While my husband was away on his [Asian sex tour], I invited my friends MM and KC over for a barbeque. (In case you were wondering, my husband’s back now and complaining of fatigue and blisters on his feet. I mean, what the fuck?)
However, when they arrived bearing sausages and booze, I had to admit that I didn’t even know how to turn the damn barbeque on. It was a low point in my afternoon.
Now, I should say here that I’m sure I’d be a very competent barbeque-er if I’d ever been given the chance. The way my husband goes on about it, it’s like some kind of Secret Men’s Business – a complex, time-consuming task that can only be done by a man with a beer in his hand (“in case of sudden fires”) and no kids underfoot (“It’s a matter of Health and Safety, ma’am.”) and a group of onlooking males. I mean, let’s face it: a dozen sausages on a hotplate need constant and careful adult supervision. Obviously.
When I’ve challenged him on this, my husband admitted it’s all just an opportunity for the menfolk to talk about things that they really want to talk about but can’t when women are present. Apparently, those ‘things’ can be summarised as “cars, chicks and guns”. Oh, and complaining about how their wives are always complaining about how difficult it to be looking after the kids all the time – all while the wives *are* inside looking after the kids.
Honestly, it’s amazing I agree to host barbeques as often as we do.
Anyway, turns out that MM – the Heir Apparent to the Barbeque Chef role simply by virtue of his gender – didn’t want to touch my husband’s barbeque. Apparently it’s akin to drinking another man’s beer, sleeping with his wife or, worse still, wearing his underpants.
KC, however, had no such hesitation.
“Come on, we can do it!” she said, and we went out to look at the barbeque where we helpfully found instructions printed on it. Yes, instructions. We followed them carefully (“switch on the gas bottle, push in the knob and turn it”) and lo! we had ourselves a sizzlin’ hotplate in no time.
“And he makes it seem so complicated… Ha!” KC said fifteen minutes later, as she brought inside a tray of perfectly cooked sausages.
And indeed, those were the best sausages I’d ever eaten. They were the Sausages of Gender-Equality, despite their phallocentric appearance and all. Some might even push things too far here by saying those sausages represented the emasculation of generations of Male BBQ Oppressors, but not I. I am far too tasteful to go there.
Anyway, the day after my husband had returned from his [trip], he found an excuse to cook something on his precious barbeque. I took this opportunity to boast about how KC and I had managed to light the thing and how KC had cooked all the sausages and even cleaned the hotplate for him after she’d finished.
“She seemed to think it’d been a while since you’d cleaned it, which I thought was being rather generous. I mean, have you ever cleaned it?” I asked.
“No way! If you clean it then when friends bring ’round vegie burgers, they won’t taste like meat,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“Anyway,” he added. “She might have done it, but she didn’t do it properly. I found a serious breach of Health & Safety regulations. She forgot to turn the gas tap off.”
“It didn’t say that on the instructions!” I protested.
“What instructions? We menfolk don’t need instructions!” my husband exclaimed, reminding me of the time he’d tried to put an Ikea Vika Furuskog desk together without the instructions and ended up making a Bjärnum shoe rack. “Also, you only need to give it a quarter-turn and not virtually twist the whole cap off. It took me half an hour just to twist it all the way back on!”
Or rather, it took half a minute for him to twist it on and the rest of the time to stand about and drink some more beer. And ain’t that the truth.
… stand around, drink beer and* repetitively comment on how we womenfolk don’t know enough about BBQs to turn the cap off …
Am personally in process of purchasing brand new grill type thing for stovetop so he can have his damned bbq and leave me out of it 🙂
Glad you got good sausages!
I guess the BBQ is the one meal where I get to delegate a good chunk of the work to my husband… because there’s no way he’s touching my stove! He just lets the milk pan boil over and then leaves the milk on the stove top to get baked on like some kind of brown varnish.
Isn’t BBQing while inebriated a health and safety breach? Or do you have to be drunk to figure out which way to turn the gas tap? That’s clearly where I went wrong.
Apparently it’s all intuitive, especially when alcohol is involved and your vision gets a bit blurry.
Oh, cleaning the barbecue. This crosses nationalities, it seems. My husband has made the same argument about how important it is NOT to clean, alongside another male friend who was nodding his head vigorously.
Good for you, taking over the BBQ and all.
KC and I are such “hand a girl a spanner” gals.
‘Sausages of gender equality’!!! Fabulous!
Yeah, I loved that line too!
I aim to please, ladies.
As opposed to my husband, who “aims to please ladies” without the comma.
. . . aims to please ladies, and afterwards puts the seat down again – now THAT’S always pleasing!
Just flying through, great post!
1. I’ve never spent even 1 second talking about cars and guns at a BBQ or anywhere else for that matter. Chicks is the only subject worthy of pursuit.
2. Sausages are not phallic to me, but for those who think they are, remember to put some cocktail franks on, and Kath and Kim style refer o them as ‘little boys’.
