Fend off this cabin fever for just awhile longer
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- February 23, 2018
- 1460
Oh Ohio, you shameless tease. We’ve had the kind of warm weather that really gets a winter-weary body excited. After a long season with regular dips near zero or below and more snow than we’ve seen for a couple of years, the temperature is finally, at least for the moment, well above 50 F.
Looking at the weather app on my ever-present phone and seeing those numbers in the 60s or even a touch higher, my mind went to one thing: grilling.
Well, that’s actually a flat-out lie. My mind went to several things: the tiny herb and vegetable garden I want to plant this spring, the need to finally get a picnic table for outdoor meals in the warm months and trying to figure out once again where to plant the peonies I never seem to get around to buying.
But mainly grilling.
Near the end of last summer I got a charcoal kettle grill that has been lazily waiting out the cold in the garage next to the wheelbarrow and between the bicycles. I felt very much like a kid getting a new toy only to have to put it away for months and just look at it now and then.
Mostly I’ve looked at it when going out there for the snow shovel. Thank goodness the garage is too ancient and tiny to put a car in it so I don’t have to look at my smug little Weber grill taunting me every day.
But Ohio teases us. It may be 65 F out there, but that balmy temp is married to a steady downpour and skies gray enough to make you close all the draperies and try to find something on TV set somewhere in the Greek Isles.
It doesn’t help, or perhaps it does, that I follow so many foodie accounts on Instagram and other social media apps, most of them associated with grilled meats or seafood. Scrolling endlessly through images of long bone chops, enormous steaks, table-covering racks of ribs and wall-to-wall shellfish is an exquisite form of self torment for an Ohio boy trapped in an eternal slate-skied February.
Of course this warm weather is as big a sham as the people who call you every day about your need for a home security system. By the time you read this, my phone will be predicting more snow.
I almost hope we get it, as I finally broke down and bought a bag of salt for the sidewalks last week, just in time for the open-windows weather. It’s Ohio after all, and it might be below zero well after this year’s early Easter.
In the meantime my family is already talking about making paella over a grill fire as soon as weather permits. We’re planning to attempt grilling crab legs sometime soon after that, and I can’t tell you often enough that when you’re going to be grilling something, anything really, pick up a dozen or so small clams to rest over the coals as an appetizer to eat around the grill as everything else cooks. It also will bring everyone outside to share them, which is where they should be.
Grilled vegetables also are high on the want list, and they’ll be a good excuse to buy the little stir-fry accessory for the grill.
Cross your fingers with me, fellow Ohioans, that we can fend off this cabin fever just a little while longer. The rewards are sure to be great.