Barbecue

Happy Father’s Day, fellow fathers!!

So on Sunday, as is possibly customary for many of my compatriots, I often take on my role as barbecue guy. Pretty traditional, I know. “Sure! Do the big showy part of the meal, ignore the salads and vegetables and potatoes, the drudgery!” Not that I don’t participate in the cooking duties otherwise, sometimes with great results and other times, the verdict is termed brightly “it’s good!” But I’m not fooled. 

But with BBQ I’m seldom wrong. Often it involves an impressive piece of meat. 

Big prime rib roast, anyone? (Please note that this wasn’t the meal I cooked for Father’s Day but for a bigger gathering at our house at Canada Day a few years ago)

Cheeseburgers in paradise. . .

Umm, ribs, I think!?!

I can make pies too:

Blueberry

 

Pizza

Apple pies, too. That’s my favourite. Although no photo of one, strangely! I’ve made so many! The trees are in our yard so it’s extreme local food, the 50-foot diet.

I’m case you were wondering, I don’t make the pies on the barbecue.

Anyway, this Father’s Day there was a leg of lamb on the Barbie.  Easy, actually, since it was sous vide (7 hours at 133 degrees) and then 15 minutes on the grill. There were seven of us for dinner: semi-extended family and with son bringing his girlfriend. I can see that everything else on the table is honestly more work than the barbecue but because I embrace that duty willingly, I’m given a pass otherwise. Well, and I did do the dishes / cleanup the kitchen. 

After being asked. 

Other adventures du jour included 1 - mowing the lawn, 2 - putting the dock into the lake, with some friends and my son to assist, 3 - smoothing out the driveway (with Bobcat tractor) 4 - switching out the bucket for the backhoe on the Bobcat (this was for putting in the dock, although the Bobcat’s usual job is wintertime snow blowing). These tasks took up the day. Hey, it can’t all be fun & games!

Bobcat on snow blowing duty. Last winter’s fun?

Division of labour in a domestic household has been studied, discussed, argued about, measured, economically evaluated, but we still so often find ourselves in stereotypically gender-defined roles. Does my baking pies, making a polenta dish, rolling pizza dough, cleaning the kitchen, making the bed in the morning, compensate or balance the other work that I seem to avoid? I suspect that one is defined, in a political/domestic sense, by the domestic duties one takes on. (For me: home repair, chopping wood, changing tires, arranging for home insurance, car insurance, banking, mortgage, investments.) I rarely go shopping and don’t do laundry. But if the washer or dryer stops working, I fix them. I don’t know where to begin on the topic of emotional labour. There is zero emotional labour involved in replacing a pump on a home heating boiler. 

I do remember putting the kids to bed a lot, but I now I wonder what they recall? Have I vacuumed enough? Did I remember enough peoples’ birthdays? Sending cards of condolences? 

Anyway, the leg of lamb was delicious. Four ingredients: salt, pepper, rosemary, garlic. We had a nice Rosé to go with it. And there were potatoes and salads and veggies and a lovely dessert (not one of my pies).