I had brought up a couple of steaks to grill but also had a hankering for sweet potatoes. Since I knew sweet potatoes were going to take way too long to cook on the grill, I had to cheat a bit and pop them in the toaster oven. Since using the toaster oven any time in the house causes all the lights to flash on and off (yes, we still haven’t quite finished updating all the outlets), it’s kind of annoying.

After tolerating about 45 minutes of blinking lights, I’d had enough and decided to finish them on the grill as the steaks were cooking. We had a simple green salad, a bottle of red wine and that was dinner.

Dinner the next night I thought would be easier.  I had brought up some frozen shrimp and was thinking of making a shrimp in a zesty green sauce.  I thought I’d grill the shrimp first, then finish them in a wok with some parsley pesto (made by hand with a mortar and pestle).

The Red House "Food Processor"

Problem was I forgot to bring up some garlic but got the idea that perhaps I could dig up one of the many garlic bulbs growing in the garden. That didn’t work too well, because the garlic when I finally freed it from the soil, looked more like a large green onion (albeit tinged purple) than anything else, but I cut it up anyway and if nothing else it smelled like garlic!

Now, I think I got the original hankering for owning a mortar and pestle because I saw Jamie Oliver on TV once crush some herbs with some olive oil, a bit of salt and pepper, and voila, he had instant pesto.  Not I.  I kept crushing the parsley but it just kind of sat there and got well, mushy.

Not So Pretty Parsley Pesto

I put it aside and threw the shrimp on the grill.  In the meantime, I cheated this weekend and brought up some burrata and sliced prosciutto from the Italian deli.

Yummy!

I made a quick tomato salad with some red onions and by the time everything was cut up, the shrimp were done.

Tomato Side Dish

Shrimp on the "Barbie"

The shrimp were pretty decent even with the ersatz parsley pesto. Before we left the next day though, I decided I would grill some chicken along with a couple of potatoes so that when we got back  to Long Island we’d have dinner!

Great Grilled Chicken, Potatoes, Too

Now Lynn has some fond memories of his Mom cooking up some extra food (chicken in particular) when they went on picnics so that once they got home, she didn’t have to worry about “what was for dinner.”  It made perfect sense for me, too.

Ironically, we hit absolutely no traffic on the ride home, which meant the chicken I had double-wrapped in tinfoil was still warm even after a four hour ride! And pretty darn good.

So when Mom and Dad came up to visit last weekend, I wanted to show them my “stuff.”  I started by grilling some chicken thighs and brushing them with BBQ sauce.

BBQ Chicken Thighs

Then I picked some yellow squash from my garden and wrapped it in some tinfoil, but not before putting some butter and brown sugar on it. When I opened the package, the brown sugar had formed a nice little pond which would be oozing sweetness when we cut it up into chunks.

Home Grown Yellow Squash

The red potatoes however, were a bit of a challenge.  Since I started dinner later than I wanted, (we decided to go for a spur-of-the-moment afternoon swim), I knew that simply plonking them down on the grill would take hours, if not days to cook.  I decided to boil them a bit first, then give them a good dose of olive oil, salt and pepper, and some dried tarragon, too, and put them under a piece of tinfoil to cook, but keep them peeking out so every once in a while I could move them around a bit.

Half Boiled/Half Grilled Potatoes

On the side burner I put a skillet pan filled with peppers and onions but truthfully, at that point, it was cocktail hour and I forgot about them.  Luckily, Lynn loves all things burnt, so he was more than happy with their outcome.

Peppers and Onions

I thought the meal came out nicely; we ate outside, even with all the mosquitoes biting our ankles and elbows and toes, and everyone seemed to enjoy just being at the Red House. And if you are wondering whether I still need an oven, the answer is if I am making bread pudding for dessert I do!

Using leftover hero rolls that I tore up and added some milk, cinnamon, sugar and an egg to, I popped the mixture into muffin tins, stuck it in the toaster oven, and plated the whole thing with fresh raspberries.  I want to say it was yummy but actually it was kind of dense, which leads me to think, maybe I should have tried making a “grilled” bread pudding?

Next time.

Red House Bread Pudding

1. I still had two rooms of linoleum that I never ripped out from last summer.

2. If we wanted to eat, we would have to grill.

So, I hauled the grill out of the barn and got a wonderful shot of some beautiful wildflowers that have suddenly sprung up all over the property.  While others might consider them to be a tad weed-like, I’m keeping them.

Beautiful Blue Wildflowers

The first morning sans stove I was pretty ambitious, I put some applewood smoked bacon on the grill which cooked up quicker than I thought but then suddenly it started to rain and even though I tried to cover the bacon as I was carrying it from outside to inside, it was cold and wet.  Yummy!

Grilling Bacon!

Luckily, the pancakes faired a tad better.  Since I never like to do anything really simple, I threw together a quick pancake batter but threw some fresh blueberries in to just kick it up a notch.  Oh, yeah, I also had real maple syrup that was tapped by a local guy down the road and which the local supermarket even sells.  How about that for a real-time CSA?

I Love Blueberry Pancakes

After my breakfast, I decided to tackle the really ugly linoleum in one of the bedrooms.  I mean really, who would even contemplate putting something this awful down on their bedroom floor?

Who Would Put This On Their Floor?

By the time I managed to rip it out, including lots of stubborn nails that were stuck in the floorboards, I thought about lunch.  It was still overcast and raining on and off, windy and a tad chilly.  I had purposely brought up some brat wurst, sauerkraut and even a package of pierogis for lunch or dinner but I decided I wanted them for lunch.  Yes, I know pierogis are Polish but they are heavy enough for me to be kind of an ersatz German food.

Brat Wurst and Pierogis

I like to boil my pierogis so I put on a pot of water on the side burner of the grill and waited and waited for the water to reach a slow boil.  Wow, this took a really long time! In the meantime, I threw the sausages on the grill and finally when the water began to bubble, I threw the pierogis in.

And yes, they were pretty darn good and filling and heavy but after all I felt I needed a bit of a reward for all that ugly linoleum ripping I had to contend with.