Adventioneering

I am shopping around for a BBQ-style grill for use camping. Once upon a time I had one of those tiny weber kettles, which was super cute, except horrible to pack in the rover (because it was round, weird, and inevitably dirty), and the ashes were a big pain to clean up. At some sites you could just bury them or dump them in the camp fire (if you had one), but I just never liked the impact.

Eventually I replaced this with an el-cheapo stainless box grill that I always suspected was going to explode and kill me, even though it worked great and served me well on many trips. It was easy to setup, easy to start (fwoosh), easy to cook on, although it ran a bit cold, easy to clean, and easy to pack up. When we moved to New England it was one of the things we left; I think Coppola has it, and I hope he’s made a few steaks on his patio with it, another past-time of mine.

In weighing sides on the eternal charcoal v. gas debate, I came across this article from Oak Ridge National Labs. The author claims that charcoal has twice the carbon emissions of a gas grill, but is net-zero because the charcoal comes from crop trees that are re-planted (and therefore recycle the carbon out of the air). So while the charcoal may be killing you (and making your food taste great), it’s possibly not killing the environment.