Grilled Zucchini Feta Salad

With the current summer heat, my kitchen now stays at a constant 83°F. This makes me really averse to turning on the stove or the oven. For several days now I have existed on "man food". Food that makes the Brain happy. Things like lunch meat sandwiches, ordered in pizza, and Tostino's Pizza Rolls. The Brain may love food like this, but I'm craving vegetables. SO as I lay sweating on the couch, hooked up to my home electric stim unit, after yet another dismal Dr's appointment, I decided that I needed to somehow find a way of cooking the zucchini on my counter.

This particular zucchini came from my garden. Which is now completely overgrown with weeds. Ugh. This particular zucchini was also mighty delicious. While I washed the remaining Daring Baker dishes (geez there were a lot), I let the sliced up zucchini marinate in some olive oil and garlic. Then I threaded them on to skewers and grilled them until I felt they were done. Add a sprinkle of feta, a splash of red wine vinegar, some kosher salt, and some fresh cracked black pepper and I'm not unhappy to know there are two more big zucchini waiting for me to eat them. And my house didn't get any warmer than it already is!

Grilled Zucchini and Feta Salad

an original Shazam recipe

1 large zucchini

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp minced garlic

kosher salt

fresh cracked black pepper

1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

2 Tbsp crumbled feta

Slice the zucchini into 1/2 inch slices. If the diameter of the zucchini is more than an inch and a half you may want to cut the zucchini into half moons or smaller sized chunks. Let marinate for 30 minutes. Then thread the zucchini onto skewers, as many skewers as needed. Grill over high heat until grill marks appear on zucchini and squash is softened. Pull zucchini off skewers onto a plate. Drizzle with red wine vinegar and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Add crumbled feta cheese and enjoy warm.

Grilled Chicken, Red Onion and Mint Kebabs with Greek Salad

Every night this week, I've had to go to bed around 7 or 8pm so that I can get up ultra early and make the donuts. Yes, I fry donuts. For a living. Well, for minimum wage, but I get PAID to make donuts. And yes, it's hard work. Yesterday morning the donut girl who's training me and I made 45 dozen just for delivery and then many more dozen for the bakery case. We have to proof a whole bunch of previously frozen dough, mix up batter for cake donuts, and then fry and fry and fry and fry donuts.

The cake dough donuts are my favorite, I wish we could start from scratch, but, reality check here, it's the IGA. We use a mix. Frying them are the most fun too because I have a funnel like contraption that is attached to a mechanical arm so that it will swing over the vat of hot grease. It also has a handle and a crank on it. What I get to do is to hold the handle and guide it over the hot grease while cranking the crank so that little round blobs of raw donuts plop out and start to cook. So fun!

So for 8 hours every morning this week, I have immersed myself in donut making. It's pretty funny because I'm just so happy to be frying up donuts and working the machine that injects the donuts with fillings, and glazing, frosting and decorating the freshly made donuts. It's hard, physical work, and Wilma the Knee is really pissed off that I'm doing it, but she'll get over it. Because it's a minimum wage job and it's not really like the people in the bakery are skilled pastry chefs, the other girls in the bakery tend to grumble a little about a lot of things. But really, how can you be grumbly when at the end of your work day you have a whole tray of frosted donuts with sprinkles staring you down? It's the best of all worlds because I can make the wide variety of donuts and the glazed donuts are shining, the cream cheese frosting is melting on the cinnamon rolls, the tiger tails have puffed up so beautifully, and the cream is oozing out of the long johns, and it all looks so beautiful and tasty and I'm challenged and I don't have to eat any of them. Of course I might snack on a cinnamon sugar cake donut at about 3am.

My latest career move means that dinner time has been moved up significantly. We used to eat dinner at 7 or 8, now it's more like at 5. And if I'm asleep by 5, which has happened, the Brain is on his own to figure out dinner. So a quick, easy, and yet supremely tasty dish is really good to find. And we found it in the Bon Appetit Cookbook with these Grilled Chicken, Red Onion and Mint Kababs with Greek Salad. I was able to put these together while chatting on the phone with my best friend T. And the kebabs took very little time to cook. And they were delicious. The Brain even offered to let me do the grilling from now on.

Grilled Chicken, Red Onion and Mint Kebabs with Greek Salad
from The Bon Appetit Cookbook

kebabs:
1 1/2 pounds skinless boneless chicken breast halves, cut into 1-inch pieces
4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
4 garlic cloves
1 tsp dried mint
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 bunch fresh mint
1 onion cut into 1 inch pieces
8 skewers

Mix chicken, 2 Tbsp oil. garlic, mint, oregano, salt, and pepper in medium bowl. Let marinate 30 minuets. Whisk remaining 2 Tbsp oil and lemon juice in small bowl to blend.Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat). Pull off large fresh mint leaves from stems. Alternate chicken, onion, and mint leaves on skeweres; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill until chicken is just cooked through, turning and basting occasionally with oil-lemon mixture, about 9 minutes. Transfer skewers to platter.

salad:
2 cups cherry tomatoes, chopped
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded, chopped
1 cup diced red bell pepper
1/4 pitted Kalamata olives chopped
1/4 cup diced onion
3 Tbsp chopped Italian parsley
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 Tsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

Mix first 9 ingredients in a medium bowl to combine. Gently mix in cheese. Season salad to taste with salt and pepper. (Can be made 2 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.)

Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce on the Grill

Today, while sitting and sweating and studying Trigonometry (I've moved on from the Geometry) I was wishing a lot of things. I was wishing they could make a knee brace that wasn't hot and itchy. I was wishing I was 10 and could run through the sprinkler. I was wishing that maybe it was less than a million percent humidity and maybe a little cooler. But mostly I was wishing for an idea of what to cook for dinner without turning on the oven or the stove. The grill of course leaps to mind, but we just had grilled chicken thighs the other day and I didn't want to do anything elaborate.

It is very rare that my wishes come true, but today they did. See Courtney posted the other day about Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce. Which really put me in the mood for some tasty barbecue. So I left a nice comment. One thing led to another and a package containing 2 bottles of Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce and some recipes arrived at my doorstop today. Yes that's TWO bottles. I am a very lucky wish granted girl. Apparently Country Bob's also makes a spicy version of the sauce, a barbecue sauce, and seasoning salt. But let me tell you this All Purpose Sauce is amazing.

It has a real tangy and zesty smell. I tasted a little of it and it had a nice zingy taste. It's not thick like a barbecue sauce, but it seems a little thicker and smoother than A1 Steak Sauce. So I opened up the little recipe package and there weren't any recipes in it for pork chops (which I quickly pulled out of the freezer and was already thawing in the microwave). There was a recipe for a grilled pork tenderloin, so I used that as my inspiration. I whipped it together in a Ziploc bag and let those pork chops marinate for 2 hours.

You know it's hot when the Brain didn't want to grill. So I became the grill mistress. I decided while I was at it that I would grill those 2 leftover chicken thighs. (Costco thighs come in packages of 5 and that other grill recipe this week called for 8). So although our meal was heavy on the meat side, a chicken thigh and a pork chop each, we had a nice tossed salad and our house stayed nice and cool.

On the side of the bottle it says "Christ is our CEO". Does that mean that I can say GOD wanted me to grill today?

Grilled Pork Chops and Chicken Thighs

original Shazam recipe

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp light soy sauce

1 Tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp ground ginger

2 scallions chopped

1 cup Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce

2 boneless pork chops

2 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

Mix the garlic, soy sauce, oil, ginger, and scallions in a large zip top bag. Add the pork chops and marinade, turning occasionally, for 2 hours. Add the chicken thighs to the bag and marinate for another 20 minutes.

Prepare the grill. Turn the flame down very low and place the pork chops on the grill, leaving the chicken still in the bag. 5 minutes later add the chicken thighs to the grill. Basting halfway through, continue to grill until the pork chops are 170 degrees and the thighs 180 degrees.

Grilled Chicken Thighs and Grape Tomatoes

I'm sorry about the long delay since the last time I blogged. I have a sort of big project I'm working on that I'll tell you more about in a couple months and it entails long hours of studying Geometry. I'm trying to remember things I learned in school over (gulp) 20 years ago. I also got to tour the NASA Plum Brook facility twice this past weekend. First when my mom came down and then when the Queen Geek came down. It was a blast. (hee hee hee get it?)

So I think I've eaten out more this past weekend than in the entire past month. And last night as I was frantically re-learning math and feeling sorry for 16 year old kids everywhere, I wanted something quick and easy for dinner. The humidity yesterday was brutal too. The thermostat inside the house read 76 degrees at 5:30pm. So really I didn't want to even think about turning on the oven.

Cooking Light to the rescue! I was leafing through the June issue and saw Grilled Chicken Thighs with Roasted Grape Tomatoes. The recipe is beyond easy. All it involves is marinating the chicken in a lemony marinade and grilling it. I altered it a little too because there was no way I was cranking the oven up to 425 degrees F. My little house would have retained the heat and I just can't sleep when it's 80 in the house. The Brain hasn't pulled out the window air conditioning unit yet, and I'm trying to delay that. So I wrapped those little tomatoes up in tinfoil and had the Brain grill them with the thighs. Probably we could have grilled them longer, but I really liked how they turned out. They were hot, but still were fairly firm. Be careful though. They're slippery. I had several of them go sailing across the room. The Brain says he's never seen anyone have a meltdown over flying tomatoes before. (It was kind of a long day. I don't normally go into histrionics that easily.)

Grilled Chicken Thighs and Grape Tomatoes

adapted from Cooking Light

Chicken:

1 Tbsp grated lemon rind

2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

1 tsp olive oil

2 garlic cloves crushed

8 skinless boneless chicken thighs

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Tomatoes:

2 cups grape tomatoes

2 tsp olive oil

2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1 tsp grated lemon rind

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

1 Tbsp capers

1/8 tsp salt

1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Prepare grill.

To prepare the marinade, combine lemon rind, lemon juice, olive oil and garlic in a large zip top bag. Add the chicken, seal the bag and move the chicken around (squish the bag) so that the marinade coats all of the chicken. Marinate for 15 minutes in the refrigerator.

Place 2 large pieces of aluminum foil on a workspace. Place the tomatoes in the center of the foil. Drizzle them with the olive oil and toss to coat evenly. Wrap the foil up so it make a sealed pouch.

Remove chicken from bag and throw away remaining marinade. Salt and pepper the chicken and grill until done. While the chicken is grilling grill the foil pack of tomatoes. They should get very tender.

Combine tomatoes, parsley, capers, salt and pepper stirring gently. Serve with chicken.