Five cool tools for summer cookouts and honoring the contributions of gay and lesbian chefs for LGBT Pride Month are subjects of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.

A fun, exhausting weekend road trip and a surprisingly debilitating summer cold are conspiring to keep me out of the kitchen this week. I’ll return next week with a recipe.

Grilling equipment used to consist of a fire and a sharp stick. Or maybe two sharp sticks, so you could use one to protect your meal from a saber-toothed tiger. Things have certainly evolved since then. Our tandem loves of grilling and of gadgets have converged to create a dazzling array of tools and accessories for outdoor cooking. Some come with a princely price tag—how many pizzas would you have to grill in your artisan fire pizza oven to amortize its $6,500 cost? Others are just, well, silly. Do you seriously need your grill thermometer to alert your smartphone when the steaks are done? Continue reading “Small Bites: 5 cool grilling tools and celebrating LGBT Pride Month in the kitchen” →