Burning Wood - Just Slightly Less Difficult Than Brain Surgery

A few days ago, I was in the backyard, lighting my grill in preparation to cook some steaks. I say "cook," but what I really mean is "burn the outside while leaving the inside so raw that the meat says 'moo' when you cut into it." I don't MEAN to cook steaks this way, but that's what always seems to happen. I blame Obama.

 

Anyway, I doused the charcoal with enough lighter fluid to float a small battleship, and opened a package of mesquite chunks. I use mesquite chunks to give a nice, smoky flavor to the burned and blackened outside of my steaks. Plus, when the steaks 'moo' as I cut into them, all that mesquite smoke makes them sound like they consume five packs of cigarettes a day.

 

As I was opening the bag of mesquite chunks, I noticed something strange on the back. There were instructions.

 

Stop and think about that for a minute. Man discovered fire about a million years ago, and my grilling prowess notwithstanding, has been using it with relative success ever since. Through the course of history, we've burned about everything there is to burn - ants, matches, Christmas wrapping paper, the library at Alexandria, etc. Other than hitting and stabbing each other with a stick, burning stuff was one of the earliest things we did.

 

Now, a million years later, we're supposedly more evolved. We can drive cars, eat cantelope, and pretend to be searching for change in our pockets while we secretly scratch our private parts. Our less-evolved ancestors couldn't do any of those things. And yet THEY understood how to make fire, and WE apparently need instructions.

 

And it wasn't even like these were HARD instructions, stuff you wouldn't ordinarily think about, like "To imbue your grilled meats and vegetables with the utmost in smoky mesquite flavor, gently rub 1/3 teaspoon of olive oil onto the mesquite chunks, using a rough surface such as a pumice stone or Rosie O'Donnell's thigh, prior to lighting." No, these instructions were pretty straightforward: "Light the charcoal. Let it burn down a little. Scatter some mesquite chunks on the burning coals a few minutes before you start to grill." And my personal favorite: "For more smoky flavor, use more mesquite chunks." This never would have occurred to me.

 

The bag also contained a warning: "Fires created using mesquite chunks can burn hot." Yes! Fire is hot! Who woulda thunk it? Thank heavens I'm a much more evolved Man than the Cro-Magnon guys -- I'm sure they NEVER would have figured out that fire is hot.

 

So I guess the upshot of all this is, don't be too proud of your bad evolved self. I'm sure that the Cro-Magnon guys could have figured out how to secretly scratch themselves through their pockets, too, if they'd had pockets.

 

(c) 2012 John Puckett