Apparently this blog thing is the type of activity that I’m going to have to do every day or I won’t do it at all. I had originally planned to write on weekdays only, but that just led to a week of silence. I’ll try not to let that happen again.

In my defense, I’ve been unusually talkative on Facebook and Twitter lately; in all likelihood some of my musings there could easily have been blog posts. So tonight they get neglected in favor of the thing with my name on it. Take that, internet community!

I got Close Encounters excited tonight (the kind where you know you’re on to something major but no one else cares) while preparing dinner. I was roasting tomatoes on the gas grill, and they were tiny tomatoes, so I had them on a sort of griddle fashioned out of aluminum foil to keep them from squidging down through the grate as they softened. Suddenly I was struck by an epiphany: if I had a larger, sturdier metal sheet, the grill could become the teppanyaki table I’ve always wanted since my first Benihana meal as a kid. Eureka!

Being a fan of Good Eats, I’ve been made to feel inadequate for not using real half-sheet pans instead of the old warped AirBake stuff we got at Publix years ago. I’m now wondering if this is the application that will justify actually buying one (or dare I dream, two). A heavy-duty aluminum slab like that seems like the best option for grill-griddling. There are cast iron griddles made more or less for this exact purpose, but that would be a massive hunk of iron to clean, store, and never use for anything else. Half-sheet pans would do not only this, but replace about 3 currently-owned baking sheets. Maybe 5.

Has anyone out there tried this, or seen it done? I’d like to hear your opinion.