Rites Of Passage

There are, in my fridge, 15 ounces of delicious, grass-fed, porterhouse goodness. This beautiful piece of meat is waiting for me, calling to me, wantonly beckoning me to lay it on my sizzling hibachi and then, once ready, to devour it's beefy deliciousness...

Perhaps I have been spending a bit too much time pondering torridity...

Usually, my steak eating escapades are quasi decadent affairs done on weekend nights in the privacy of my own home. That I can consume of a pound of USDA beef, a baked potato with an eighth of a pound of butter, and a salad in one sitting brings with it a particular type of shame. A, lets do this again and again, week after week kind of shame....

Anyway...I digress....because I had a friend who had a lonely beer sitting next to her last night, I had to go out, leaving my porterhouse friend to languish. So even though tonight is Monday, a kid night, a dad night, a family night...I have to grill my steak. And thus, I now have an opportunity to turn this quasi decadent, semi shameful ritual into something wholesome...

It is time to teach my oldest son Oliver, the manly art of grilling. He is ready to learn the essentials of cooking steak over fire; That charcoals need to be a certain shade of gray before they are ready to receive the steak. That a fine piece of meat, aside from kosher salt and pepper, requires no additional adornment. That a one inch thick steak with a bone requires four minutes on one side, three on the other, to arrive at grilled perfection, and most importantly of all, that once done a steak requires patience and must be left alone for a least five minutes....which means no hacking, no cutting, no sampling...simply leave the steak the hell alone....

I have taught my sons how to fish, how to throw a curveball, and tonight, I shall teach Oliver to cook with fire. Bit by bit I am sharing with him and with Aidan, the rituals and habits of manhood...and that along the way I hope they learn to appreciate the subtleties and nuances of life. Because as in grilling a steak, life is not meant to be lived charred on the outside and blood raw on the inside.