Light That Grill

    I like to grill.   I have cooked up quite a few pounds of meat over the years.   (I've also burned my share of meat.)   As soon as that snow is melted away and those day light hours stretch out to where one can spend more time outside I look for my torch and light up the grill.   Most of the time now, it is just Pam and I so it doesn't take a very big rig to do a couple of chicken breasts or two brats or one large pork chop.   So I usually purchase a little portable gas grill as my outdoor stove and that is what we use.   You know what?   It always tastes great.

     Fourteen years ago I built this little platform to set our portable grill on.   It is make out of cedar and to be honest - although it was a little grease stained and dirty -  the wood part of it was sill in pretty good shape.   I had worn out five of those little portable grills.   They were cheap and would rust out in three years or so, but they worked for what we needed.   

       The latest portable grill that I purchased I would use when we would go on picnics etc.  That one was made out of stainless steel so when the last of the cheapies rusted out this winter I decided to use the stainless steel one on our patio.   I am hoping that it will last a little longer.   My problem was that the stainless steel grill was a little larger than what I had before and there was not enough room to set it on the existing platform. 

    So, I decided that I would just replace the old platform with a wider newer version.    I still had some (not a lot) of red cedar boards left over from when I had done the patio chairs last winter so this seemed like this would be a good place to use those up.     

  

 This would have been a good time to be a little creative with my design, but "what you see is what you get".     I liked working with this locally grown red cedar.    I do have a few more scraps left, but this project will just about eliminate what I do have on hand.   This will be a little test to see if it will last as long as the previous stand lasted.   Maybe the western cedar is better.  We'll find out.

  I applied a few coats of spar varnish and mounted it on the side of the railing of my deck.   I took this picture as a reminder of what it looks like before it becomes coated with grease and smudges from the hot fires that one always seems to generate when cooking up a little snack. 

    There we go.   Ready to grill away.   Back when I had a "real" job there might have been a couple of steaks to cook up.   Now that I'm retired and spending my money foolishly on tools etc., there might only be a couple of pork patties to cook up.

   Today the sun has traveled as far north as it will go.   Tomorrow it will start its journey southward.   Day light hours will become shorter.   Before you know it, grilling season will come to an end.  (Sad Face.)