Naturally, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I had an enthusiastic audience for my cooking (and someone else to foot the grocery bill!) and whip up a barbecue feast. First, I decided to make Martha Stewart’s entire Fourth of July menu, and then I realized what pure idiocy that was. One person can make Martha Stewart’s entire Fourth of July Menu single-handedly: Martha Stewart. Then, after a perusal of www.epicurious.com , I decided to make Bon Appétit’s menu, until I picked up a copy of the magazine and discovered it was meant for an entire cooking club to prepare. That was obviously not happening, as I am a cooking club of one. The main course, however, a mixed grill of ribs, chicken, and sausage with a homemade barbecue sauce, looked so fabulously delicious that I opted to make just that and let the rest of my family do some of the lifting.
The endeavor was perilous from the get-go as I was working out of the kitchen of my family’s lake house, which features an assortment of appliances older than yours truly, a less-than-ideal selection of tools and utensils, and virtually nothing in the way of a pantry. I had made the rub for the ribs and chicken and home, thank goodness, because there was no basil nor thyme to be found (let alone smoked paprika, although that had been purchased expressly for this purpose). When it came time to start the sauce, I had to call my mother in to sniff the oils that were housed, unlabeled, in various old condiment jars in a futile attempt to identify them. Ultimately, I decided I didn’t feel comfortable using mystery oil that had been housed in a pickle jar for an indeterminate number of years and stuck with good old-fashioned EVOO even though the recipe called for vegetable oil.
Lesson learned: attempting to save three minutes by grating onion rather than chopping it causes infinitely more pain and suffering to the ocular region. I’d imagine it’s because you’re releasing more of the offending juices into the atmosphere. Regardless, it’s misery. Don’t do it. The fumes stick around forever. The poor dog was even crying. Once the onions and the garlic were reduced to little piles of semi-uniform bits (okay, not that uniform…my knife skills are so bad they’re like negative knife skills) and browning away in the aforementioned garlic and olive oil, though, things got easy. All that was left to do was dump in the chili sauce, the cherry preserves (Trappist, I used, and next time I’d run it through a food processor first as whole cherries, though delicious, don’t particularly like to stick to grilled meats), Cherry Coke, brown sugar, and balsamic vinegar, and let it simmer away till thickened. I tasted it as soon as everything went in, and initially it was extremely tart, but the flavors really mellowed throughout the cooking process and overall the sauce turned out wonderfully unusual, with a strong, delicious natural cherry flavor. It provided a simultaneous contrast and balance with the smoky, spicy rub that went on the ribs and the chicken breasts, but didn’t overpower the delicate apple flavor of the chicken sausage.
Rather than going all out with complicated salads, we served the mixed grill with steamed corn-on-the-cob (so sweet this time of year, you hardly even need butter), a simple mix of red and green bell pepper, eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, and button mushrooms roasted in olive oil in the oven and drizzled with balsamic vinegar, and fresh fruit salad. It made for a really great and not overly complicated afternoon meal.
You can find the recipe for the Mixed Grill here (it links to the barbecue sauce recipe): http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/MIXED-GRILL-WITH-CHERRY-COLA-BARBECUE-SAUCE-242715 . I won’t lie – I ignored the wood chip/mini loaf pan scenario entirely and while I’m sure they would have been somewhat more delicious with a hint of wood smoke, they didn’t exactly suffer for lack of it. The regular old gas grill produced splendid results. So splendid, in fact, that I actually ate the leftovers the next day, and I never eat leftovers.
(I should probably also take a moment to note that my dad did all the actual physical grilling as I am not entirely to be trusted around open flames – when I tried to grill chimichurri steak skewers on Memorial Day I nearly lit my hair on fire trying to light the pilot, once I finally figured out that it didn’t just light itself. But since I am shameless, I did make him step out of the way for a photo op. Hey, it’s not his blog!) 