3.As a Eurasian with a wok, I endorse a limited non-cleaning perspective. You can, in fact scrape off the obvious muck, but the mission is to keep the plate seasoned wok style, IMHO.
Woohoo!
To be honest, I don’t think my husband has much interest in cars or guns either. Still, if it gets him out of child wrangling inside the house, he’s there. With a beer in his hand.
I think you are all very lucky to be alive:
a) 15mins for sausages is hardly safe cooking time. I guess you like the taste of bacteria.
b) That gas bottle was just waiting for a spark to blow you all up.
You’re very lucky your husband returned to set things straight.
My husband later admitted that the gas bottle incident really didn’t put anyone’s lives in danger but that it was the principle of the thing.
As for fifteen minutes, it may have been longer and, indeed, it may have been shorter. Whatever. Noone threw up. And in my house, that’s a miracle.
Too damn funny!
Barbeque parties are the same Australia wide…perhaps worldwide.
My favourite bit…
“reminding me of the time he’d tried to put an Ikea Vika Furuskog desk together without the instructions and ended up making a Bjärnum shoe rack”
Hilarious!! 🙂
I might have exaggerated that a little – for one thing, any Ikea aficionado would be able to tell you that it’s impossible for a Vika Furuskog desk to become a Bjärnum shoe rack because one is made of “wood” and the other of “metal”.
Still, if my husband has drunk enough beer…
I’ve posted an article at Aussie Mummy Bloggers called Husband Optimisation Tips, and included a link to this post. Thought you may like it. Colin
Thanks for the link, Colin.
Ha ha. Men. They’re so lame.
Wait a minute…
Ha ha.
send it in to 1973 New Idea: Mere Male column.
Did you have to look up the names of the Ikea furniture? I would have.
I also would have required some sort of instructions to turn the thing on.
I did a post about this topic recently, but I like yours better–the girl triumphs in your story, not so much in mine.
If you want to read it, it’s here: http://tropicalmum.blogspot.com/2010/04/mythbusters-bbqing-means-break-for-mum.html
Enjoyed your post. Looking forward to the next instalment.
*Of course* I had to look up those Ikea names. The only Ikea name that I can ever remember off the top of my head is ‘Billy’ and that’s because someone I knew once walked into another person’s house and IDed their Billy bookcase just like that.
Thanks for sharing your post. I think, from your description, cooking a BBQ is just like cooking a roast – it’s all simple enough, but the expertise is in the timing. So it amazes me that we ever get to eat anything when we host a BBQ because my husband’s sense of timing is normally useless.
http://www.iamcal.com/games/ikea/
diverted by the wikipedia entry about Ikea – its founder, who was dyslexic, decided upon product names rather than codes.
(I wonder if the dyslexia names make the cut. Now that would be fun!)
Its true, barbies must be the same world over, the way you described ‘Secret Men’s Business’ called to mind of so many memories of my barbecue experiences – to a tee!…Although I should add that at the last barbie the male host ended up having a sook that he did all the cooking and no one even bothered to gather round the barbie and talk to him, gee, that must have been tough….
All that responsibility watching the sausages fell on his shoulders and his shoulders alone. No wonder he was sooking, poor dear.
“Sigh” Men!
Sausages of Gender Equality – they sound delicious!
I was discussing hosting a BBQ with my friend and mentioned that DH might not be able to attend but her hubs or she and I could handle the task…at which point she informed me that we would definitely have to do it. Why? I asked…her response?:
“Because my husband feels that messing with another man’s BBQ is akin to messing with his wife.”
What is WRONG with men. I am not to be compared to a COOKING IMPLEMENT. I have much more to offer doggone it.
GRUMBLE. I say down with the male-dominated fallus promoting grilling process. Let’s have pink grills and round hot dogs! And we’ll make them 12 inches long…men have trouble with measurement anyway. 😉
XOXO Rachael
@PineappleBabble
alright, one final comment about barbecuing: gas barbecuing in particular.
I sincerely believed that “Swap and Go” gas stands at petrol stations were just that: swap, and GO!.
But to be on the safe side, I went inside and checked with the pleasant attendant behind the register: “Yes, that’s it, you swap your gas bottle over with one of ours. The stand is right beside the front door. Too easy.” (or perhaps he said “It’s all good.”)
Cool!
So I hefted our gas bottle out, and hefted their much heavier gas bottle into our boot.
It WAS too easy!
The next step, I’ve learned, is then to pay.
I learned this when the panting attendant leaned in my car window as I was about to pull back out into the traffic at the top of High Street.
Swap, Pay and Go. That’s my recommendation for future signage.
* makes mental note not to bring any veggie burgers round anytime soon.
the only ikea product i know is ‘glimma’ – the tea lights with the nice glowy name. the only thing i ever buy there.
I love manning the bbq (boom tish), which I may have mentioned once or twice in the Twittersvere, but just to really upset the apple cart, I do it with a glass of wine in my hand, cop that beer swilling bbq-oppressors.