I decided it had been too long since I cooked on the grill, so today I used it to make lunch. Yesterday I started marinating some organic chicken breast in beer and fajita seasoning, and today I brushed it with olive oil and grilled it up. I also cut up some green peppers and a red onion, which I cooked on a cast iron skillet on the grill, which got the veggies nice and caramelized. When the chicken was done, I sliced it up and tossed it in a bowl with the peppers and onion, and Jenn and I ate fajitas for lunch. I also used the rice cooker I just bought to do up some spanish rice while I was working the grill, which was great because I just turned it on and walked away to focus on the live fire. Last night I tried making iced tea, which didn't turn out too well, but I know what I did wrong, so I'll just fix it next time. I also bought fresh blueberries yesterday, which I made into a crumble while I was getting my charcoal going in the starter can. ( Here's the recipe for that, taken from cooks.com )Hey Marcella, we talked about getting together with Jenn and Neal for dinner when he's back in town, does this meal sound good to you? I'd love to cook it again, although if you want red meat we could use buffalo steaks...

This morning began with me beating Jedi Knight 2, which I had actually stopped cheating to play after about the fourth level or so. Last night, I made it up to the final boss battle, and found it unbeatable. I looked for hints, and one of the ones I found was to set down a bunch of automated defense turret things, and release floating defense drone things, which distract the boss so badly you can just cut him down. I found these items nearly useless for most of the game, so I had five of each. Worked like a charm, beat the game in about 15 seconds, although it's probably not the noble jedi way to do things.

I tidied up the place with Jenn's help, and we set to work prepping food for our barbecue. I also sampled some of the beer I've been brewing, and bottled two weeks ago with my dad. It's got a nice flavour developing, almost like white wine, but I accidentally gave my dad the wrong measuring spoon to put priming sugar into the bottles with, so now the beer is severely lacking in carbonation. Hopefully it will improve after three weeks. Jenn and I cut up potatoes, onions and mushrooms, and I made buffalo burger patties using this recipe:

2 lbs ground buffalo (consistantly available in 1 lb vacuum bags at the Big Fresh Farmer's Market)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup bread crumbs
4 cloves garlic, crushed
worcestershire sauce and montreal steak spice to taste

Just mix the ingredients and shape into patties. I didn't have wax paper to stick between patties, so I used paper towels. They actually worked really well, and absorbed a lot of moisture from the burgers, which seemed to make them stick together better. I do wish I owned one of those burger pattie pressing tubes with the plastic spacers, though, that would be awesome for doing them up ahead of time. The onions and mushrooms were fried up seperately, and Jenn deep fried the potatoes. I got the charcoal going using the starter can, worked like a hot damn, I love that thing. I managed to get some traditional lump charcoal from Canadian tire, which I thought was really cool because the pieces aren't a uniform shape like brickettes. What really knocked my socks off was that once they started glowing there was no smoke at all, so I'm never using brickettes again if I can avoid them. The burgers turned out magnificent, and I had kaiser buns from the Vianna bakery around the corner, and man, those kaisers, even when they're a couple days old they're waaay softer than fresh kaisers anywhere else, it's like the difference between sponge and styrofoam. We had cheddar and swiss cheese to put on the burgers, and goat's cheese to spread on the buns if you're into the fancy stuff. Colin and eventually Derek came over to join us for burgers and fries, I kind of wish we could have had more guests, but a) our place is small and b) we didn't have tons of food to go around, although there are a few leftover burgers.

While we were doing the prep work, I popped on to MSN messenger to see if I could find Derek. I set my status to busy right away, but that didn't stop one of my "pen pals" from pinging me. You see, I have this contingent of british teenage guys who have friended me for no real reason, and this was a new one. Anyway, here's the conversation we had, which I found amusing:

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
mongo

Bumbot says:
mongo to you too, buddy

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
r u sam williams?

Bumbot says:
no sir.

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
ye u r arent u

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
who r u then?

Bumbot says:
Steve. In Canada. Today is Canada Day, so if I don't answer, it's because I'm working my grill.

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
it is u i asked jack b

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
nice try

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
canada my arse

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
!!!!!!!!

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
!

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
!

hearts r the shittest scum in the world says:
u r sam i know it

Bumbot says:
Sorry, bozo, I'm not sam. Observe my ancient geocities page: http://www.geocities.com/bumbot/steve.html how many bumbots do you think there are?

I kind of wish he'd continued to be dim at me after this, but he seems to have figured it out and left me alone.

After foods, we hung around and chatted, and eventually went out to the video store around the corner, where after much deliberation and some railroading, we rented Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle, which turns out to be at least partially Canadian (including a bit part played by Shaun Majumder, a favourite comedian of mine). I wasn't sure what to expect, the critics said that it was basically a standard stoner comedy, but it was written intelligently and managed to break the mold in some respects. I wound up liking it very much, and highly recommend it to just about anyone. The characterizations of the two protagonists were great, and I like the way that they weren't quite idiots or cool guys, but just a couple of normal young people with their own individual hangups and strengths, who happened to enjoy getting high on friday nights. I also liked seeing an asian and a south asian guy in the lead roles, playing these average north americans, as I see that all the time around me, but not so much in most films. Racism was relied on rather heavily to establish the antagonists as jerks, but it didn't seem entirely irrelevant. Potty humour was present, but kept to a minimal level in my opinion, and also used in what was to me a creative way. Unwanted homoerotic overtures ran rampant throughout the movie, but I am guilty of laughing at them. It was similar to Rat Race and The Stupids, in that a grand adventure is begun, goes out of control in a million different ways, and seemingly unrelated events wind up coming coming together to make things work out for the protagonists. All in all, I'd say it's an owner.

After watching some of the special features, Colin and Derek were kicked out, and as it was only 10:00 Jenn and I cleaned up for tea. This is actually the first time the barbecue has had time to cool of the same day I've used it, so all I had to do was bring it down to the landing so I could have light to scoop it out with, and the grills have a non-stick surface and are very easy to clean with the dishes. This actually made cleanup super easy, so all my grilling will be done in the early afternoon from now on, which means I should be able to get lots more grilling done this summer. Maybe after or during the next tea we host (not tomorrow, the one after) I'll set up the grill and have a little byom lunch with everyone. Anyway, between all the coffee I drank and the junk food I consumed, I'm wide awake, so I'm just going to stay up for a while, hence the blog.