Guest Post on Welcome to the Cookout and Why I'm So Short

If you haven't read Welcome to the Cookout, you should. It's a great site all about outdoor cooking full of information from novice to expert grilling by master "CB" Chef Barry. He's as awesome on the grill as he is tall. I come up to, like, his waist both figuratively and actually.

Of course I come up to a lot of people's waists, chests and armpits. Whenever I put on a hoodie in the rain the cottony touch and damp laundry scent reminds me of concerts I saw as a teen because I spent most of them with my nose smashed into the back of some tall person's sweaty outerwear. When I wasn't trapped into a stranger's armpit, I was able to see the stage only 50% of the time on the up part of the constant jumping I had to do to see around the giants that invariably muscled their way to the front row. Maybe that's why I didn't go to as many concerts as my classmates. You try jumping for three straight hours. Even with a teen body, concerts were marathon aerobic workouts that left me sore and spent the next day.

Grandma Alida, at 4 foot 9 is to blame. I think she started out at the towering zenith of 4 foot 11, but by her eighties her contents had settled a bit. She was cute as a button, though, as is my daughter whom I gave Alida as a middle name. (My pediatrician was startled when I jumped up and cheered after she'd said my kids were "average" height for their ages).

But enough about my shortcomings (snort, giggle) and back to Barry and grills and barbecue. Incidentally, Mr. Martin also created Our Community Table, a site all about our food system and how it's broken and how we can fix it, together, and who out there is walking the walk and who is stomping on us with their millions. I have meant to join in and contribute for a year, but I have so many irons in the fire, for now I have to simply be a fan. I'll get there, late as usual. Barry also wrote the bulk of these two books
  and , during his spokesman years with Char-broil so he has the creds to back up his on-line persona.

For a guest post on his site I wanted to write on a subject for beginners on the grill. I get a lot of questions about how to keep meat from sticking on the grill. This post takes on that question with an easy recipe for practicing the technique (while making dinner of course!)

The Mustard-Oregano Chicken Tenders recipe in the post is a great one for kids too. I see that Barry took his own, better photo for his website and watermarked my photos for me because he knows I can't figure out how to do that. And he has those nifty "PIN THIS" Pinterest button on all the photos. I've been meaning to Google "how to get pin this button on blog photos" to figure out what the deal is with THAT, but I'd have to get a day off for once in my life, people, so get off my back!

Whoa, didn't know I was going to get all tetchy on you, poor dearest reader (hi mom). Must be my Napoleon complex.

Just (please) go read the post on Welcome to the Cookout and say something nice, OK?