RogerBW's Blog

Autumn Barbecue 2014 05 October 2014

Another barbecue gone by. No photos this time as I wasn't taking them.

The rain, as forecast, was heavy in the late morning when I was setting up, and continued until about 3pm. The tent coped, though it's not ideal for the job as it tends to build up water in slack spaces on the fabric then dump it on the unsuspecting. The gazebo roof is definitely not what it was now; it's good enough for working under, but it really needs replacement.

As usual I started cooking when Chris went to fetch the first batch of people from the station, but for some reason (perhaps the charcoal was more enthusiastic than usual) by the time they got here there were already eight steak-and-garlic burgers ready to eat, and sausages in progress. The cooking seemed to stay ahead of people's hunger reasonably effectively, and as usual I cooked more than people really wanted to eat. Some people brought steaks in marinade, which while they needed a little extra arrangement appeared to work well and were certainly delicious.

A side note: the instructions on charcoal say that one should wait for the flames to die down before one cooks over it. This seems to me to throw away much of the cooking potential! So I put metal trays over the flames for burgers and such like, then cook sausages more slowly later. Thick steaks take ages, though, and I think people may have taken them before they were really ready.

I went back to using iced water for beer cooling, which seemed to work fairly well. Draught beer was Mansion Mild, an all-year brew from the Tring Brewery which I'd picked up on Friday, as well as some growlers from Camden and Brewdog (thanks to I.) the contents of which I didn't note in detail.

Thirteen guests plus us, which didn't feel too crowded. Conversation was wide-ranging as usual.

If you are reading this and think you should be getting barbecue invitations, let me know…


  1. Posted by Owen Smith at 12:35pm on 06 October 2014

    I brought my camera but didn't get it out, partly because it was chucking it down with rain initially. Next time I'll take some pictures.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1