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.