Girrrrl, You Gots To Be Grillin'

You can mark the changes of the season in your own way. The buds on the trees. Daylight Savings time. Red sox season. Smog level rises. An influx of allergy commercials. But how ever you measure the slow march of time, there can be no denying that we have stumbled upon the splendor that is grilling season. More than Santa Claus and giant neon menorahs, the thrill of the grill brings out the good cheer of the Fat Kid, who dreams of dextrous tongs, fragrant wood chips, and talking webers. So here is a short discussion of the glories and potential pit falls of the season. Baby, its warm outside!

Things to keep in mind:
1). Grilling is hot work, which means it requires a cool beverage. I strongly recommend a durable coozie to keep both your hand dry and your beverage cold. You really can’t grill without a drink. Please don’t forget this.
2). Grilling is great because it doesn’t require doing any dishes. Don’t mess up this wonderful part of grilling by putting everything on a bunch of little plates before you head to the grill. Grilling brings out the lazy and resourceful in the fat kid; relish it.
3). Grilling rarely finishes before dark, despite your best intentions. It is therefore important to consider lighting when placing your grill. Many a Fat Kid rocks the head lamp at the grill, which not only looks cool but allows for elaborate signaling in case your beverage is empty or you just want to get someone’s attention. Moreover, nothing looks nerdier than half-cooked, salmonella-riddled chicken kabobs. Nothing.
4). Alcohol and drugs make it difficult to know how long things have been on the grill. If you participate in either of these activities (see number one), you should get a timer or a designated timer. Particularly if you’re ignoring the advice of number three and going it in the dark.
5). Depending upon the size of your grill and the size of your party, it may be impossible for everything to come off at the same time. Do not freak out, Fat Kid in Training. Grilling is the most casual way to entertain and as such should not be sweated. Just let people gnosh away and they’ll get the rest when its ready.
6). While the meal that is entirely from the grill is of course a delight, its not always the best course of action (see number five). So you may have to allow someone to make something in the kitchen while you’re grilling. That’s fine, as long as that person is not you.
7). Don’t be weird about letting other people use the grill – you’ll just look like a douche and no one will invite you to grill at their house, much like the kid who wets the bed. Grilling is not where you demonstrate your macho control, it is where you demonstrate your egalitarian spirit and love for food. So move over and pass the tongs.
8). TONGS! Yes, you need a decent spatula, but tongs are the most essential piece of the grill. Make sure they’re wieldy.


Things you can grill – A totally not exhaustive list:
Meats of all shapes and sizes, including, but not limited to:
• Bacon
• Sausage
• Beef
• Pork
• Chicken
• Turkey
• Turduckin
• Lamb
• Veal
• Buffalo/Bison
• Any of the above wrapped in any of the above, particularly the first above

Seafoods of all varieties, using ample amounts of oil, butter, or tinfoil:
• Fishes (the correct plural of many varieties of fish)
• Shrimp
• Scallops
• Lobster
• Crab
• Octopi
• Conch
• Squid
• Urchin

Vegetables, including, but not limited to:
• Asparagus
• Peppers, green, red, yellow, orange, and purple
• Eggplant
• Zucchini
• Squash
• Corn – keep it on the cob, kids
• Mushroom – portabello, button, white, crimini, porcini, wild, self-grown
• Tomatoes (don’t even tell me it’s a fruit)
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Radicchio
• Sweet potatoes
• Reg’lar potatoes
• Snap peas
• Green beans
• Onions – white, sweet, red, Vidalia
• Any of the above wrapped in any of the meats above the above

Various other things you can – and should – throw on the fire
• Extra firm tofu
• Polenta
• Peaches
• Strawberries
• Banana
• Bread
• Pizza
• English muffins (think glorious breakfast sandwich)

Things you should, under no circumstances, grill:
• Milk
• Cantaloupe
• Rice
• Popcorn
• Silken tofu
• Cheese, standing alone
• Beans

An Open Letter to the Restaurant Entrepreneurs of Boston

Dear Sirs, Madams, and Gender Neutral Betters,

As a resident of the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, I am weekly distressed by two simple facts. One, there is no decent place to eat brunch within walking distance. Two, there is no decent place to buy booze within walking distance. These problems seemed unrelated, or at least not solvable all at once, until it hit me: liquor store slash brunch place. An instant money maker that would solve all of my gustatory needs.

You may be thinking, these two establishments have nothing in common. Come on, entrepreneur, have a little vision! That’s what people thought about fruit and jello, melon and prosciutto, meat and dairy, but they were dead wrong. Now we have the wiggly jello mold within which fruit is inexplicably suspended, delicious antipasto that is at once sweet and savory, and a whole jew-terrorizing section of cheese stuffed meats. Here’s the pitch: most of the time, it’s a liquor store that provides libations to the booze guzzling twenty somethings and Russian elderly of the neighborhood. On Saturday and Sunday mornings and the occasional holiday Monday, and when I have the day off, the shelves disappear (this is where your entrepreneurial genius comes in!) and in their place are some lovely bistro tables, colorfully decorated with thought provoking local portrayals of injustice or ingestion. A simple menu of eggs (benedicts, florentines, scrambles, omelets), grains (french toast, pancakes, english muffins), meats (both canadian and american bacon, link sausage, and the occasional smoked fish) and beverages (coffee, water, coffee, rootbeer, apple juice, coffee) would suffice. You’d also need the recipe for the best potatoes ever made (see The Pantry, New Haven, CT for some clues) and some saucy, glasses wearing college hopefuls to wait the tables. Lines around the block, I guarantee. You can call it something like “Brighton Booze ‘n’ Brunch” or “Booze, Brunch, and Bitch” and have kitschy signs that say, “We Serve Alcoholics and Their Hangovers” or “No shirt, no shoes, no brunch you homeless bastard – get the fuck out!”

