Grilling: The Adventure Begins

We live in an apartment building, so having an amazing grill is a little impractical. But we all love to grill so recently Ty decided that we had to get one, even if it was just a little one. So we went to Wal-Mart, picked out a little $35 propane grill and grabbed some hamburger and hot dog fixings!

Here's the grill Ty picked out, complete with accessories!



Ty made potato packets to go with our hamburgers and hot dogs. Delicious seasoned potatoes, onions and green peppers wrapped in tin-foil and cooked on the grill. They were really tasty!





I made hamburgers and grabbed the hot dogs, and then we headed outside!



Here's Ty, just grilling away!







Yes, they were just as delicious as they look!



Our grilling adventure was a major success! You'll be seeing a lot more of the grill throughout the summer months.

Thai Red Curry

We had a seasoning packet for Thai Red Curry in our cabinet for months and months. I found it a couple of weeks ago and thought it looked pretty awesome. I don't know why we waited so long to make it!

Here are the chicken and vegetables cooking together.



You were supposed to add coconut milk to the packet to make a sauce for the curry. I forgot to buy coconut milk so I used what I had on hand, which just so happened to be vanilla soy milk. It turned out just as tasty.







We served the Thai Red Curry over basmati rice. It was great and if we buy this again we won't wait so long before making it!

Proper English Cottage Pie

Cottage Pie was one of my favorite things I ate when I went to the United Kingdom in 2004. When AllRecipes.com sent me the recipe for Proper English Cottage Pie as a recipe-of-the-day awhile back I was excited to make it!

We made it a couple of days after Easter and because we still had leftover Colcannon I used that in place of plain mashed potatoes for the topping. It was great. The fried cabbage in the Colcannon really added something to the flavor.

Here I'm cooking the carrots and onions together.



Here it is right before going into the oven.



Here's the finished product, which was a savory, comfort food wonder! So delicious!!



Try it for yourself! It's guaranteed to please! Here's the recipe: Proper English Cottage Pie.

Easter Dinner

This year for Easter dinner I decided to cook my first whole chicken. I found a really great recipe on AllRecipes.com called Juicy Roasted Chicken. The ingredients were simple and the recipes had great reviews. One woman said she used this recipe for a chicken she submitted in a chicken contest and she won the blue ribbon. It sounded so wonderful we just had to try it!

Here's the before picture...



...and after.



The chicken turned out amazing! It was juicy, delicious and just fell apart! It was a big hit, and easy to make, so we'll be having it again. Here's the recipe if you want to try it for yourself: Juicy Roasted Chicken

For a side dish we made green bean casserole, which is a holiday favorite in our family. Even though I make sure to make a lot of it, it's always the first thing to go. It's delicious!

Here are the green beans cooking with the tasty maple bacon:



And here's the green bean casserole before I sprinkled on the crunchy onions and popped it into the oven.



Jacob had been pretty disappointed when I didn't make Colcannon for St. Patrick's Day, so I decided to make Colcannon instead of plain mashed potatoes for Easter dinner.

Here's the complete meal. It was delicious!

Egg Coloring Extravaganza / Deviled Eggs

Can you call it an extravaganza when you're only coloring a dozen eggs?

For the last several years we've colored Easter eggs with our nieces or with the nieces/nephews/small children of friends. This year, none of the aforementioned children were available so Ty and I decided to color Easter eggs by ourselves while Matt caught up to where we were in "Big Love" (we've been power-watching it, it's amazing).



Since there were no kiddies present, Ty and I decided to invite our good "friend" Captain Morgan to color eggs with us.



This is where it gets hilarious... Ty, for reasons unknown, thought it would be really funny to use the "magic crayon" to draw boobs on the first egg he colored. He went for a totally different interpretation of boobs than I would have (maybe because he doesn't have them). I had no idea what he was doing until he pulled the egg out and said, in a very disappointed tone, "Oh, they don't look like boobs at all! It just looks like a W." Sure enough, he'd gone for a frontal interpretation of bosoms that was nearly indistinguishable from the letter 'W'. Personally, I would have gone with the "fried egg" interpretation of boobs, but that's just me... Anyway, we had a good, long laugh about it and Ty may be trying to live down his "boobs" Easter egg for many Easters to come.

If you look closely, you can see Ty's W/boobs on the egg...



We colored the eggs a couple days before Easter so that come Easter morning, the eggs would be all ready for their transformation into deviled eggs.

