When you see a scene like this, grilling is probably one of the furthest things from your mind. However, if you have been following me for any amount of time, you know that grilling is a year round event for me. Even when the Michigan Winter hits and the temps drop into the negative Fahrenheit digits.
Unlike the East coast of the US, snow has been pretty scarce in our neck of the woods this year. This picture is from one of the first decent snows we have gotten so far.
In the summer, I keep my grill off the right edge of this photo down on the cement slab where our patio used to end.
In the winter, I move the grill into our garage and when it is time to fire it up I roll it out into the driveway. The other weekend we made a regular trip to the meat market and my wife decided that it would be a good weekend to grill.
We have gotten in the habit of buying most of our meat all at once about every month or every other month. Then we portion it out and food save it (vacuum seal) it to freeze and use later.
On this particular trip I purchased the following (just to give you an idea of what we regularly buy):
2 pounds of thick cut double smoked bacon
2 pounds of ground pork
2 pounds of bulk pork breakfast sausage
3 pounds of ground chicken
20 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breasts
Usually when I go to the meat market my wife chooses to stay in the car because she can't stand the smell. She still doesn't eat beef and it is only recently that she has taken to eating more pork products. When we first started dating she wouldn't touch bacon, ham, or pork at all.
It is more of a taste and texture thing for her versus a moral objection. I am happy to say that I was able to wear her down because some of the best meats for grilling and smoking are pork.
All that being said, Chicken is still our go-to protein and we eat more of that than anything. If I had to guess I would say in an average year 60% of our meals include chicken, 25% include pork, 10% include beef (just for me) and 5% include some other non animal based protein like lentils etc.
Oddly enough, this past weekend when we grilled, none of the meat we had just purchased was on the menu. Instead we decided to have some pork chops that we had picked up at our local Costco. The Costco is only about two miles down the road from us and it has only been open close to a year now. They have some really great deals on meat sometimes. We got eight center cut boneless pork chops for like $15 USD.
It is exciting for me because like I said even a year ago my wife never would have touched one of these pork chops. I am still working on getting the cook down right. We have a restaurant down the road that makes some of the most tender pork chops I have ever had. My wife loves them too. Sadly, whenever I try to grill chops, I always end up getting them just a little wrong and they have that tough steak-like texture that my wife doesn't care for. She is a trooper and she still eats them anyway.
I think part of my problem is the fact that I am so used to cooking pork well done. I know that with the recent eradication of Trichinosis that isn't necessary anymore, but I honestly don't think my wife would eat them if there was too much pink.
I just need to find that perfect balance of pulling them at the right time so the carry over cooking keeps them tender. I have tried countless methods of manually tenderizing them including marinades and poking them with a fork.
I may not get the chops perfect (for her), but potatoes on the grill are something that I excel at. It really isn't that hard given the fact that you just throw the foil packet on the grill and let it go.
There is the rare occasion that I pull it a bit early and the potatoes are hard or I leave it too long and the bottom gets a little burnt. More often than not though, they come out absolutely perfect.
You will likely laugh at me, but I usually cut the chops into small bites sized pieces so that it eats more like chicken for my wife. It's not that she can't do it herself, it's just that I know she is taking a leap by even eating pork with me, so she deserves me going the extra mile for her.
We added some air-fried broccoli to this meal to make it practically perfect in every way. It was truly fantastic and I took the leftovers to work with me for lunch the next day.
Just like the old post office motto "neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor dark of night" or however it goes, that is what I think of when it comes to me grilling. It would likely take a hurricane, tornado, or tsunami for me to think twice about grilling out.
All pictures taken by myself or 
