BBQ & Other Friday Night Endeavours...

It was a busy weekend that started around noon on Friday.

I was about two years overdue to hold a serious BBQ, and so I sent out invitations earlier in the week to about 10 people, of whom 6 or so responded. I had asked for an RSVP, but as an earlier article in the NYT stated, RSVP seems to be a dying social convention.

The BBQ was to involve burgers and sausage; I had found a new coffee based dry rub recipe that I wanted to try out via the Epicurious app on my iPhone.

Given that I work from a home office, I didn't feel too bad with shutting it down at noon, and beginning the Epic Quest™ to pull together all the required ingredients.

I started at The Leslieville Cheese Market for some smoked Gouda, and provolone cheeses to crown my epic creations. Across the street, Rowe Farms provided me with four pounds of organic hamburger and fresh Brick Street Bakery buns.

The next stop was Meat on Queen, for some sausage... this Mom & Son operation have an entire deli case full of gourmet sausages that are made on site. Some of the recipes include Apple & Ginger, Veal & Sun-dried Tomato, as well as the usual suspects like garlic, honey, chorizo, greek, etc.

Last stop was Loblaws, to pick up the usual condiments; lettuce, tomato, onions, cold deli salads, etc.

I had purposefully asked people to NOT BRING ANYTHING. In fact, I was adamant as I wanted no kitchen / fridge leftovers. When you're single, and you host a party, your cold storage space can quickly become overrun if people bring stuff; you can never get through it all before it goes bad later on. And that's still exactly what happened, as peeps find it impossible to show up empty handed. Either that, or they never actually read anything I wrote in the invitation. Ah well.

One of the reasons that I had rarely if ever went down the road of home-made-burgers is that a) the frozen, store bought kind aren't too bad nowadays, and b) I was always embarrassed at my inability to make a round, evenly distributed patty. Enter the Starfrit Hamburger Stacker, the king of the infomercial circuit and (thankfully) carried by the local Canadian Tire. This thing is just awesome; I'm making fresh home made burgers all the time this summer. Or I say now. ;-)

With all the ingredients collected, I went about making the burgers, and placed the in the fridge to cool and retain that lovely red-hockey-puck shape. The house was clean, the beer was cold, and all that I needed was guests.

Rodolfo the Jewish Brazilian Designer/Photographer was the first to arrive, bringing a couple bottles of wine. Ok, I can handle people bringing wine; it stores well and keeps me from having to hit up the LCBO.

Over the next hour, the rest of the guests trickled in; The Computer Engineer / Photographer / Historian, the Photographer/Music Journalist, the Engineer & Teacher from next door, the Wedding Photographer/Insurance Adjuster, the Television Programming Exec / Photographer... you can see that I should have gotten some decently varied, and maybe even awesomely indepth discussions on art and science... maybe even something on the future of our society, right? Nope. The girls talked DeGrassi memories, and guys talked computers. *sigh* So. Ashamed. And Sad.

The food was demolished in short order; I ended up running out actually and the people that showed up late thankfully brought their own kebabs that I just had to throw on the grill. By this point, the sun was down, the wine and beer were flowing even more copiously and it was time to hit the local bar to finish off the night.

Good times, good food, good peeps. :-)