Grilling in the Driveway, or Second Breakfast #10
Hello! This is Meghan McCarron, and you're reading my newsletter, Second Breakfast. If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, you can unsubscribe here.
I think of myself as a person who grills. I own a grill. And all the grill gear. But what I lack is a grilling spot. I can haul the grill out to my driveway, but then I’m out alone putting on some kind of grill show. So I am a person who grills who almost never grills.
Luckily, some friends came over late last month for dinner, which gave me an excuse to bust out my whole setup and make pizza and wings. With my enthusiasm for fire so long suppressed, I decided to grill everything.
The wings’ inspiration was this Ali Slagle recipe, but I wandered off, in part because I was out of paprika, something I didn’t imagine could be possible. There was a time when I had three different kinds of paprika. Where did they go?
Brown sugar and Lawry’s were involved, as well brushed-on red jalapeno barbecue sauce from my favorite chile pepper grower. My friend Lydia arrived in time to make the ranch dip.
For pizza, I made what I think of as the “LA Hawaii,” a pizza with ham, pineapple, and jalapenos. Every pandemic pizza maker seemed to offer it — the best were from Antico Nuovo and Quarter Sheets.
For mine, I grilled the pineapple and some Spam I had to use up, and even grilled the jalapeno before deciding I’d rather have something sour and swapped in some I’d pickled earlier.
The first pizza came out a little burnt, the last a little under-cooked, but the middle one was just right. I believe the secret to happiness would be a little pizza oven. Am I right? Pizza-oven-havers, are you happy? Or is there something I could do beyond cranking my oven up to 500 with a baking steel, or hoping for goldilocks coals on my grill, to achieve home pizza bliss?
Honestly, having friends over in my driveway, especially friends who like hanging out with the toddler and keeping him away from the grill, was pretty blissful. So maybe all I really need for greater pizza happiness is to have more friends over for LA Hawaii’s.
For the New York Times, I wrote about robots in restaurants, and the feelings people have about them. The reporting involved speaking to multiple robotics engineers AND driving around Southern California visiting Denny’s and drive thrus. It was a lot of fun.
We’re having kind of an earthquake moment in Los Angeles lately. During the last one, I was changing the kid and my partner burst in to tell me to seek cover. So I ducked under the desk with a toddler in a diaper, and nothing much happened, and we got out again.
In the depths of postpartum anxiety, I once practiced running into his room, picking up his little baby form and ducking under the same desk, so I’d know how. But he’s a lot bigger now. I ended up having to move an ottoman out from under the desk so the next time things shake, we’ll both fit.
Earthquakes are maddeningly random and certain to occur at the same time. You want every one to mean something, and none of them do. Our oracle of uncertainty, Lucy Jones, told the New York Times about this current uptick in seismic activity, “Maybe in 1,000 years, we’ll be able to tell you what it means.”
I’ve been doing a lot of reporting-research and book-research reading this month. A few other things that have come across my dash:
Yet another summer road trip daydream to add to my list
Irish literature, still undefeated
A sweet profile of my local-ish knitting store
Deeply envious of this connects-all-the-dots report on the incredible state of American pizza
Also envious: the definitive story of ‘garlicky’
So many Southern California things are happening in this story it’s hard to look at straight on, like the sun
Thank you for reading Second Breakfast! If you’ve read this far and have any recommendations for Santa Barbara, I’d love to hear them. We are trying out this thing called “family vacation.”
Meghan