In the Midst of the Storm

There have been flash thunderstorms that ripped through where we live in the past two days. These lasted only 5-10 minutes but were pretty scary because of the force of the water and the winds. Yesterday's storm was especially bad. Power lines were shut down (no nice underground cabling like in New York or Singapore here) because tree branches thrown onto the lines. I also saw some power line poles that had they're heads broken off. We took a walk (because Sourdough needed a walk) after the storm and there was quite a lot of physical damage to the trees. Two huge pine trees that flank our building -- they reach up to the third story, so I'm guessing they're about 30 feet tall -- were uprooted and lay on their side like felled giants. Over by the pond, a huge willow tree was uprooted as well. This was probably the event of the week for most people staying here and lots of people were out of their apartments -- gawking at the uprooted trees, taking photos with their cell-phones and generally taking in the spectacle of the storm's aftermath.

Anyway, after losing power, our first reaction was to figure out how to make sure all the food we had stashed in the fridge and freezer wouldn't have to be thrown away. We had no idea how long the outage would last, so we decided that we might as well make an event of things (the slightly celebratory mood was probably enhanced by the fact that I've passed my driving test - a kind of final frontier for me - and the recent news that several of Edna's papers from her dissertation have been accepted in top education journals) and go out and get a grill and grill all that food as it thawed.

A quick phone call to a more grill savvy friend narrowed down our options quite quickly. Apparently there are laws about the kind of grill you can use on the balcony of an apartment in Lansing, so we could only get a gas grill -- the kind fueled by a propane tank. True aficionados don't think highly of gas-grills because charcoal and coal grills add aroma to the food but we didn't have much choice in this one. (Also, see this NYTimes video in the middle of the page, which I had chanced upon earlier in the day).

I used to do a lot of BBQing in Singapore (for large crowds -- having to feed the church youth group or my classes of students and where flavor was pretty much secondary to everything else that went on at one of these gatherings) but that was with charcoal grills which you had to take a lot of time to stoke and get up to heat, so I was pretty apprehensive about using a gas grill. The notion of attaching a propane tank to a flimsy nozzle and all the cautionary labels about the hazards and potential explosions were pretty scary. Plus, I was never very good with bunsen burners in secondary school (I shamefully recall the fact that the last time I attempt to turn one on, during my O-level Bio practical exam, I wasted precious minutes fiddling with matches and the gas control). At the same time, a gas grill is much cleaner and takes much less time to get into cooking mode. Anyway, we found a cheap (small, portable and "Made in China") one at Meijer (16 bucks), brought it home and assembled it. I had some trouble getting the grill ignited (because the in-built ignition switch doesn't work I think) and caused a pretty spectacular fire ball that would have singed off my beard if I had one (reminiscent of the silly stunts we tried to pull with 30 cent lighters in sec. school ... the most memorable being the blue flame running up one's jeans) when I finally got the thing going after using a gas lighter (must remember to let the gas clear if one fails to ignite the thing and not put my face right in the grill ...)

At which point, the electricity came back on, making the whole need to grill redundant. However, I just couldn't pass up on an opportunity to grill (after nearly burning off my eyebrows and inhaling lots of gas) so I quickly thawed out some chicken, rubbed it with a quick seasoning and proceeded to cook it. They turned out pretty nicely in the end. In fact, Edna was impressed enough (with the flavor, if not appearance) to declare that we would do a major grill session today!