Ashes to Artisan: Creative Chronicles IV The Places Between the Fires

 What I began to find deeply profound were the moments in between the days of cooking.

Not just the time standing beside the grill, tending the fire and watching the smoke move through the air, but the quiet hours leading up to those cooks. The spaces in between. The ordinary parts of the day that most people might overlook.

That is where something unexpected began to happen.

In those days between cooks, my mind would often drift back to the fire. I would find myself thinking about cuts of meat, recipes I wanted to try, spice combinations that might bring out deeper flavour. Sometimes the thoughts would appear while walking through familiar streets around Runaway Bay, other times while standing quietly in a shop or looking through the glass displays of a local butcher.

The fire had started something in my mind that continued even when the grill was cold.

I began paying closer attention to the places around me. Local butcher shops became small worlds of discovery. I would stand quietly looking over the displays, studying the different cuts of meat, imagining how they might respond to heat and smoke. A brisket held one possibility, a rack of ribs another. Even something as simple as a thick steak could spark curiosity.

Each cut seemed to carry its own story waiting to unfold beside the fire.

The butcher shops around Runaway Bay and the surrounding suburbs slowly became part of the ritual. Walking into those stores felt different now. I was no longer simply buying food. I was searching for the next experiment, the next small step in understanding the craft.

Sometimes I would leave with nothing more than an idea.

Other times I would carry home a cut of meat already imagining the fire it would meet.

And before each cook begins, there is always a quiet moment where I remind myself of something important. I tell myself that today is a new day and my past disastrous cooks and the mistakes don't dictate today's cook. Every fire begins fresh. Every cook carries a new possibility. What happened yesterday beside the grill does not have to follow me into today.

Those quiet moments taught me something important about creativity.

The craft is not only happening when the fire is burning.

It is happening long before that.

It happens in the thinking.

In the curiosity.

In the imagination of what might be possible.

Barbecue may only take place beside the grill, but the process begins much earlier. It begins in the mind and in the places we move through every day.

And those places became part of the journey.

The streets around Runaway Bay, the butcher counters, the quiet walks home with ideas forming in my head — all of them became small stages where the craft was slowly taking shape. Each place carried a small piece of the process that eventually led back to the fire.

Looking back now, I realise those moments between cooks were never empty spaces.

They were preparation.

Between one fire and the next, something inside the cook continues to change.

Because the craft is never only about what happens on the grill.

It is also about the quiet places between the fires.