Chimney Starters and April 14th

Chimney Starters

Say no to petroleum fuels

That is the basic version of what we call a "Chimney starter".  Chimney starters have been used for a long while, but for some reason haven't been all the mass marketed till recently.  The change to gas powered grills and the selling of them as luxury items has largely held back shelf space for making charcoal products available.  What are the benefits of a Chimney starter?  Well, for one, you will not have to use lighter fluid in your cooking.  Now, I know there are those that say "but I grew up on lighter fluid tasting hotdogs, it tastes like home", and those that say "lighter fluid is just easier".  I would not say it is easier.  Also, you have to make sure you have lighter fluid around or buy match light.  Typically match-light charcoal is filled with other chemicals or car manufacturing by products.  It is also super dangerous to keep stored if you like have spontaneous grill outs.  Match-light burns super fast, super hot(per coal), and takes just as long to be ready a regular char wood or char coal.

How does a Chimney starter work?  Well I use news paper or phone book pages.  I crumple a page into a ball and put 3-4 balls under the starter.  I fill the starter full of charcoal, and light the newspaper.  Now all I have to do is wait.  The flames will draw in air, which will then circulate and heat, rushing out of the top of the chimney, where it will spin and create a sort of tornado inside.  This will draw even more air from the bottom in a self sustaining jet engine like flame that will get your coals lit and burning hot in about 20-30 mins, depending on charcoal size and weather conditions.  When the coals stop smoking, char white, and the flame is red hot, then the coals are ready to transfer to your grill.

Remember how I said that match-light burns hotter per coal?  At first you think this is great, but that just means the charcoal is burning away faster.  You can still get lots of heat by bunching regular charcoal together.  You can get 650-750 degrees with regular charcoal and it will burn for much much longer.  If you use actual wood chunk charcoal you can get up to 900 degrees.  That'll cook a steak perfectly medium with a nice crusty outside in no time.  Plus you won't taste any of the lighter fluid that is left over in matchlight no matter how long you let it "set".

April 14th, 2014

A surprise rainy day.  Well most of them are because I do not keep up with weather forecasts.  Maybe I should have because I wanted to see the lunar eclipse tonight.  I remember seeing the last one in 2010 with my father, but tonight is just going to be too cloudy.  Ah well, it won't be too rare to see them I guess.  Not like the total eclipse of the sun coming in a few years, that I really hope to not miss.  The last one in my area, I was too small to really care about such things because they weren't as amazing as Star Trek: TNG's intro.  Now I really appreciate them.

Grocery day!  I swear Old Spice recycles older scents that don't sell well into their new line ups to see if they get traction.  They took Komodo and made it smell a little sweeter(unfortunately) and call it Bearglove now or some such.  I really wish they'd sell Komodo around here more, it was the best.  It was spicy and slightly sweet, without being old fashioned and blah.  I'm not a fan of old fashioned cologne.  

I am notorious for my gigantic mugs of coffee.  The last few days I have tried making much stronger tasting coffee in smaller cups to see if it will cut down on how much of it I drink.  So far its working.  I think I put more milk per-cup than I usually do, but I drink far less cups overall, so I think its a positive, I'll have to measure because we all know we underestimate things.

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