I Grilled the Grill

Summer time marks the season of lemonade, bathing suits, sun burns and hotdogs. For our household, it marks the season of near disaster. Yesterday I was given a simple assignment - Grill two chicken breasts. It was about 7 in the evening, we had just enjoyed a wonderful meal outside on the back porch, and Kathryn was in the midst of preparing some chicken/pasta dish for the week's worth of lunches. She needed two chicken breasts grilled. We have a grill. This shouldn't be that hard. But of course....disaster.

I turned on the gas and lit the three igniters (sp?) - so far so good. Let it heat up. Give it a good ten minutes or so. Nice and toasty. Kathryn sat outside and I swept the porch while the grill heated up. We enjoyed our last few moments of an insanity-free evening. After a few minutes I opened up the grill to check on the progress and as soon as I lifted the lid, thick, cobalt smoke came billowing out. Balls of flames were consuming the insides. And then I saw what had happened. I had left the black, plastic scrapey thing in there from the previous use. Laffy Taffy-like, strings of burning plastic, stretched between the lid and the grates creating what looked and felt like the jaws of some monster you'd find in a low budget horror film. Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire....in fact, great balls of dripping oil-like fire that was once plastic, er..solid plastic.

For some reason in the moment of terror and desperation, I managed to kindly ask Kathryn if I could borrow her glass of water. (She said yes.) I tossed it onto the inferno and quickly turned off the igniters (sp?) and the gas to the troubling chorus of hissing and wheezing as the strands of black plastic cooled down. 2 hours later I evaluated the damage and discovered that plastic cools down to a solid that is just about as hard as it was before it liquified. Now I have chords of frozen plastic threaded between my grill grates.

There is no help desk phone number for this kind of problem. This problem does not make the FAQ list. Now we're left on our own to decide: do we spend money replacing grill parts and/or grill or do we take a chance with that first burger, marinated and seasoned with toxins? Tough call. Honestly. Tough call.

[Written by both Mathryn]