Summer Time

...Is my second favorite time of year.

Flip flops. Swimming. Beach umbrellas. Fishing. Fresh steamed crab. Vidalia onions. Peaches. Suntans. Pretty polished toes.

Love it all!!!

But...there's one other thing that I just absolutely love about summer time....

GRILLING!!!

I used to be so afraid of the grill. Always worried that I would ruin the food and burn everything. One day I just decided to face that fear and now...you can't keep me away from it.

When Mike and I first started dating, we lived in the dorms on base where our rooms didn't have kitchens. Thankfully, he enjoyed grilling just as much, if not more, than I. We were grilling all.the.time.

Now-a-days, you will probably find us outside by the grill majority of the time.

Cooking on the grill is so nice, but one of my favorite thing is the minimal clean up. Awh..a busy Moma loves little clean-ups. It's just....nice. *sigh*

So...this summer has started off so well. We've been grilling a.lot! Trying out new ways to fix foods. New rubs and marinades. Kabobs, steaks, onions, you name it we've definitely maybe tried it.

Yesterday we grilled out, again. Summertime is always offering the most beautiful veggies so we definitely take advantage of it. More so now because we're part of the CSA, so we get a good variety of veggies every week. It's great!! I mean...look at those veggies. They're just perty!!!!

Anyhoo...Mike found a new spice rub at the grocery store...it's a Maui something rub (McCormick I think). Well...we decided to make chicken kabobs for supper. So here's what we did...I used 2 medium size boneless chicken breasts and cut them up into large chunks. (We bought these new metal, double kabobs sticks so that the food will flip all together instead of spin. Make's for a happier Grill Master.)

Marinated the chicken with the spice pack for about 3 hours. I opened a can of sliced pineapple and cut the slices into 3 sections. So, when I made the kabobs, I alternated the chicken and the pineapple.

For the veggies, we had vidalia onions *so good* and the huge-mongous red peppers that I bought from the fruit stand and fresh corn from our CSA box. Now, of course the corn didn't go on the kabobs silly...I'll get to it in a bit...

the pepper and the onion were cut up into large pieces and rubbed down with a bit of veggie oil and a jerk spice rub (part of that new "Perfect Pinch" line of spices) and thrown into our oh-so-wonderful grill basket.

Which by-the-way...you have to try. We use this for everything from shrimp to veggies to bread. It's awesome!!!

So, for the corn...well, I couldn't get all the silk off without tearing the husk apart so I went ahead and shucked it all. It's still kinda early for corn here, so the kernels are still sort of small. Because of that I decided to cut the corn off the cob and cook it in a pot. Simple, simple. Four ears of little tiny corn was perfect for us. I added a little bit of water and let it simmer for a bit on the stove with like 1 Tbspn of butter and S&P. After it was semi-cooked, I added in my Pampered Chef BBQ season that we l.o.v.e.

I'm totally loving this kinda supper yall...look how healthy it looks!!

Chicken + Veggies = Healthy Summer Goodness!!!

We felt so good about ourselves after eating this supper. No guiltiness here.

Ok..so it doesn't look so pretty on the plate. This picture does NOT do it justice. But, the pineapple and chicken with a little bite of the sweet onion...

Oh!!! My mouth is watering all over again.

I can't wait to see what other sort of stuff we throw on the grill this summer. It's so much fun.

What do you enjoy grilling? Do you have a new idea that maybe I could try?

If so, throw it my way, and I'll let you know how we like it.

Hope yall are having a great summer so far. Time for family and fun...

Sweet lovins!!!!