What's for dinner? Chicken Kabobs!

Last night, we made chicken kabobs for dinner. Delicious, easy, and summer-y!

Usually, chicken kabobs in this house entail mushrooms, zucchini and green peppers, plus the chicken.

I start out by cutting the chicken into chunks (about 1-1.5 inches), and then marinading them for at least an hour in the fridge before tossing them on the grill.

Last night's marinade included Wildtree's Hickory Smoked Grapeseed Oil, which adds a delicious smoky flavor, Southwestern Seasoning (from Pampered Chef!), cayenne pepper and a spicy garlic from Dean Jacobs. What we actually did was add the spices first and tried to coat the meat as thoroughly as possible, and then added in the grapeseed oil, then added some more spices and mixed it again.

Tossed in the fridge for an hour to let the flavors marinade together.

On Monday, I went out to run some errands and happened across a produce stand on my way home. Since I actually had cash on hand, I made sure to stop. I picked up a dozen ears of corn ($6), two large zucchini ($1.50/lb), two ginormous green peppers ($o.75/lb), some green beans (~$1.50/lb), a pint of blueberries ($2.50) and two cucumbers ($0.75 each). My total came to just over $14 which is WAY better than I'd have been able to do at the grocery store. Plus, it was fresh and local!! Bonus!

For the kabobs, I had bought two green peppers and two zucchini, since that's what we'd used for our last round of kabobs. Since the peppers and zucchini were much larger than the ones we get at the grocery store, we only had to use 1 of each. We sliced the zucchini and peppers, and started threading the kabobs. We have a nice set of wood handled kabobs that we use, but please keep in mind that if you are using wood kabobs, don't forget to soak them in cold water for about 20 minutes (minimum) before adding the meat and veggies so they don't go up in flames when you put them on the grill!

Toss the kabobs on the grill, making sure to check on them and rotate them regularly. It took about 15 minutes for the kabobs to cook thoroughly on medium high heat.

Kabobs are delicious and a fun way to eat chicken and veggies. The prep time is not that long, I'd say about 20 minutes total and that includes cutting up the chicken and making the marinade, and then to cut up the veggies and thread the kabobs (but allow about 1 hour to marinade).

And it's only chicken and veggies, so it's not bad for you at all. There are marinades available at the grocery store, but if you have oil/grapeseed oil on hand, I encourage you to make it yourself! We have also used sesame seed oil for a marinade with success.

Happy grilling!

Extreme Comfort Food and Fun with the Grill

Periodically, this blog strays away from the healthy aspect. :) This is one of those days...

For a while, I've been itching for some good, homemade mac & cheese. This was inspired by a recipe that I found in the copy of the most recent Penzey's catalog. I even went out and bought some mustard powder on my last Penzey's trip to make this mac & cheese! But the Penzey's recipe, while it sounded delicious, was baked. And the humidity had struck and the air conditioning is on so there was no way that I was going to turn on my oven. :) So, I thought I was going to have to put the mac & cheese on the backburner for a while.

And then I found this recipe last Wednesday. And I was in love. And we went to the grocery store Thursday night so I immediately picked up all the ingredients that I didn't already have.

Scan over the recipe and I dare you not to fall in love with it too.

I'll start out with the modifications that I made: I followed the Pioneer Woman's recommendation of using Cavatappi noodles (I find this recipe calls for a "heftier" noodle than just a macaroni noodle!) and eliminated the jalapeno pepper completely. I also used 1 cup of Pepper Jack cheese and 1/2 cup of Monterey Jack cheese instead of all Pepper Jack cheese.

I more or less followed the rest of the recipe as is, except I used a combination of Garlic olive oil and Chili olive oil.

Olive oil, onions, red bell pepper, garlic & corn:

Shredded Pepper Jack & Monterey Jack cheese:

I don't even want to think about how many calories were in this delicious dish, but sometimes it's worth it to take a break from the healthy living to have the ultimate in comfort food. :) And mac & cheese IS the ultimate in comfort food, and having the spicy elements adds a bit of a "grown-up" twist. Not to mention this mac & cheese is not neon orange a la Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. :)

I definitely will be making this again. I liked the modifications that I made, but I think I might add Jalapeno Grapeseed Oil to the mix instead of Chili Olive Oil. Go out and make this mac & cheese. Probably not this second, but this week. For sure. :)

The next entry in this blog post is much healthier!

For dinner tonight, we made Black & Red Chicken from the Penzey's catalog, and added grilled asparagus and mushrooms for a side dish.

The chicken we made as is. We dipped the chicken in Natural Grapeseed Oil and then sprinkled on quite a bit of Black & Red seasoning before rubbing the seasoning into the chicken. We then left the chicken in the fridge for an hour to let the flavors "soak" into the chicken.

After the chicken was "marinaded" for an hour in the fridge, it was put on the grill for about 10 minutes at medium high.

