Family BBQ in Southeast Iowa City

Captions: 1. Matt Quinn, our daughter Sarah's husband, prepares shrimp/pineapple kabobs. 2. Shrimp/pineapple kabobs, fresh off the grill. 3. On left, Sarah Quinn and on right, Jim Conzemius, her father, share a moment. 4. Maria Conzemius takes a blue salad strainer out of the dishwasher. Photos taken by Jesse Lee Conzemius.

Summer is here (I go by temperature, not the summer solstice). Time for family barbecues! Since I keep a daily record of the temperature in a 10-year journal, I see that last year at this time, we had a very hot weekend as well.

To celebrate our daughter Sarah’s acquisition of a first shift (7 a.m.-3 p.m.) Friday through Tuesday at work as opposed to her old second shift (3 p.m-11 p.m.) Friday through Tuesday, we had a BBQ to replace the BBQ we had without either child or their significant other on Memorial Day weekend. Things just didn’t or couldn’t come together.

But this Friday’s BBQ made up for everything. Two men in the family love to cook: my husband, Jim, and our daughter Sarah’s husband, Matt. Jim grilled the hamburgers and brats. Matt and Sarah went to Costco, bought kabob sticks, gloves, shrimp, and pineapple before coming to our house. Matt soaked the frozen shrimp to thaw them. Then he put together the shrimp and pineapple and grilled them over one of our two grills on the deck. He put lemon juice and melted butter over the kabobs. They really jazzed up our typical American BBQ!

Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, brats, baked beans, corn on the cob, potato salad, and home-made rhubarb pie with ice cream were joined by grilled shrimp/pineapple kabobs.

Sarah triumphantly announced that Davenport, where she and Matt live, is getting a Costco. I was jealous because Coralville’s Costco is one of the reasons she’s forced to come to Iowa City! Then I realized that if Davenport gets a Costco, she and Matt can buy shrimp at home, thaw it at home, and have the kabobs put together before they get here.

Conversely, I am now dying to try shrimp kabobs myself! I could buy shrimp, thaw them, marinate them in lemon juice and herbs that I haven’t thought of yet, drizzle melted butter over them, put pineapple chunks, onion, and red pepper on the kabob sticks and add that to our family BBQ. Not, mind you, for me and Jim alone because Jim wouldn’t eat them. The only family members who ate the shrimp kabobs were Matt, Sarah, and me.

Jesse, our son, and Sarah chatted animatedly and laughed a lot. Sarah and Jim, her dad, always have a conversational spark between them. Jesse ran around taking photos with my camera. (If there’s a gadget in the house, it immediately becomes Jesse’s, at least for the moment. At Christmas, if someone gets a gadget as a gift, he says, “Lemme see that,” and it’s suddenly in Jesse’s long, sensitive fingers. The only way I could get him to promise to vote in elections was to buy the camera for myself in the first place.)

Rachel, Jesse’s girlfriend, brought me a belated Mother’s Day present, a beautiful orchid plant with pink orchids on it. The fact that it’s artificial detracts not at all from its appeal. Matt put the orchid on the top of my plant stand to replace a real cilantro plant I couldn’t save. I was delighted and gave Rachel a hug.

A second cilantro plant that still has a chance is on top of our critter shelter outside, which was sided by Tony Miell and roofed by roofers when our house was remodeled. The raccoons keep digging up the cilantro and I keep replanting it. It has sunshine aplenty and seems to be thriving. Devoted human attention indoors was killing the plant, so I’m going to let the raccoons aerate the soil daily outdoors as needed.

Our family BBQ went very well. In honor of the occasion, I cleaned the refrigerator beforehand. I left frozen cooked chicken, frozen cooked ham, and a solitary cooked meatball that had been in the freezer a tad too long on a plate for the raccoons and possums to discover later as a treat. However, our neighbor’s large dog got loose again without my knowledge and chowed down on all of the frozen meat before it had a chance to thaw. I was astonished to find the entire plate empty. He drank a lot of water from our water bowl on the deck afterward. He grinned and wagged his tail at me through the screen door as though looking for more. I was surprised he hadn’t foundered himself.

None of us foundered ourselves, though I certainly ate more than I intended to. I chose to eat Jim’s brat and Matt’s shrimp/pineapple kabob. Both were delicious, as was the corn on the cob.

I got a lot of compliments on my rhubarb pie. I’ve been making it since I was 11 or 13 years old. More than 50 years ago, my family had rhubarb growing in the backyard garden just as Jim and I do now. Friday, 6/9/2017 was the first time I remembered to add every ingredient. I remembered to put little slices of butter on top of the rhubarb before the pie crust is added on top last year. This year I remembered to also sprinkle the top crust with sugar, something Jim's mother Rosemary always remembered to do.

Matt offered to leave all three of the leftover shrimp kabobs with me, but I said I'd like just one, and to take the other two for himself and Sarah.

We're having another get-together Friday for Father's Day because Jesse and Rachel are driving down to Charlotte, North Carolina on Father's Day. They're moving down there in July for better economic opportunities.