Red Adair, Johnny, and Phil

(Title sung to the tune of Abraham, Martin, and John)

As in Johnny Cash and Phil Hartman. I miss all three. My brain works in weird ways, in fact my high school drama teacher called me "The King of Free Association." So I'll be quite impressed if anyone here gets the connection between the three (other than being dead and admired by me). But here goes.

Back when I was a newlywed living in San Diego, the only source of outdoor cooking we had was a little Weber Smokey Joe. The summer we moved back to Oregon, my father passed away, and I inherited his twin burner gas grill. I know, it's not "Real Barbecue", but it was free.

This summer I've been doing a lot more grilling than I usually do (which is a good amount to begin with) because the smell of food cooking make the wife even sicker than normal, so I do not cook indoors, I do not eat indoors, I even keep food PREP indoors to a minimum.

Before any guys give me hell for being "whipped", let me just say this. No matter what your feelings on family hierarchy are, when a woman is pregnant, she is to be obeyed!!!!! No questions asked. She has an alien in her, you put it there, and because of this, she's suffering worse fluctuations in body chemistry than Bruce Banner! If you piss her off, no court in the land will convict her of so much as a misdemeanor for anything she does to you. and they will not find the body.

So to make things easier on myself, I bought a bag of those frozen hamburger patties that you just slap on the heat and cook. Again, I know, this violates all sorts of true barbecue religion doctrines, but when work gets me home at close to 7 PM and there are all sorts of household chores and pampering duties to attend to, it's a lifesaver, no worse than fast food, and a heck of a lot faster and cheaper. The only thing I have against them is that they're 20% fat, while I usually cook lean meat, including hamburger at 7%.

Now, I am usually a fairly old fashioned guy, with a tendency to favor traditional, even ritual ideas, including the way I cook outdoors, and thus I've added a smoke box to the gas grill, and have almost all the tools (toys) they recommend you have for a good grilling experience, except one. I don't have a spray bottle for flare-ups. Gas flame stays pretty steady, so I never saw the need (see where this is going?). So a few nights ago I fired up the grillmaster, slapped a couple of patties on, and waited. Within a few minutes, the patties were ready to turn. So I opened the grill, slid my spatula under them, and flipped.

This is when I learned why I really should get a spray bottle. Three little words I mentioned earlier: Twenty Percent Fat.

Now, that's a fire!