I noted in a previous post that my Saturday started with fluffy, delicious buttermilk pancakes and ended in fire. It’s time to explain.

See, on Friday night Anjali and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. With classic Wingo “nothing-to-see-here” nonchalance, I picked up several large branches and carried them back home. There’s no way to prove this, but I definitely carried them for at least 2 miles.

And then Saturday rolled around and we fucking destroyed the kitchen. I sanded down the counters, we painted all the walls in a gorgeous turquoise, and then we refinished the countertops with butcher block oil. The kitchen was unusable.

So, was there actually another option besides lighting my sticks on fire and cooking the most delicious burgers this side of Cincinnati? Nope. Had to be done.

The dudes who owned this house prior left us lots of goodies: a lawn mower, a water hose, 8 bags of raked leaves, rotten wooden planks, charcoal, lighter fluid, a grill grate, etc. They didn’t leave us an actual grill, but they left us some bricks and a fire pit.

I carefully selected three “Cookin’ Bricks” to hold up the grate and nested some charcoal in the middle. I doused those fuckers in lighter fluid, lit a piece of mail on fire, dropped it in and watched it burn.

I should note that Anjali was inside at the time and it was probably better that way.

As no one could have predicted, the coals didn’t quite light. There wasn’t enough airflow from beneath. The most obvious solution was to add more lighter fluid, but I could hear my dad’s voice telling me “no” for some inexplicable reason. The next obvious solution was to add some of my precious, precious sticks.

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Burger success! (Mom – still veggie burgers, still not eating meat.)

While I was outside giddy with power, Anjali was inside MAKING FRENCH FRIES. Making french fries, y’all. We had our doubts about the necessity of the Air Fryer until. this. moment. The fries. So good.

We laid out a burger toppings bar and ate the chargrilled fruits of our labor. Honestly, this is the best meal we’ve had so far.

Speaking of chargrilled fruits, we got a sugar craving, but again the kitchen was out of order. Inspiration struck: a fruit galette. We had pre-made pie crust and frozen raspberries. We put the crust in a cast iron dutch oven, dumped in the raspberries, sprinkled it with sugar, closed the pie crust around the fruit, and put it on the fire.

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The bottom crust cooked very quickly. Literally no one could have seen that coming. We had to create a heat source from the top. Anjali bravely transferred a sacred Cookin’ Brick to the top of the dutch oven.

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While we waited, Anjali drew beautiful mountain landscapes on the bricks with a very lovely stick that I definitely wouldn’t burn because I was told that I couldn’t burn it under any circumstances and I would never violate such an order, Anjali, I swear I don’t know what happened to your stick.

Anyhoo, the galette was very burned and we ate it with ice cream.

Dear readers, the burgers were DELICIOUS, but please don’t try any of this at home.