Embarrassing Learning Curves

As BIP professionals, I feel it is important to acknowledge our inner fears and failings as a conscious reflective strategy for improvement of our braai skills. I wish to place on record two 'incidents' in which I felt that I was not in control.

The first incident occurred through an invitation to braai with friends under alien pine trees. On my arrival, my first mistake was to assume that senior members of BIP would take on the braai process. This was not the case. In fact it appeared to me that senior BIP members were quite distracted. I then proceeded to construct a ring of rocks around the fire to rest the braai grid on. These were quite pointy rocks and the grid kept threatening to fall over. Feeling quite flustered and not in full control, I then proceeded to load the braai grid. Unfortunately I had loaded the grid with sausages and chicken wings in such a way that I could not expose them all to equal heat. I was also unable to keep moving the braai grid as there was a tree stump in the way. Although the food was eventually cooked, this incident made me realise that I have much to learn about braaiing in adverse ecological conditions.

The second incident occurred much more recently. Flush from the success of a mid-week collaborative BIP process involving potjies, webers and drum braais, I proceeded to cook a weber chicken and lamb chops for my wife's familty at their house in Fish Hoek. The wind was howling and the briquettes crumbled as they were poured into the Weber. The net upshot of this braai was that the chicken barely cooked, the chops on a separate fire were underdone and the potatoes and whole butternut had to be microwaved.

Embarassing as these events were to my professional BIP identity, I nevertheless felt that I underwent a strong learning curve. My learnings were as follows:

• If you ever braai outside your own home environment, make sure someone else is in charge. If things do go wrong, blame the person in charge. 
• If there is no-one to take charge of a braai in a foreign areas, blame the ecological conditions e.g. " Your briquettes are wet and mouldy - I am not used to working with such shoddy resources". 
• Again if you're in charge and things go wrong, make deep philosophical observations e.g. " I've learned something new here. Given the strength of the wind in these parts, the only way to braai is to burn things at high heat as the wind will ensure that no coals are left to complete the cooking process." 

I find the latter approach the most effective, as it subtly implies that their location is a useless place to braai even using the best braai experts in the land.

Regards

BIP Shaman