Half the year is already gone. How does that happen so fast? Kids are off to their various camps, or swimming in pools, or making sandcastles at the beach. Parents are putting in for PTO at work for a little downtime (but is it really downtime when you’re shuttling the kids around to all of their summertime activities?).
Gardens are merrily humming along, lawns are being cut (ahh-choo!!!), and people are just enjoying the sun - but hopefully not TOO much sun…those sunburns can hurt!
Outdoor grills are being used regularly - burgers, hot dogs, steak, chicken, pork, seafood, fruit and vegetables, pizza…you name it, it can be grilled! And this is the group to prove that correct.
So…are you grilling over a campfire, an outdoor gas or charcoal grill, or an indoor grill pan like me? Whatever food masterpiece is coming off your grill, let us know!
There are actually a few things I look forward to coming home to this week — mostly unrelated to food: our sweet lil monkey boy, the many friends who didn’t visit us in Berlin this summer , my gal pals, my band, and just being in our own space again.
It’ll be great to have my own kitchen back and do more cooking than I did these last couple months, where eating out is generally our priority. That also includes getting to know our Primo XL better, which got shamefully little use last year bc it was so GDMF humid that nobody wanted to hang out on the patio for any extended period of time. Whereas I envision a lot of charcoal-scented meats, fish & vegetables, hot-smoked salmon and slow-smoked pork butts, my PIC has decided he wants to master baking pizza on the Primo.
No doubt @John will be a great source of information, as will be other threads specifically dealing with BGE cooking and pizza baking. I’ll send my dude the respective links for him to figger it oot
Every positive streak ends one day and for our great dinners at in Portugal it was last night at Real by Casa da Calcada https://restaurantereal.pt/en/ in Porto. It was far from a disaster but at the same time also not on the same level of any of our other dinners so far. The appetizers were the best part but the ribeye was very tough and chewy and full of gristle. We like monkfish for its firm and meaty texture but this one was like rubber and really hard to cut. And it was kind of ironic that they translate their chocolate cake as moist when it was so dry that it completely crumbled. Service was good but also inattentive, e.g. served the ribeye with the wrong sauce, we had ask for any beverage menu after ordering our food, the beverage menu or server never mentioned any cocktails as an option and we just saw at the end of the meal that another table was ordering them.
Overall, nothing really bad but also not a restaurant worth revisiting in the future.
Leftover Buffalo-d rotisserie chicken, side Caesar salad with tomatoes and some carrots and cucumber that needed using up. Homemade pretzel roll croutons, crispy skin and Parm/Regg for garnish.
First day of a two week vacation, couldn’t be happier! Foggy day turned into a gorgeous evening. First of the local sugar snap peas, thin-skinned new potatoes and ham. View from my seat at the dining table in my rental (10th summer renting here, my happy place).
I used to have seasons tickets to our local CFL team and the food inside the stadium seemed equally horrible as what you got so I actively avoided their food. We have one Whole Foods in Ottawa and it’s where the football stadium is located. On every game day they would fire up the bbq and sell hamburgers and there was always a line up. Another restaurant had a stand set up outside and they sold prameal bacon on a bun and they also had a line up. The stadium is losing a lot of customers…
Baked ham slice, squash casserole, chicken ST stuffing, cranberry sauce and frozen Rhodes rise and bake dinner rolls with butter. I made a batch of spaghetti sauce from garden tomatoes. I still think it’s missing a little something but couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Finally got tired of messing around with it and called it a day. Maybe a little time in the freezer will help.
ChristinaM
(Hungry in Asheville, NC (still plenty to offer tourists post Hurricane))
15
Tonight I made sheet-pan chicken Italian sausages with peppers, onions, and marinara sauce, a lemony barley and veg salad, and roasted foraged Chanterelle mushrooms. It was well received.
It’s sad. I’ve been thinking about it. A charcuterie-cheese-and-cracker plate along with a 3-bean salad would be infinitely preferable to what was being served, and could be done so without much need for special handling, advanced service skills, or extraordinary refrigeration, etc. I suppose, however, that is not what most people are willing to pay for.
Shrimp and spinach salad with red onions, hbe and warm bacon dressing. Shrimp were seasoned with Old Bay and sauteed in bacon drippings, dressing was bacon drippings, cider vinegar, honey and Dijon mustard.
, my gal pals, my band, and just being in our own space again.
