Grilling Time

We have been making do with a $30 grill for few years. It has not aged well. It has been rusting out from the beginning and we decided to upgrade to the charcoal grill that everyone seems to end up with - the Weber One-Touch Gold. It has a larger grilling area, holds more coal, has a neat cleaning system, and has more durable finish. It also has, to my surprise, a built in thermometer. Which is useful. The assembly was a bit more annoying than I expected, since the legs really take a lot of force to slide on and the bin underneath took more squeezing to snap it in than I expected.

Old rusty grill on the left, shiny new grill in the middle, and the coal chimney starter on the right

Fans on the Weber which can be moved with the lever (visible at 6 o'clock) to 1. let more air in and 2. push old charcoal into the bin below. The lid also has a latch to let you hang it off a handle.

The old grill has gotten pretty grungy. I really like how the new grill has hooks on the handles to hang grilling equipment

Thermometer

I have only used it a few times, so I'm still figuring it out how to best control the temperature. I have also had some problems with the coals taking a long time to heat up past 200 F. I found that the ash from previous grilling sessions was clogging the holes and preventing proper air flow.

After clearing that up, I opened up the bottom and top vents and can get the grill over 500 F.

If I close the top and bottom vents, the grill drops to around 300 F. The biggest annoyances are that the top lid handle gets uncomfortably hot when the grill is fully heated up and that the assembly is so fiddly. Fairly minor complaints. The real test will be to see whether the grill will still be going strong 10 years from now.

Barely baby-proofing

I'm not quite sure where July has gone - taken up with summer fun and not much yard or home maintenance. So today's long overdue post is mostly about lack of action. The little one is still, thankfully, mostly immobile. We are savoring these last few weeks (days?) of her being unable to get around by herself and have continued to be pretty lax on baby proofing.

What have we done so far? Mostly just removed the biggest risks in the living room, where we spend more of our time with her.

We moved the fireplace equipment to the breezeway. This piece in particular seemed like a significant baby hazard. Trying to hold on to pull herself up might cause wood to fall everywhere. Metal pokers are sharp, wood splinters, the piece itself is heavy and unforgiving in the event of tumbles, etc. So outside it went.

Our shoe tray also has been effected - we had pebbles in there to keep the shoes off the ground and allow the soles to dry. Pebbles that would be a fabulous "tasty treat" to any discerning baby. Goodbye choking hazard. We're trying to find a long kitchen trivet to put in there to accomplish the same thing of letting air circulate under the shoes, but so far to no avail.

We also got rid of nearly all the cat toys, since their small size made them good candidates for choking hazards. So far though, that's about it.

We bought fancy magnetic safety latches for our cabinets, but they've been laying uninstalled for a few weeks now. We got baby gates at the shower we had last October, also uninstalled (we really should at least make sure we know where they are...)

We've made plans to attach furniture to the walls, at least in the rooms where she would most likely not be under constant supervision like her nursery and the living room, but again, no progress in that area.

So yeah, just a quiet summer of playing with baby and not at all preparing for her future mobility....