For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for May 29, 2010

Because you’re the loudest whiners.

Considering the high cost of feeding and kid’s bottomless pit of appetite, what do you expect?

Did I ever tell you, you are the practice kid

One word, “Carcinogens.” So bad for you, but taste soooo good!

A lot of people overcook burgers because they think the red on the outside means it isn’t done. If you get it the ‘right’ color, it’s gonna be burned. If you can’t figure it out yourself use a thermometer.

None of the strips I just read show that either John or Mike think they need to overcook meat. They are both just absent minded and careless about it. They focus on the people around them instead of the grill. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing)

Hee-Hee :) When holidays or events called for cookies or homemade foods of any kind to be brought in to work or for a family gathering, I’d always set aside a plate of ‘imperfections’ for the kids to eat right then..saving the picture-perfect results for the occasion at hand.

I never burned any..so the kids just got the asymmetrical ones.–They tasted just as good as the perfect ones, I was always told.

REAL MEN know how to bar-b-q for the family.

as do REAL WOMEN, My husband’s a good cook. but the kitchen and bbq is mine. I’m so blessed to have the cooking gene, and so is my family.

John is a dentist. His profession requires unstinting precision and meticulous execution. It seems passing strange that he doesn’t seem to be able to bring these hard earned skills and habits to the grill. If he learned to do dentistry why can’t he learn cooking?

But then a again, this is a comic.

I think this really means that John b-b-qs only once or twice a year, which is not often enough to improve his technique. This is pretty much like me and bowling. I go bowling once a year and have very dismal scores every time. So, John has to relearn every time, and that means the burgers go from hunks of charcoal to slightly overdone by the time John is finished, and since he is last, he gets the best burgers.

I can get Mike’s complaints here. No one wants the burnt-to-a-crisp burgers so they get palmed off to the kids. Though in this case, they really should have gone to the dog, and the kids get the next batch of burgers which is slightly less worse.

John burns the burgers because he’s a man in a comic strip, and according to the Laws of Cartoon Physics, a man in a comic strip always burns anything he attempts to barbecue (and sometimes also incinerates himself in the process; see Fox Trot for example).

A. Barbecue/BBQ/bbq is slow-cooked usually pulled pork or beef. Cooking on a grill is grilling.

B. In my family in the 50’s and 60’s, the kids got the best, Mom got the next best, and Dad ate the failures and bad ones. I guess my dad didn’t get the memo.

C. When the coals are too hot or too close to the food, the food gets burned. A common occurence in the backyard.

D. When this strip originally ran the use of a thermometer outdoors was not common.

It’s pork that has to have lost the pink before it’s considered done, to avoid the danger of trichinosis. I don’t think it’s necessary for beef. There’s probably a different disease for that.

Also, I don’t think that John’s skills as a dentist automatically carry over to other parts of his life. For one thing, a skill is something you learn. Probably if he spent a fair amount of time cooking, he could learn how to do that too.

RinaFarina, yeah e-coli….