"The Steak That Would Not Cook"

So aspenwolf drove up tuesday afternoon, and I went out and bought a nice organic steak for dinner. We went to the beach first (where the water proved too cold for swimming), and then returned home to cook the steak.


I lit the grill and dropped the steak on it, and then realised that the grill was a bit brighter than usual. Looking underneath, I saw that the fuel line had a *flame* coming off it. I turned off the gas, the flame remained. I blew out the flame. Wandered inside to see if we could use the broiler instead, and then decided to give the grill a second chance. This resulted in me sitting on the grass near the grill to blow out the fuel line flame every time it sprouted for about 6 minutes, at which point it was getting harder to blow out the flame and aspenwolf was having visions of a crispy fried wingy. (At the time I was more concerned about the steak not getting cooked than grill explody turning me into a crispy critter). So we decided to attempt the broiling.
But we couldnt figure out how to assemble the broiler. I ended up suggesting that we just put it on a rack and place a tray under it with tin foil. We did, aspenwolf pressed the Broil button, and we waited. About 5 minutes later we checked and there was no sign that the broiler had been broiling. I realised that the Start button hadn't been pressed. So I pressed it and we waited again.
A half hour later aspenwolf opened the broiler and poked the steak... and squeaked, "It shouldn't still be raw!?!" So it was, that a half hour after starting to cook the steak, we had achieved room-temperature, slightly toasted, raw meat. And we were hungry!
Then we realised that what we thought was the broiler was, in fact, the storage drawer. We had been trying to cook the steak in a storage drawer. (That explains the random pieces of 'broiler' we couldn't figure out how to assemble). Having located the broiler flame at the top of the oven section, we finally got the steak cooking and sat back to wait. On the positive side, the steak, when finally cooked, was heavenly.

Dad informed us later that he had had the same problem with the grill, and that all we had to do was use the other side instead.

So last night we decided to have grilled hot dogs for dinner instead of baked chicken. I wandered out and lit the working side of the grill... which resulted in a fireball I barely avoided getting singed by. aspenwolf and I nearly fell over giggling hysterically.