A friend for dinner in January

We wanted to spend an evening with a good friend so I prepared Harter House pork chops with medium thickness, grilled asparagus and a wonderful recipe from the January Food and Wine for Warm Quinoa Salad with carrots:

Christmas Day 2011

We were excited to have out of town family at our Christmas table at my sisters.  My contributions were Marie and Cleo's Cranberry Salad, Spinach and Artichoke casserole and my famous Libby's recipe pumpkin pie:

Christmas 2011

Christmas is a time for being with family and friends.  We did some(alot) entertaining Christmas weekend but no one requested anything from the BGE.  Here are a few pics of our cooking along with a lovely host/hostess gift from a lovely blogger and entertained Hospitability Yours- Stephanie Madsen:

Thanksgiving Dinner continued

Gary made his fresh mashed pototatoes, Mom brought cranberry sauce, Cathy prepared Trees and Raisins and rolls, and we were ready to start the buffet line.  Minkie was just exhausted but a great meal and a good time was had by all.  Happy Thanksgiving!

PS-  Gary made the pie crust and I made Cindy's Pecan pie and pumpkin pie served with fresh whipped cream.

Thanksgiving morning and turkey prep

 We got up at 6am to light the grill and prepare the turkey.  We added onions, herbs and orange from the brine to the cavity of the turkey.  The grill was filled with Big Green Egg lump charcoal and lighted with starter.

We dressed the turkey with olive oil, garlic salt and California pepper.  We added fresh herbs to the cavity along with an orange, 1/2 lemon, halved whole garlic, 1/2 onion, thyme, rosemary and sage. .  We struggled a bit with the fire temp.  Gary was able to evenly distribute the hot coals to where we finally got the temp to maintain at 350 degrees.  We added a 1/4 cup of apple chips to the fire.  It was 7:25am when we got the turkey on after placing the Big Green Egg plate setter with legs up, we filled the drip pan with 1 carrot, an orange, rosemary and thyme along with vegetable broth.  After about 1/2 hr we were able to maintain the grill temp at 270 degrees.

 My Dad came over to help me with the dressing.  I had gotten Nancy Nahon's recipe from Mona McCann this week.  It called for 2 baked boxes of Jiffy cornbread which Dad cooked yesterday.  I had left out a 24 ou loaf of white bread out on a cookie sheet.  Dad began tearing the bread's up and mixing them together.  We ended up only using one Jiffy and half of the bread for our 9 x 13 baking dish.  In the meantime, I was boiling all of the giblets in water over high heat on the stove.  I chopped an onion and half of a bunch of celery then put it in a saucepan with 1/2 stick of butter.  To that we added fresh sage which I had chopped.  We sauted that until done and added some vegetable broth to the giblet mixture.  Dad added the celery and onion to the bread mixture which he had put in the baking dish.  We added salt and pepper to the giblet mixture and poured what we thought we needed on the bread mixture.  We placed a few whole sage leaves to the top.  We baked the dressing at 350 degrees for 45 minutes

At 10:30am we checked the turkey and it was done at 170, inside the breast temp.  We brought it in to rest.  The dressing was done in 40 minutes and looked beautiful.

Thanksgiving Eve 2011

So excited to try the turkey on the Big Green Egg.  I talked to several friends and looked at web recipes for my plans.  One of my friends, Ronnie, picked up a fresh turkey for us on the Farmer's Market last Saturday from Autumn Olive Farms.  It is around a 16.3 lb bird.  I've keep in the frig at 36 degrees.  We prepared a brine of 1/2 c brown sugar, 1/2 c of sugar, 1 orange rind, 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, 1 c kosher salt, 2 onions quartered, 1 halved garlic and 16 c of H2O.  We put that in our Playmate and topped it with ice.  The outside temp was 40 degrees so we were able to keep it out back.

Sunday night with BGE pork, cauliflower and a table of family

A couple of Sunday's ago I lighted the grill to cook Hormel Lemon-Pepper pork tenderloin and some pork chops.  These were grilled for around 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

I grilled the asparagus while Gary boiled cauliflower and mashed it with butter and skim milk. He  used Penzey's Garlic Salt for flavor and we added chives from the garden.  Notice that the Turkey plates were out in anticipation of another Big Green Egg smoked turkey for Thanksgiving.

Friday night dinner

After a long and busy week we did not want to go out so I decided to stop by Smillies for chicken tenders and take some frozen shrimp from Sam's to cook on the grill.  The corn looked fresh and I also got some brocollini to try.  I put olive oil and fresh garden herbs(oregano, parsley and basil) along with salt and pepper on the shrimp and Lake Shore Drive Seasoning from The Spice House in Evanston, Ill on the chicken.  Gary helped me make some fresh salsa and guac for the side.   I also boiled purple and brown new potatoes from Homegrown Foods.  Yummy and easy meal on a beautiful Friday night.

Summer catch up

Just some photo's of Big Green Egg cooking over the last month.  I've learned how to regulate and evenly distribute the heat.  I've cooked the chicken, salmon, turkey burgers and turkey sausages without anything but the BGE lump charcoal.  The flavor is so good.  We've been using the chicken for wraps and salad, as you can see above.  It's been fun to cook a bunch of food on Sunday to simplify the week:)

Return from a Weekend trip- Chicken Breasts- June 5, 2011

We returned on Sunday from a trip to a Pulhoz win, stopping at Whole Foods.  I had to show the photo of their veggie displays.  We even ate breakfast there before doing a little shopping.  So, we have a big outdoor grill at work and Kirk had grilled chicken breasts with Santa Maria seasoning on them on Friday.  I went to Harter House and purchased 4.  Started up the grill, put on the breasts at 350.  I turned them a couple of times for a total of almost 25 minutes.  they were delicious and made great wraps for lunch with avocados and locally made Float Trip pickles.

Friday night Salmon- June 3rd, 2011

Friday night in June sounded like a good time to attempt to get some Copper River salmon so I went to Dillons after work and got a pound and a half.  Rather than marinate in the bag I just put the fish on our fish platter and put olive oil, light soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic salt and California pepper.  I started the fire, prepared the asparagus with olive oil and sea salt then waited until the egg reached 400 degrees.  I placed the fish directly on the grill and held the temperature at 350.  The salmon cooked for around 20 minutes and easily came off the grill onto the fish platter.  I put the asparagus on the Green Egg grill pan which I had sprayed with Pam and cooked them for 7 minutes.  For a side i had orzo salad from The Traveling Chef, Jennifer Smith.  We had a nice salad and a great 1997 bottle of Silver Oak. It was a pleasure to have our first meal of the season being outside on the patio.  Simple meal and great tastes.

Saturday night Pizza

Last night we did not go to the lake and Gary had gone on a 25 mile bike ride, so we decided to try pizza again on the BGE. I lit the grill and got it to 500 degrees. We used a Pillsbury Pizza Crust which Gary rolled out and placed on the wooden paddle. I configured the grill as before with the grate, plate topper top up and our pizza stone. We added Kraft Mozzarella cheese to the top of the crust then added asparagus from the farmer's market, sliced red onions, Cherry Cherub tomatoes cut in half, roasted red pepper and mushrooms. We topped it with Kraft Parmesan cheese, basil and oregano from our garden, Penzey's Garlic Salt and California Pepper, and Penzey's Pizza Herbs. I cooked the pizza for 15 minutes at 400 degrees. We took the pizza and stone off and sliced the pizza from there. It was delicious and the crust was perfect!