Grill Grill Grill (dugga dugga dugga)

When we moved into our house in 2005, my dad bought us a really nice Webber propane grill. And like most nice things I have been given as gifts, I didn't take the best care of it. Because between 2005 and the Great Grill Fire of 2010, I never really cleaned it.

I'm not totally disgusting. I cleaned the parts that actually touch my food. But you know all that part UNDER the grill? The part where 5 years worth of fats can accumulate? And that little grease trap at the bottom (who knew there was a grease trap in big propane grills)? I never cleaned them. Which led directly to the aforementioned Great Grill Fire of 2010.

(Look, I claim only to be pretty good at cooking. I have never claimed to be anything but terrible at cleaning, and everyone who knows me will back me up on that ).

It wasn't really that bad. I was innocently cooking hamburgers on the clean top grill that perched unassumingly above the grease-filled underbelly, when the whole shebang just went up in one big inferno. I shut off the gas, dumped a box of baking soda on it, and we ordered out that night.

So I didn't use the grill for about a year. Because I was freaked out, and well, with my life, and all of the 100 things that always need doing, cleaning out my nasty charred grill never struggled to the top. But I bit the bullet today, and how I cleaned. I dug out all the ashes and scoured the grill top to bottom and inside and out, and am happy to report that the fabulous Weber is still in fine shape and no real damage was done.

Which is great, because summer is ending and I need to make up for a lost year's worth of grilling. I love the grill, and tonight I did the entire dinner ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn it.

I marinated two bone-in split chicken breasts (great deal on those at Kroger right now) overnight in a bottled Teriyaki marinade. I tossed those on the grill with a few zucchini, sliced down the middle and coated with olive oil and Italian seasoning, and four corn cobs in their husks.

I used to engage in a lot of guess work when grilling. Does it look done? I don't anymore and finally started using a meat thermometer, for two reasons: 1. I don't want to kill my family with food poisoning and 2. If you try to guess, you usually end up overcooking more often than not. Which takes a nice, delicious piece of meat and turns it into jerky. I try to yank stuff off the grill the second that it reaches the right internal temperature (my grill actually has a temperature chart printed on it, but there's also a handy one here.

Split breasts are a very large cut of meat, so it took a while to grill--about 45 minutes, which made dinner later than I intended. One was enough for the family, and I cut up and saved the other one to use in a pasta dish tomorrow night. The kids mainly just ate the corn, which wasn't surprising, but they ate a little chicken, too. The zucchini was a bridge to far for them, but the hubby ate it happily, so it wasn't a total loss.