Importance of Cooking Rituals

Last night I was going to be the gracious cook and provide dinner for my wife and me.

My step-son gave us his old Weber three burner barbecue several years ago. And it worked most of the time. But there were frustrating cookouts when all I got out of it was a very small flame on three burners. I always thought the tank was empty or there were spiders in the pipes. But it happened twice lately and I installed a new tank of gas in between times.

I was ready to go out an purchase a new 40 dollar regulator at Home Depot. But I decided to clean out the spiders first. And I did. As I cleaned, I read deeply in the instruction book. It was humid outside and I was in a burning, many degree sun, so I read fast.

It seems there is an anger management control (AMC) attached to the gas line that I did not know about. But I disassembled and reassembled the black, greasy machine, anyway. And then I followed the instructions for the ritual for appeasing the AMC.
It seems that for any reason at all, the machine will cut off its own gas supply. In other words the finest chef in the world is cooking at the whim and caprice of some kind of a device that shuts down and reduces the heat to a point at which the melting of butter is impossible, even on a hot day. There is a procedure one follows to convince the AMC that whatever happened, the chef was only kidding and it wouldn't happen again. Ever.

I tested the machine after I had followed the ritual and it worked.

The odd thing is, if I had purchased a new regulator for 40 dollars, I would have followed the ritual accidentally and the burners would have come on brightly, anyway.

I want to get into the regulator business right away.

Writing cooking Humor