I went to my first ever sausage sizzle last night. I have been told that Australians like to barbecue but it never occurred to me that they thought that everyone else in the world cooked the same way.  When I told them it was my first time someone yelled, “bullshit!”.

I have certainly been to a barbecue in Northern Ireland but they have always involved burgers.  There will probably be sausages but they will be one type, and they’ll probably be little processed pork sausages.  In Holland the barbecues I’ve attended involved chicken and vegetable skewers as well as burgers.  But it would never occur to me to have a barbecue and cook only one type of meat.  I’m not a fan of sausages but the sausages last night were really good.  (Well, I only ate one and it was really good.)

The other factor is the weather.  I’m in Perth and it’s dry and hot.  It’s perfect weather for eating outside in the evening.  In Northern Ireland it will probably rain during a barbecue.  My memories of barbecues involve Marty standing by himself in the garden trying to protect our tiny disposable barbecue from the rain so that we can eat hamburgers.  A fairly silly thing to be doing when it was easy to cook hamburgers on the stove and it doesn’t rain inside.