Now is the summer BBQ of our discontent
Folks, the time is here again for outdoor entertaining.
Cookouts in the backyard!
Paper plates in your lap! Insects in your food! Many of them not quite dead yet!
I know you’re as eager as I am to get the summer fun rolling, so let’s review the most important points about the casual outdoor entertaining lifestyle:
First of all, the outdoor party is a good way to discharge those social obligations that have piled up during the cooler months, since you can fit more people into your backyard than around your dinner table.
Keep in mind, though, that when these people had you over their house, they had you sitting in a comfortable chair inside the house, using real plates and silverware to eat food that had been cooked to the proper temperature. So they might not consider their hospitality adequately repaid.
The next time you go over their house, they might seek revenge by making you sit through the 90-minute video they shot of their 5-year-old niece’s dance-school recital. (Although she was adorable, especially when she remembered to take her finger out of her nose.)
Your average outdoor bash is built about three things:
The volleyball game, in which you choose sides and see which group of out-of-shape adults can acquire the most sprained ankles and dislocated shoulders. This is especially likely for those of your friends — you know which ones — who cannot stop staring at their smartphones, even when attempting to spike a volleyball.
The large tub filled with blocks of ice and cans of drinks, which will run out at 5:15 p.m. Except for the diet ginger ale.
The cookout!
Even in this age of gender equality, the cookout remains in many households the province of the male.
A man will insist on this, because when faced with a fire outdoors he is gripped by a primitive but powerful instinct to burn meat.
Cave paintings discovered in Lascaux, France, depict Primitive Man carefully reducing mastodon-burgers to cinders, while Primitive Woman shrugs her shoulders and puts together an avocado salad.
Also, the man knows he first must face the challenge of getting those charcoal briquettes in the grill to actually catch fire. Sometimes this requires calling in a supporting air strike.
Or he can take the easy way out and get one of those super-fancy gas grills, complete with six burners, oven, warning rack, rotisserie function, fuel injection, five-speed gearshift, etc. This, however, requires the man to ignore the thought, “Gee, this is no different from cooking in our actual indoor kitchen, except it’s humid and sweaty.”
Which is some consolation.
If he cannot afford this option, the backyard rotisseur can find a clever alternative, such as concealing a microwave oven inside the grill.
In addition to carbonizing meat, the grill can prepare “kabobs,” which are sticks skewering different types of food carefully selected so that some will be overcooked and other still raw.
A bonus for the cook is he gets to wear his big chef’s apron with a comical saying on it. (I have one that says, “Congress will quickly and responsibly conduct the people’s business.” Gets big laughs.)
Persevere, sir, and your reward will be a cut of meat redolent of the distinctive tang of the smoke that billowed around it. Put out of your mind the thought that, in another context, this is considered “pollution.”
To go with your carbonized meat, you will serve up a huge bowl of potato salad that no one will touch because of how long it’s been sitting out in the sun. Which is OK, it can be put to good use later to patch holes in your driveway. And the leftover charred burgers, when painted and varnished, will make cute doorstops.
With their hunger satisfied (“No more, thanks! Really, this celery is all I need!”), your guests can relax beneath the soft summer twilight and the gently descending clouds of mosquitoes, guided there by the light of your citronella candles.
It is true mosquitoes don’t like the smell, as demonstrated by the fact that they never bite the candles, but that won’t help you much.
The chef will not be troubled by insects, as he is covered by a dense layer of soot from leaning over the fire.
The rest of the partygoers should coat themselves with an effective repellent, such as the potato salad.
Or they can all go inside and watch your kid’s dance-recital video.