Not bad for a couple of oldies!

Last Friday my husband and I set about assembling the grill.  I can only remember seeing it done once before many moons ago. It was  complicated back then, even for a couple of mechanically minded young men.

Bearing in mind I am 76 and my husband will be 80 in a couple of weeks I was a little reticent to embark on this challenge.

But slowly and methodically, following the reasonably good instructions it came with, we got most of it done on Friday and finished it off on Saturday morning.

We now have a beautiful fully functional BBQ grill with side-burner sitting on the cooking pad on our screen porch. 

We were very proud of ourselves and hardly any swear words were spoken in the process.  We could have got it done all in one day but it got quite hot outside on Friday afternoon plus we were both worn out.

We tried it out Saturday night and grilled a couple of burgers and some hot dogs.

Off course, it being new I was a tad fanatical about cleaning it afterwards.  I quickly realised that I should have lined the tray underneath with foil.  After I cleaned it and dried said tray, I did just that, ready for next time.  I know in time the cleaning frenzy will die off as grills are messy things by nature but the foil should help and I can just replace it when necessary.  The burner tent covers also got quite messy so I cleaned them too then made some foil covers for them also.  It was a lot of work for 2 burgers and 3 hotdogs lol.  I liked the old-fashioned grills where there were briquettes over the burners that heated up and the fat just burned off on them.  Much simpler!..... After a little investigation it seems you can still get lava rocks for grills.  You have to get another set of racks to sit over the burners to place them on and you take off the burner tent covers.  More research needed but I am leaning towards this idea.

Anyway, it is ready again for our next cook-up.  It also came with a heavy griddle tray that sits on the grill, and using that will be a lot less messy. 

Weather wise, (us British are known to talk about the weather lol), it is still very hot here and very dry.  We are in desperate need of rain.  Usually by now we have had a lot of rain and the grass shoots up and we are mowing like crazy.  This year we just can not mow as the grass is all but dead.  I am hoping for some rain soon to save it. 

Onwards and upwards!

XXXXX

Wednesday was a good day!

 Tuesday, I went to get some groceries and some potting soil and pebbles.  Whilst looking for the pebbles and soil I noticed that the pavers we have been buying for our front porch were getting really low and we needed another 30 or so to finish the job.  I could only get 4 in the vehicle as I already had groceries in the back.

I came home and put the groceries away and we put the 4 pavers down.

I said to my husband that we needed to get the rest of them before they were all gone so yesterday morning we set out quite early, got breakfast in McDonalds and went over to the Ace hardware store to get the pavers and to see if they still had the birdhouse feeder they had advertised in their flyer.  They had sent a flyer with their sale items and 2 x $10 coupons if you spent more than $50, even if it was on sale items.  Well they only had 21 pavers which didn't come to $50 and yes! they had one birdhouse feeder left.  Original price was $44.99, reduced to $29.99 in the flyer and I had my $10 coupon so I was so very happy.

This birdhouse feeder is supposed to be squirrel proof and I believe it will be better than all the others we have tried.  

It is solidly made from all metal and the perch for the birds is spring loaded so if anything heavier than a bird gets on it it will close the entry to the bird food.

So then we went to Walmart to get some bagged compost and went in to pay and we saw this magnificent Cuisinart grill on sale.  Reduced from $492 to $178 dollars.  We couldn't believe our luck.  We have been looking for some time for a new grill as our existing one is over the hill.  3 out of 4 burners do not work and all the burner covers have corroded away.  In fairness we have had it a long time and it has been well used but it was time for it to be replaced.

But the prices had gotten so high we couldn't really afford to replace it, but when we saw this we couldn't pass it by.

The old one is in the background.  Externally it looks great but the workings are shot.

Just waiting for a cool day so we can assemble it and use it.

Hope all is good in your worlds.

XXXXX