

In 2005, we decided to take a trip over Thanksgiving. It included our annual trip to Disneyland, but that isn't important to this story. Her mom wanted to know what we wanted for Thanksgiving dinner. I told Nancy that I'm not a big traditionalist when it comes to Thanksgiving and since her mom has been raving about her steaks ever since she got her gas grill, I wanted steaks.

So while her husband was creaming me at Halo 2, they were out cooking on the grill. Her mother likes to put aluminum foil down to make the cleanup easy. Before putting the foil down she did the obligatory burn off period. Afterward she put the foil down and then the steaks. Moms and Daughters being as they are proceeded to laugh and talk, laugh and talk and laugh some more. The whole time the lid of the grill was down and our steaks were cooking.....or were they

Well, her mom decided to check on the steaks and lifted the lid. The entire grill was on fire. Apparently, she had forgotten to turn the heat down from the "burn off" and it goes so hot in there that the aluminum foil melted to the steaks.

I being the every grateful house guest ate my steak with the utmost care but without a complaint. I have crowns and when aluminum hits it, I might as well have been hit by lightening. I tell you a lot of scraping went into getting my gilded steak back to just meat.

Her poor mom was mortified and she said it took forever to get the aluminum off the grill grates.

I have a wife who is an excellent cook, so now no matter how bad a meal turns out, I'm sure it wouldn't match that meal.

On a positive note, I was able to learn how to grill corn on the cob on the grill (I didn't know you could do that). We now only prepare corn that way.