For the mushrooms, Andy drizzled olive oil and sea salt on them, wrapped them in tinfoil and put them on the grill. He made two "batches" - one with garlic olive oil and one with chili olive oil. They were grilled on medium high for about 15 minutes.

The asparagus was brushed with chili olive oil and put directly on the grill for about 5 minutes on medium high.

Overall- really really tasty!! Not very much salt/sodium in it since the Black & Red seasoning is salt-free and we only used salt in the mushrooms (and not very much). A really good recipe, but possibly I will use less Black & Red next time because it was extremely HOT (spicy!).

I think grilling vegetables is going to become a new staple in our house. A little bit of olive oil, shake on some spices and put on the grill and veggies are tasty but still relatively healthy (not being sauteed in butter helps, haha). I'm hoping to experiment more with grilling veggies throughout the summer.

Jamaican Jerk Chicken!

I have had the recipe for Jamaican Jerk Chicken in my "recipe box" on AllRecipes for over two years now and just haven't gotten around to making it! However, I decided a few weeks ago that I really wanted to make it since we were at the Brewers game instead of going to Rhythm & Brews when they had their "Jerk" night a few weeks ago.

So, without further ado, Jamaican Jerk Chicken!

The recipe calls for 4 limes (juiced) and a cup of water to put the chicken in. We used 5 limes since a- we have a lot of limes leftover from our Memorial Day BBQ where the featured drink was gin & tonic, and b- we don't have juicer and I don't think squeezing the limes by hand maximizes the amount of lime juice...

The rest of the marinade was made up of allspice, nutmeg, salt, brown sugar, thyme, ground pepper, and ginger. It also called for vegetable oil, but I substituted Natural Grapeseed Oil instead since I have almost a whole bottle of it that I've only used twice. The recipe called for ground allspice, but I only have the whole allspice, but since it gets put in the blender I hardly think it really matters. Blended all that together and then added the chopped onion, chopped green onion, 6 cloves of garlic, and the peppers. The recipe called for habanero peppers but we used jalapeno and serrano peppers instead since habaneros are hella hot! After all that was blended together, it was added to the chicken/lime juice/water and marinaded in the fridge for two hours.

This chicken went on the grill after it was marinaded and only took about 15-20 minutes to grill thoroughly. There was a little marinade leftover so that it could be used to baste the chicken on the grill.

Finally, we served it with a side of basmati rice, since that's what we had in the house, when we make it again I'll probably use a more authentic side such as red beans and rice or anything from Zatarain's. :)

Overall, a great dish. Easy to prepare and easy to cook. Prep time was pretty accurate on the recipe, it took about 20 minutes to prep everything before going into the fridge. 221 calories per serving (about 5 WW points) not including the rice. Even without the habanero peppers, there was a bit of spice in the dish, but nothing outrageous (I can't imagine how hot it would have been with the habaneros, though!). Fun to make, and perfect for a summer day!

Even in the year 3000, the question will be "what's for dinner?"

If anyone else happens to remember that commercial from the 1980s promoting canned food, then mad props to you. There is nothing more weird than a space housewife promoting canned vegetables, and if that doesn't promote canned food, then I just don't know what does!

Anyway. My friend Erin periodically runs a post on her food blog called "what's for dinner" and I decided to steal her idea sincerely imitate her and do a post like that of my own. :)

On Friday we made hamburgers with sauteed mushrooms and onions (sauteed in Hickory Smoke Grapeseed Oil), on Thursday we cheated and went to The Chancery for 1/2 price pasta night.

On Wednesday night, however, I made Spaghetti Pie. When I was a kid, my mom made spaghetti pie a lot and it has become one of those nostalgic favorites. I had never attempted to make one myself, though I have tried to make lasagna and have deemed it to be a lot of work and I don't like making it that much. Spaghetti pie, however, is another story.

I don't really have any recollection of what recipe my mom used, so I poked around online and found one that sounded good at AllRecipes.com. There were a number of spaghetti pie recipes there, but I settled on Spaghetti Pie II because it sounded the easiest and most basic.

Since I had never made this recipe before, nor had I ever made a spaghetti pie before, I decided to just follow the recipe more or less as is, except that after I had made the "crust" (spaghetti, 2 eggs, and 2tblsp of butter in a pie pan), I realized I had bought tomato paste, but no diced tomatoes. Oops. Luckily, one of the reviewers of the recipe noted that instead of tomatoes/tomato paste, they used spaghetti sauce. So I used a plain spaghetti sauce instead, and it turned out fine- you're just mixing the tomatoes/paste with ground beef, onions and green peppers anyway.

Aside from that minor substitute, I followed the rest of the recipe as is. It turned out really good and was not that hard. Now that I have a basic recipe down, it will be easy to substitute and do my own variations of it. I am also going to ask my mom for her spaghetti pie recipe to see how it differs- I don't remember having that much ground beef in the pie as a kid.

I recommend this recipe- easy, tasty and for me, nostalgia. But unlike some nostalgia (like Sunny Delight - ew), this one is still good. :)