Ty loves deviled eggs, they're one of the holiday foods that we make that he most looks forward to having. Being the awesome husband that he is, he loves to help me make them. He not only helped make them, this time he even remembered to grab the camera and get some pictures.

Here's me, getting ready to tackle Easter dinner. Because Jacob had to work he let me borrow his cool black apron so I wouldn't get food all over myself (thanks again, Jake). I think it looks quite nice!



Here's a look at the little lovelies before they were converted to deviled eggs. The orange egg in the first row all the way to the right is the infamous boob egg. I turned it around for the photo so people wouldn't ask why we just put a W on one of our eggs.



Alas, beauty is only skin-deep, or in this case, shell-deep...



Here I am filling the eggs with tasty, deviled egg mixture...




Ty sliced some Spanish olives to garnish the tops...



Here's the finished product. Ty loves them so much that by the time I'd washed my hands to handle the camera he'd already eaten several! I don't blame him, they were delicious!

Tandoori Chicken

As part of my quest to continually expand our culinary horizons, I wanted to introduce the deliciousness that is Tandoori to Ty. Matt, Jacob and I had Tandoori years ago when my parents picked up a big shaker of it from a natural foods store. For the short time that we had it, I sprinkled Tandoori on nearly everything. Then, when it was gone, it was, well, gone. Recently, the deliciousness re-entered my mind and I made it my mission to find it...which was fairly hard to do in "Big Sky" country.

For those who have not yet had the opportunity to experience the deliciousness of Tandoori, let me tell you a bit about it. Tandoori is a blend of Indian spices named for the oven, called the tandoor, that is traditionally used to cook this particular type of Indian foods. The spice itself is a blend of a variety of spices including ginger, coriander, cumin, paprika, pepper, turmeric, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon.

Tandoori Chicken, as I've recently learned, is actually a Punjabi dish that dates back to the time of the Mughal Empire in Central and Southern Asia. It's made by marinating the chicken in a mixture of the Tandoori spice blend and plain yogurt.

Though I wasn't able to find dry Tandoori seasoning here in Great Falls, I was able to find a Tandoori paste at 2J's. There was a simple recipe for Tandoori Chicken on the bottle so we decided to use it.

As per the recipe I mixed eight tablespoons of the Tandoori paste with six tablespoons of plain yogurt and marinated the chicken for 24 hours. Then we baked the chicken in the oven for about a half an hour. It was delicious!!

Before I forget to mention it, as good as the Tandoori was, the real star of the show was the Basmati rice I made to go along with it. Basmati is a fragrant, long-grained rice that smells and tastes a bit like popcorn. It's so different from the typical white rice and an amazing treat. It goes really well with dishes like Tandoori Chicken.

The night we made the Tandoori Chicken Ty was working late to finish an album review and both Matt and Jacob were either working or otherwise engaged. So, because I made the dinner by myself I, regrettably, don't have any photos of the cooking process. I was able to snap a few photos of the finished product.



I think there's some kind of unwritten rule that every time I bring out the camera Matt has to do some kind of crazy pose...as evidenced by the following two photos...




Here are a couple of photos of Ty, looking cute and enjoying my food!




Because we still had half a bottle of Tandoori paste, another carton of plain yogurt, three thin cuts of steak that needed to be used and left-over basmati rice, we decided to make Tandoori Steak the next night. Not only was it good, but it was about ten times better than the Tandoori Chicken...which was mouth-watering! Definitely a keeper!

Fast and Easy Chicken Fajitas

We found this delicious recipe for homemade fajitas in an issue of Martha Stewart: Everyday Cooking. Ty and I were so happy with how they turned out! We had restaurant-delicious chicken fajitas in under 30 minutes...start to finish. It just doesn't get better than that!

First, we cut an onion, one red and one yellow bell pepper into thin strips. We threw them into a bowl and tossed them with some olive oil and various seasonings.



Next, we sprinkled three chicken breasts with seasonings and put them in the oven to broil for five to ten minutes. I kept the oven open a slight crack so I could keep an eye on them while they cooked...the broiler is a dangerous beast and I didn't want it getting the best of me! The chicken turned out beautifully and the actual broiling time for our chicken was around eight minutes.



After the chicken came out of the oven we used a sharp knife to cut it into thin strips.

The vegetables went into the oven next. The recipe said to broil them for six to eight minutes, or until tender and slightly charred. After eight minutes the peppers still weren't tender enough so we cooked them for around ten minutes instead.



Here's a look at the finished product...




The recipe was a big hit with everyone! I'm sure we'll be making it again sometime soon!