Blackened
The instructions, passed on to the missus by the guy at the meat counter, were simple: grill for forty-five minutes. And so, I popped the cap on a Dos Equis and headed down into the back yard, where I fired up the grill, the threw on the seasoned half chicken that was to be the evening repast. And then, with forty-five minutes to kill, I went back up to play with the baby, because nowhere in the above instructions does it state that the grill must be watched carefully, lest you leave to play with your child for twenty minutes or so and return to find the whole goddamn thing on fire.
The first indicator of a problem in the backyard came with the glance through the kitchen window that revealed a thin, but persistent, column of smoke rising steadily from the general vicinity of the grill. The second indicator was when I poked open said grill and found myself looking into what could have passed for a deleted scene in BACKDRAFT. Flames filled the grill and licked over the sides hungrily, and, stalwart fellow that I am, I threw myself on the ground to protect myself from the inevitable blowback explosion from oxygen flowing into the grill (I've seen BACKDRAFT at least seven times).
When no explosion came, I hurried over and turned off the propane, then pulled the coal-black carcass of what had at one point been a fine-looking hunk of chicken off the seared white grill once the flames had died down. It had shrunk to half its size and now resembled an oddly-shaped lava rock. I cut into it, holding out hope that I'd inadvertently discovered a new recipe for charred chicken, but the inferno that had engulfed the interior of the grill minutes before had failed to penetrate through the crusty outer shell that had quickly developed, and the inside was a bright pink. So I threw it on a plate and presented it to the missus, indigninantly citing the deficiencies in the instructions she'd passed on to me, only to learn that said chicken had been coated in tequila, apparently a popular seasoning technique that happens to be as flamable as all hell.
The missus, practical woman that she is, rightly chastized me for leaving a fatty chicken unattended on an open flame, then presented a backup meal of raw hamburger from the refrigerator. And so I returned to the grill, cleaned the blackened curls of fat off the grate, and did it up proper, watching those burgers like a hawk as I sat on the porch swing with the baby, instructing her in the finer points of grilling and waving off the planes carrying fire retardant and smokejumpers that had appeared overhead.