Going for Gold, Ending up Burned.

They say that hindsight is a wonderful thing and indeed, when it comes to the behaviours of sun-tanning, my own hindsight is indeed filled with wonder. I wonder from what age and how we adopted the obsession with sun tans? I wonder how I physically survived the years of hardcore sunbathing in spf-free sun oils, never mind a teenage fixation of sunbeds? But, most of all, I wonder ...how is it, despite a modern society’s awareness of the harmful damage and the ease of non-sun alternatives to achieve an all over glow, this same obsession and battle remain unchanged for the youth of today?

Good wine may mature with age, and there is nothing as succulent as a well cooked aged steak but this week, as I watched the rows of sun worshippers sizzle in the European sunshine, I couldn’t help think…is our age an indication of our impatience and inexperience to cook up the perfect tan, regardless of the risk of burning or at what point do we pay attention to the smoke alarms?

My own Confessions of a Sun Worshipper has as many follies as bronzing oils - carrot, coconut, lemon, olive and any other oil that promised me to be a golden greek goddess from a fortnight on the Costas. But, accepting that nothing less than a full body skin graft would give me the 365 day olive skin of the Mediterranean, I soon found my niche in winter spray tans and summer spf that ensured I too could have a healthy glow from the sun that could still ensure my escape from the granny prune club.

Lined up like a row of sausages on the barbeque, I contemplated the spectrum of colours that rainbow from pink to golden to mahogany burned along the sun jetty and wondered….have we become so accustomed to quick-hit microwave dinners that nobody really checks the cooking instructions any more?  

The fresh skinned teens, a mix of pink from not covering up in the midday sun or day-after raw like a steak tata, coincidentally all harbouring the lemon, coco, olive oils in their beach bag beside the jumbo sized bottle of soothing aloe vera.

In the middle are the prime cuts - the succulent ones that catch your eye, a combination of seasoned steaks braising perfectly around the desired medium rare, turning regularly on each side, oiled with the perfect spf to create the desired golden finish to complement the origin of the meat, yet with room to cook for longer if the skin and the taste so desires.

And, at the opposite end of the grill, getting gradually closer to the left-over plate, the aged-steaks - dry and creasing from being too overdone yet, surprisingly, still layered in olive oil to cook some more, but little to no chance of looking succulent ever again.

So, as the buzzer sounds to call time to turn the meat and drizzle with oil once more, I consider how much better it is to go for gold with a barbeque that is so much tastier when its executed with time and effort and wonder...for those who quite simply ‘Can’t Cook, Won’t cook’….perhaps the booth is a better route to bronze?

‘Til next time, Pandora