Perhaps you are wondering who on earth would visit such an establishment. A better question is, doubting entrepreneur, who wouldn’t? You’re probably thinking pregnant women and recovering alcoholics. But they, like most people, are enchanted by a good brunch. And people who work the graveyard shift love to drink. There is not a single category of person who wouldn’t be served by this establishment. Forget niche marketing – your niche is the entire human race! Soon there would be Booze ‘n’ Brunch franchises throughout the globe, even in places where people don’t need these things within walking distance because they drive oversized S.U.V.s everywhere or, alternatively, have no legs due to a legacy of U.S. military involvement. This idea cannot go wrong. I am giving it to you, bright and promising entrepreneurs, only because I want to see you succeed in these harsh times of economic stagnation. By the way, can you think of a better way to spend a stimulus check than on liquor and brunch in your own neighborhood? Plus, since you can walk there, its part of this new fangled “green” movement I’ve heard so much about. You won’t even need to hire an advertising firm!

Please invest soon, as next weekend is right around the corner and I really don’t want to have to wake up writhing with anger at the lack of brunch spots, having already exhausted myself from the trek to the liquor store the previous night.

Yours very truly,
The Fat Kid

How to Tell if You Are a Fat Kid

Many of you may be wondering - am I a fat kid? I was certainly a portly pre-teen, but have since slimmed down. Am I off the squad? Alternatively, you may be thinking, I'm a relatively overweight middle-aged man with three kids, a variable rate mortgage, and a calendar of Food Network Stars (mmm...Ina Gartner...) - am I included in this elite crew? The answers to these haunting questions lie with the survey of attributes enumerated below. Like any reasonably good diagnostic manual, you do not need to possess all of these qualities to meet the qualifications of a fat kid. So fear not, skinny older folks - its not your size, its what you do with it.

1) Fat Kids are not actually overweight children. Fat Kid is a mentality, a world view, an epistemology. Like Christianity. Or Yuppiness. Or Scientology. Or Responsibility. Fat Kids, therefore, come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and stages.

2) If you are a Fat Kid, you think about your next meal while you are eating. For example, over a delicious brunch of eggs florentine, you may ask your dining companion, "How do you feel about grilled shrimp and asparagus for dinner?" If your dining companion is also a Fat Kid, a stimulating and lively conversation will follow. If your dining companion is not a Fat Kid, leave the table immediately, but not until you have thrown his eggwhite tofurkey farce of a meal in his face.

3) Fat Kids can eat well in any dining establishment, including the dorm room of an unsuspecting undergraduate boy. DO NOT confuse Fat Kids with Foodies - there is not an ounce of snobbery in the body of the Fat Kid, just disdain for those who don't care enough to find the good stuff on the menu. Fat Kids know there is a time and place for everything, and the time and place for fried dough is the state fair. The time and place for croutons is 3am at a house party of a strange coworker. The time and place for finger sandwiches is Easter Tea and Bridal Showers. The time and place for lobster is whenever you can get your hands on it.

4) Fat Kids need a little extra time with their menus. Since there is always something decent and delicious to be had, the Fat Kid must find it. Phrases like "No Substitutions" are paralyzing to the Fat Kid. On the other hand, the Fat Kid will order the meat loaf without a second thought just to get his hands on those delicious herbed garlic mashed potatoes.

5) Grocery stores are important places for Fat Kids. Shopping with a Fat Kid is not a stick-to-the-list, in-and-out-in-twenty-minutes kind of experience. Because Fat Kids actually enjoy grocery shopping. The sights, the sounds, the possibility of randomly soliciting the opinions of unsuspecting strangers, the thought of future careers in deli work. I once knew two Fat Kids who referred to their favorite grocery store as Mecca because of its magnificent bounty and the pilgrimage it took to get there.

6) Fat Kids like it when others enjoy food too. This can be manifested in a variety of ways: cooking for friends, suggesting entres at well-known eateries, forcing others to take a bite from her fork.

7) Two Fat Kids together can bring about the holy grail of Fat Kid ordering: the split. No longer are you forced to order just one menu item. You can get the steak and the salmon, the pasta and the sushi. Restaurants and take-out places designed for the split are great for the Fat Kid, but beware of non-Fat Kids who have no idea how to order and fuck it up for everyone. Sharing someone's soggy Buddha Delight vegetables while they shovel your sesame chicken into their gaping maw is enough to make any Fat Kid sick.

8) Fat Kids know and respect the fact that they have a limited number of meals in a lifetime. Eating is not something you have to do to sustain life - it is something that sustains life because it is inherantly valuable. Grabbing a quick bagel before heading for the bar is not on the agenda; the bar can always wait while the Fat Kid drinks with dinner.

The Fat Kid Begins

Some of us have been eating the the fat kid for a very long time. At every meal, it is the fat kid saying, "You know what would be great? If this sandwich had just a little more mustard, a layer of red peppers, and a seeded crust. Now THAT would be a sandwich." The fat kid is thinking about what to have for dinner during brunch, and what to have for brunch pretty much all the time. The kingdom of the fat kid is all things food or food related - he is equally at home in a Wendy's parking lot, a Whole Food's fish counter, and a Willamette Farmer's Market. The fat kid does not fake his enthusiasm, because he doesn't have to; the fat kid knows it is food that unites us and food that will divide us if we're not extremely careful. Most importantly, the fat kid knows we have a limited number of meals on this planet, and it is a shame to waste even one.