I learned to cook at an early age. I was raised by my grandparents – mostly my grandmother, since gramps passed away from a stroke when I was 12-years old. I had a good childhood – we were dirt poor, but so was everyone else in our neighborhood – but most of my friends and I didn’t know we were poor. I don’t want to bore our readers with much of this, but as an example of being poor, my grandmother would send me to the corner grocery store – there weren’t any big supermarkets like we have today, and she would give me orders “get four slices of baloney” or “tell them you want 25-cents worth of baloney…” I had a hunch we weren’t rich by any measure. I also knew that, the grocer would give me more that I asked for, knowing we weren’t all that well off.
Looking back now, I realize we weren’t just poor, we were really poor. My own mother hardly gave my grandparents any money to help raise me, and both grandparents worked until I was about five years old – one would work the day shift at a factory, and the other the night shift, so one of them was always home to care for me. Again, not to bore our readers, but I learned to read, write and do simple math, long before I entered kindergarten – that’s how much my grandparents cared for me.
I love to barbecue, and we can usually barbecue all year round, even in the rain and snow, and we get a lot of rain in Western Oregon – but our front deck is partially covered, and I can roll the barbecue grill until the covered part of the deck and still cook – no matter the weather conditions. I was up late one night, I don’t sleep well at all – and saw an infomercial for something called the Blackstone Griddle – and it really caught my attention.Continue reading“Blackstone Griddle, by Pat Cascio”
