Cedar planked salmon & potatoes

So, you are all thinking, “Sure, she lures us back in with BBQ blog posts then abandons us!” Sorry, but my last master’s class started on August 10^th – so I’ve been writing THAT paper in all my spare time. It is a condensed class and only goes until October 12^th, so there is LOTS due each week. I’ll really be glad when I have that masters under my belt, though. (I’ve wanted one ever since someone who worked with me who wasn’t even coherent made $20K more than me solely because he had a masters.)

The other Sunday, I managed to sneak out between rain storms and BBQ some salmon and little potatoes. I use the Jamaican jerk spice out of the “Make It Fast, Cook It Slow” crockpot book (one of my all time favorite cookbooks!) and rub that on the salmon, then cook it on cedar planks. The potatoes I just put in a Ziploc bag with the ol’ standby Lipton Onion soup mix and shook it up, then cooked them on my Pampered Chef medium bar pan (of course.) While the food was BBQing, I threw some veggies in a pan and quickly stir fried them. Just some mushrooms, onions, green peppers, and spinach. When it was all done, I served the salmon over the veggies with the potatoes on the side, except for the kids. They ate the same food, but none of it was touching any other food. Heaven forbid if a piece of spinach were to accidentally touch a piece of salmon!!

It was yummy, and this is really an easy way to BBQ the salmon. Plus, when you use those cedar planks the bonus is NO CLEAN UP! Just throw it away when you are done! (That’s what I’m talking about!)

Here is a bonus picture of my microwave door. I’m the only one who thinks it is funny in our family, but I can’t help it – it makes me laugh!

Pizza & Turkish Baked Shrimp

Tonight, I made the kids pizza on the grill. I’ve been doing this all summer, too. And by “make” I mean heat up a frozen pizza for them. I wanted yummy Turkish baked shrimp tonight, and for some reason they don’t like shrimp. I don’t know where they get that. I could live on shrimp! Plus, I needed to use some of our tomatoes. I have 5 plants, and 5 gobbldy-billion tomatoes! I also made some zucchini on the side. I have 1 zucchini plant, and that is making just enough for our family. Zucchini is a good source of the ever-elusive fiber. You need more fiber in your diet!

Turkish Baked Shrimp

1 lb shrimp (no-shells)

2 TBS olive oil

1 onion, diced

1 green pepper

1 jalapeno

4+ cloves garlic

1 tsp caraway seeds

 1 tsp coriander seeds

 Fresh basil, ripped up

4 large, juicy tomatoes (in winter, I used canned)

Parmesan cheese

Salt/pepper

I throw it all into my PC covered baker (except cheese, that goes on last.)

Cook in oven (or BBQ) about 30 minutes until hot and bubbly. You can make this in individual ramekins, too, if you want. Put some parmesan cheese on top and eat with a crusty bread!

Souvlaki Spiedinis!

Tonight I made steak souvlaki spiedinis, with pepper & tomato spiedinis on the side.

This souvlaki marinade is awesome with any kind of meat. Awhile back there were some cheap steaks on sale so I bought a pack. They would have been too tough to eat like steak, so I cubed them up, threw them in a bag with the marinade and froze them. Tonight seemed like a good night to grill them up (since it is soccer night again tomorrow, and these make good leftovers.)

Souvlaki marinade

2 lbs cubed meat (chicken, beef, lamb, pork – whatever sounds good to you.)

½ cup olive oil

4 TBS lemon juice
½ cup wine (red w/ red meat, white with white meat – or else it turns purple and looks weird.)
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
4 (+) garlic cloves, diced
1 small red onion, diced
Salt & pepper

Mix it all up in a Ziploc bag. Throw in the meat and let sit for several hours or overnight in fridge, or freeze it all together for later use. Once again, this is a meal the whole family likes to eat!

Family Picnic

Friday was a mandatory fun day at Jack’s unit – the annual Family Picnic! It was actually pretty fun for the kids. They had a petting zoo, pony rides, a little bouncy castle, and there were two playgrounds and a splash pad the kids could play at until the BBQ.

When I grill burgers at home I take 2 lbs of ground beef, a can of kidney beans, a small handful of ground flax, and a couple splashes of worchestershire sauce. (Puree the beans then mix it all up.) They taste good and that way you get some fiber in your burgers. I put the extra ones on a cookie sheet and freeze them, then put them in a Ziploc bag so I can just grab them when the kids want a burger for lunch. But sometimes, we run out or I don’t feel like making them so then we use the good ol’ frozen ¼ lb burgers from Costco. That is what we had at the picnic. They are pretty tasty.

