BBQs

Last night I learnt another little American thing that I never noticed myself. For once it was an American who pointed it out to me!

The party last night was both for Cindy's birthday and also because our friend Katie is leaving town. So Katie brought a couple of her other friends whom we've met but don't know well. One started trying to ingratiate himself by asking Cindy, "Which part of Australia are you from?" It's quite amusing for me to watch this sort of exchange in which Cindy has to pause to wonder whether she's understood the question correctly and then try to find a polite way of responding to a question that doesn't really have a correct answer. (Last time one of my classmates, upon hearing that we were going there asked Cindy, "Have you ever been to France before?")

After the Australia questions were redirected to myself, this guy started commenting on how we prefer to barbecue on hot plates, rather than grills. My first reaction was to think to myself, "Well, it's a lot easier when the meat's not falling into the fire. We only use the grill side of the gas barbie if there's so much meat that it won't fit on the plate or you want pretty lines on your steak." And then I realised that all those times I've been to barbecues here, I'd never seen a plain barbecue plate. We've been forced to use a metal grill (and have the burger patties break and fall in the fire) not because the Bloomington parks are too cheap to install decent barbecues, it's because the plate style just doesn't exist here. Our guest then proceeded to tell us about an Australian friend of his who had actually built a brick barbecue for his family so that they could cook more easily on a plate.