Thursday Night Dinner For The Hawthornes.

Here's the Hawthornes' dinner Thursday night. Grilled barbecued chicken, broccoli, and cornbread muffins.

Mr. Hawthorne once again gets the "shit detail," as he calls it, and skins the chicken.

The butchers hide a lot of the fat underneath the chicken. They could very easily chop this off, but I imagine they like having the customers pay premium prices for fat. I do not like this.

Mr. Hawthorne, I do believe you've done this before. One of the most important kitchen tools is a good pair of scissors. We like the kind of scissors that have the removable blades so you can wash raw meat off of them easier. And do not use your kitchen scissors to cut cardboard.

Mr. Hawthorne always leaves a little bit of fat on so he can get the flare ups on the grill which gives you that flame-kissed flavor.

Out of 4.87 pounds of chicken, we ended up with 1 pound 7.3 ounces of fat. This is not acceptable to me.

Next, the ingredients for my barbecue sauce: (And these measurements are not etched in stone. They are to my taste, which is impeccable, of course. But you can add more or less of whatever.) 1 cup cider vinegar 1/3 cup molasses 1/3 cup dark corn syrup 1/2 cup ketchup 1/2 cup brown sugar 4 TB Lea & Perrins 4 TB Dijon mustard 2 TB sweet hot mustard 4 cloves garlic 1-2 tsp Mr. Stubb's Hickory Liquid Smoke (Go easy on this stuff. Add just a little bit at a time and taste.) Red pepper flakes, to taste. I use about a tablespoon.

First, I minced my garlic and added in the vinegar and the rest of the ingredients.

I waited till last to add the Liquid Smoke. Mix well, taste, and adjust if necessary.

Mr. Hawthorne put the chicken quarters on the grill, turning every so often, cooking for about 25 minutes.

He brushes on the barbecue sauce about 10-15 minutes before finishing cooking.

In the meantime, I had made these pretty little cornbread muffins.

I'm liking this texture very much.

Butter makes everything better. These were quite good (as in they were all gone that night save for 1 muffin) but I'm going to tweak this recipe a bit flavor-wise. Then I'll give you the recipe measurements.

Chicken is done. And here's my plate: Grilled chicken with a bit of extra barbecue sauce, tender, moist, and juicy on the inside, crispy on the outside. Crispy-tender steamed broccoli with lemon juice and butter. And a cornbread muffin with butter and a drizzling of barbecue sauce. Simple, easy, and dare I say it ... delicious.