About a month ago a new gas grill popped into my life, the first one I've ever used. It's not hooked up to the gas main or anything, but after years and years of charcoal, lighter fluid, and hickory wood chips, it's remarkably easy to use.

Turn the spigot on the big, fat can of gas, turn a burner, press an igniter button, and next thing you know there are flames, over which you can grill.

The old way of cooking, with the briquets, I still call barbecuing. I've heard there's some difference between the two terms (barbecuing uses lower temperatures), but the biggest difference for me is the ease. This grill is as easy to use as a stove top, but it's outside.

Over the past month I've cooked a couple pounds of ranchera or flap meat, two or three chicken breasts, some sausages, and, tonight, some Thai-spiced rib meat stuff that I've never heard of before. The only thing I've been able to cook well, however, is tomatoes, and I chalk that up to them being edible before they ever touch the grill.

I even looked at the instruction book, and not just to assemble the beast. In it there was some talk of what seemed to me an astronomical number of BTUs, but I have to admit I don't understand that scale one bit. In that sense, they're a lot like decibels. I know what they measure, sort of, but I don't have the same feel for them that I do for temperature.

If you tell me that it will ten degrees, I have a pretty good idea what to expect, whether you're talking Farenheit or Centigrade. I have no such base for either BTUs or decibels, but I'm not so dumb as to not know that more is better.

That means that I have no idea if the thousands, or hundreds, or tens of thousands of BTUs that this thing kicks out are a lot, although they are a marketing point. What I do know is that it doesn't cook as quickly as my old charcoal barbecues, but I guess the selling point is more control than speed with these things.

It doesn't help at all, I don't think, that most of this grilling I'm doing now is done in the dark. Oh, sure, I've got an outside light, but it's directly behind me, so when I cook I cast a shadow on the only thing I'm interested in lighting up. I haven't failed to the point of making chicken jerkey (yet), and I'm sure I'll get better over time.

As thrilling as it may be to be in step with tools and techniques of modern cookery, I miss my old barbecue. It may not miss me much, but I still feel sort of like a traitor.