Elegant grilling for a fancy Labor Day

Labor Day is coming. Even if the observations are more subdued than usual this year, people will still be grilling. Plus, we can feel like we're interacting with the neighbors if we can smell their charred hot dogs.

For a change of pace, I'm going to try to class the place up this year.

This is Elegant Fare from the Weber Kettle (Jane Wood, 1977).

While there is next to nothing on hot dog cookery, the elegant fare is not always that elevated.

Why go the boring route of cooking meatloaf in the oven when you can grill it? Plus, this meatloaf is a little extra classy since it has olives in it, so putting it in an "elegant" cook book makes sense.

The book doesn't have déclassé marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, either, but it does offer these sweet potatoes in preparation for fall.

This recipe seems perfectly made for the grill, what with the pre-baking, scooping, mashing, slicing, and baking. I'd certainly want to try to do all the prep outside, or at least parade in and out of the house with trays full of fruit-stuffed sweet potatoes.

Of course, some of the recipes are pretty elegant, especially for the '70s. There's a paella with actual saffron:

Preparing all the various types of seafood and veggies gets to be even more fun when somebody has to tend the coals and make sure the top-heavy grill doesn't blow over during cooking. (Plus there will be the fun of someone complaining they can sense the lingering presence of lighter fluid in the rice.)

As seemingly sophisticated as those '70s diners may have been, I get the sense they were unfamiliar with pita.

Why else refer to the saffron-and-cinnamon seasoned lamb on pita as "Turkish Tacos"? There is nothing (aside perhaps from a dash of cumin) remotely taco-ish about them, so my guess is that the pita earns them the label.

My favorite grilled delicacy, however, might be this one, which has a power move of replacing an avocado pit with a hard-cooked egg and then wrapping and grilling this strange delicacy in chicken breast.

I always thought Chicken Monterey was what my grandma got me at a restaurant for my 16th birthday: chicken blanketed in bacon and Monterey jack cheese. From now on, the only thing that will come to mind will be the avocado with the ghostly white pit!

Here's hoping your holiday weekend will leave you with memories that are not too haunting...