Шашлики on the balcony- overall, a good day!

This weekend, we made short notice plans with some dear friends to come see us this morning. There's that Oh So Grand park across the road from us. If you get yourself officially beyond park boundaries and into the chunks of land people use for gardens, you can legally have a cookout! And- there's a baby grill set in one of the cupboards in the hallway just beside the door here... yum and drool. Yes. Well. We woke up to rain. The kind that looked to last all day (and it did, in fact... but- we've had almost none the past 2 months, so no one's complaining). 

Let's grill on the balcony, I said.

T's face lit up- Yeah! I always wanted to do that last year but Ange always said it'd be a bad idea and better not. 

Aw come on, I said. People at home do it all the time. 

I could tell by T's face that she was psyched by the idea. I went off to the store to buy groceries; T got the potatoes baking and then went off to light the grill.

I came home to laughs and a definite smell of barbecue starter fluid. Our guests had arrived. Are the fire trucks following you? Are scared neighbors beating their frantic way up the stairs? Uh nooooo... 

Weak grins. 

The place is definitely smelling 'grilly'. And every window in the house couldn't be open wider. Apparently, there'd been a slight 'get the fire started' mishap that ended with the entire fire being doused with quite a lot of water. Which explained why the house was full of smoke. 

 

 Anyhooo- onward. New fire fired up. Let the coals heat up while we...

 load the skewers with the marinaded meat...

 and clean, cut and load veggies. (Summer squash, mushrooms, onions)

 In the end, we brought the meat in to the oven to finish and keep warm.

 and pulled out the portable grill/sandwich maker (a freebie from somewhere!!) to finish the veggies...

 and the meat.

 Lunch. It Was Delicious! (**marinade details below)

And our guests. Well- they came to finish some repair stuff here- we can do a lot but changing the innards of a European john/toilet is not (yet) part of my repertoire... 

So- the apt now has a distinct petroleum product smell that vaguely reminds me of my Grandma B's house who has oil lamps and kerosene stoves. I wouldn't say it's such a pleasant smell but it was Grandma's house smell and therefore I don't mind it. It brings back a flood of images and memories. It smells warm. (Their house usually was.)
I guess Ange was right- the balcony here is just not the place to grill.... even without the initial fire starting incident, it proly wouldn't have been a hot idea.

** very simple and very tasty marinade for going-to-grill-it meat
put meat chunks into a plastic baggie and coat with
-mayonnaise
-add salt, lemon slices, crushed garlic.

Friend this summer marinaded the meat for 3 days- super yummy. We did only overnight and it was just fine. Of course, marinade time depends a bit on the quality of meat you have (the tougher the meat, the longer the marinade time). We had pretty scrappy stuff and did ok with an overnight marinade, though.