Happy 5th of July! It's a day to do absolutely nothing useful or important because we both have the day off and yet there are no celebrations, explosions in the sky, or flanks of meat to barbecue.
Although, we didn't even grill flanks of meat on the 4th of July. As it turns out we might as well not have grilled anything.
Let us start from the beginning. My in-laws belong to an athletic club which hosts a 4th of July celebration each year: a buffet barbecue dinner followed by a fireworks show. After attending the buffet last year, we decided this year we could do better (and it would be cheaper, and probably healthier) just making our own barbecue at home.
That line of thought was put to the test yesterday evening.
The turkey burgers (yes, we had turkey burgers because we are nothing if not health-conscious), ended up being a mushy mess on the grill within about ten minutes. Something to do with the grill not being hot enough, or not oiling the grate before putting the burgers on, or a faulty recipe...or all of the above. While attempting to flip the mushy mess and figure out a.) whose fault it was, b.) how we were going to eat these, and c.) why the burgers were completely falling apart, it seems the heat and smoke from the grill were beginning to char an overhanging tree limb.
Luckily, we stopped discussing the disastrous turkey burgers long enough to notice the tree was turning black and move the grill over to avoid our own backyard fireworks.
(Another good question: why was the tree getting grilled while the turkey was just turning to mush? Hmmm.)
We ended up scooping the turkey off the grill, sautéing it all in a pan on the stove, and eating the "burgers" more or less like sloppy joes. The happy news is: they were tasty.
John's mom made some ice cream for dessert, only her ice cream maker apparently bit the dust during the churning/freezing process yesterday. We were a little worried the ice cream might not be hard enough until we started trying to scoop it out. Their freezer is definitely NOT broken and after running the whole thing under hot water and using some major elbow grease (um, not mine), we finally got the ice creamed all served up....with some delicious berry compote.
That berry compote was supposed to be flambéed. Us girls in the kitchen trying to flambé the berry compote ended up blaming the failure to light anything on fire on either the too-small amount of liquor (the more liquor, the better, right?) or the over-abundance of berry juice. The guys walked in a minute after our failed attempt, and for a while we were able to convince them they had missed an awesome display of culinary fire power.
The berry compote was really good anyway. And, let's face it, the only thing that even almost caught on fire during the evening was the tree overhanging the barbecue grill.
To top off the dinner, my mother-in-law's sink started backing up and her disposal has stopped working. She could not finish cleaning off the dishes, desperately wanted one of the guys to fix the sink (neither of them could figure out quite what to do at the time), and then became paralyzed when faced with the reality that we needed to leave to go see fireworks and yet the kitchen would be left in complete disarray. We honestly thought she might refuse to leave the house with dirty dishes on the counter, and my sister-in-law joked that she might actually have a heart attack. (The rest of us laughed, but John pointed out that I would be equally unhinged if this were happening at our house. And he's probably right.)
We eventually got out the door and set up our chairs in time to watch the fireworks show (which included some strange new variety of explosives that were basically really loud pops accompanied by one big, blinding flash of light - I felt the need for some eye protection), and were one of the first few out to the car, thus avoiding a 30-minute wait to exit the parking lot.
On the way home, John and his sister reminisced about watching the finale of the fireworks show from the rear window of the car growing up...because they needed to pile back in and get started home before all the traffic commenced! I'm happy to report we stayed for the entirety of the fireworks show last night.
I hope your 4th of July was just as entertaining and full of laughter as ours was...although perhaps a little less crazy. If you have today off, enjoy your Day After Independence Day!
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Hahaha! So sorry we missed it! That sounds quite amusing. I am almost sorry to say that not one bit of that surprises me. Sounds like a typical Rogers evening. It reminds me of Rick's calzone (which began it's life as a pizza). Were you there for that? Remind me to tell you about it on the way to Colorado if not.
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