Some guy had this shirt on. How awesome is that? It would have been perfect for Jack’s birthday white trash bash!!

Donair meat on the Grill

On Tuesday I made donair meat, once again at the request of Sammi. She would live on that stuff if I let her. The rest of us like it, too, so when ground beef is on sale I buy pounds and pounds of it and make up a big batch of this stuff to freeze.

Wednesday is our soccer night, so I try to make something on Tuesday so we can have leftovers. This donair meat tastes even better the next night!

I smoosh it out on my Pampered Chef medium bar pan and BBQ it about 30 minutes until it looks done. The kids just eat it plain, but Jack & I put it in pita bread with cukes, tomatoes, onion, parsley, lettuce, pickled turnips, and some greek yogurt. Jack likes that sweet donair sauce, which is really just sweetened condensed milk. He thought I was amazing until one night he caught me “making” it, so now he knows it is just sweetened condensed milk.



Donair meat on the grill

Here is the recipe. When you buy your ground beef, try to get the butcher to re-grind it a couple times for you. This makes it more donairy when you cook it. I always try to get the ethnic looking guy to do it for me. One time I asked the old, white guy to re-grind my meat and he looked at me like I was crazy and said, “But, it is already ground.” If I get the other guy I can just say, “Hey, Hassan, will you re-grind this for me a couple times? I’m making donairs.” He gets it!

1 lb ground beef

1 tsp salt1 tsp flour

1 tsp ground oregano

½ tsp garlic powder

½ tsp onion powder

½ tsp Italian seasoning

½ tsp pepper

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

Place beef in bowl and set aside. Mix all the spices together in a bowl. Add the spice mix a little at a time to the meat. Pick up the meat and throw it down into the bowl. Do this 20-30 times, kneading it after each throw.

Heat oven to 350^o, smoosh meat into a flat loaf shape. Bake until done, about 30 minutes or so.

Kola and his haul of heirloom tomatoes (& 1 zucchini.)

It gets hot here in the summer. I know, hard to believe it isn’t always 40^o below, but it is true. We also have a really old gas oven. It heats up the whole house when it is on. That is awesome for baking in the winter, but pretty much the opposite of awesome in the summer. A couple months ago I gave up cooking in the house and have been cooking everything on the grill. So, I’m back.

I sort of gave up blogging awhile back because I haven’t been doing much gallivanting. There are enough mommy bloggers out there, you don’t need to read about me schlepping my kids to swim lessons and soccer and the store. Sure, I’m still an expat, but the travelling hasn’t been too exciting, so I will now share my exploits on the grill with you!

We have an old, junky grill because we are planning on moving soon and want to wait until then to get a new grill. Mine doesn’t have a side burner, but if it did I would even boil pasta outside. We do have AC in our igloo house, but it is not very robust and it is defeated every time I cook inside. The thing about grilling is, it doesn’t have to be a big production. You don’t have to prepare 500 lbs of meat and grill it. Just cook! Anything you can cook in the house you can do on the grill.

As an example here is what we had the other night. Sammi requested “delicious Spiderpig night” so I cooked up some delicious spiderpig for us. What? You don’t know what delicious spiderpig is? Well, if you have kids you probably know that if you make food sound interesting they are more apt to eat it. “Hey kids, want some shake & back pork chops?” NOOOO!!!! “Hey kids, want some delicious spiderpig?” YESSSSS!!

I just threw some shake & bake pork chops on my Pampered Chef large bar pan, saw I had some extra room and added some zucchini from the garden, drizzled with olive oil with a little garlic & red hot shakeys. I also had some green peppers we needed to eat, so I cut them into quarters, brushed some olive oil with red hot shakeys in it over them, and grilled them just straight on the grill. Grilled peppers are delicious!

Here it is:

Delicious spiderpig, zucchini & grilled peppers.

My Awesome Garden!

The kids ate the spiderpig and zucchini (because they grew it – forget about store bought ones.) and Jack & I enjoyed it all with the peppers on the side.

(I use my PC stoneware on the grill all the time. Do this at your own risk. It doesn’t say you can do this on their website – but so far I have had no problems.)

Hello...

Hi! I am sure no one is even checking this anymore, but I think I will start it up again. Facebook is cool, but limiting as well. Even though I am not gallivanting so much, I'm sure I can still think of things to write about. Plus, both kids are going to be in school FULL-TIME next year, so that will give me lots of time to write! Yay!

See you soon in blog world.