A Kid with a New Toy

(I'm that kid.)

Yes, the new grill got a workout this weekend. After Friday night's supper, Susan and I sat down with my grilling cookbooks, selected a few recipes, made a grocery list, and went shopping. When we got back from the store Saturday afternoon, I made a vegetable marinade and created shishkebabs with baby potatoes (which Susan parboiled first), green peppers, yellow peppers, red peppers, zucchini, and baby bella mushrooms. I also made a cucumber salsa (with a little crushed red pepper for a kick) to go with the tilapia that I drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with kosher salt, and layered with lemon slices in a grilling basket. I basted the kebabs with the marinade, which was so good that I basted the fish with it, too. That was one fine meal, which we ended with s'mores, also made on the grill.

I made hot dogs on the grill for dinner yesterday, and for supper I made an Asian soy marinade (including chopped shallots, fresh minced ginger, and two pressed cloves of garlic) and soaked two chicken breasts in it all afternoon. I made a salad dressing from a recipe mocking the one that Applebee's uses on its oriental chicken salad, and Susan put together the greens for it. I used every last drop of that marinade to baste the chicken on the grill, and that was a dang tasty meal, too, for which Susan made Schwan's pot stickers as an accompaniment.

Our neighbors Chuck and Reba and their two kids walked over last night and joined us on the veranda for watermelon and slushes (an adult beverage for the adults) and pink lemonade (for the kids). As the sun set, the adults visited at the table on one end of the veranda while the kids ate at the other end before they began playing hide-and-go-seek and tag in the back and front yards. Our visitors walked the one-house distance home in the dark, just in time to avoid the ferocious thunder, lightning, and rain. The flashes of lightning lit up the whole house, and the thunder cracks sounded like trees falling in our yard. The electricity was knocked out for a couple seconds, too. It was all bluster, though--no harm done. It was very summer-y and, in its own way, a fitting end to a relaxing, summer-y weekend.