May Was A Month of Sundays And We Took Advantage of Every One!

      It is truly Summer here in Georgia, and the best part of Summer is making plans with friends to enjoy the weather! We were invited by our friend Karen to her place on Lake Weiss in Alabama last month on Memorial Day Weekend. (This post is a little late but the last few weeks have been so crazy!  I blogged a lot about our cruise last month, and I've been babysitting and dog sitting, and doing some volunteer work. Time has flown by!) 

     Our visit to the lake was so much fun!  Karen and her husband, Ronnie, are the best hosts, we made a few new friends, and of course, being on the water is wonderful!

     Here are some wonderful "Greek" Chicken Kabobs my sister and I took to the party.  They were grilled up by Mike, one of the new friends we made that day and they disappeared pretty quickly, so I'm pretty sure they were a big hit!  I wanted to make fresh tzatziki sauce but ended up having store bought because there were no pretty cucumbers at the grocery store.

     Besides hanging with friends, the second best thing about Summer is all the beautiful produce.  This recipe calls for two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 1/2" cubes (one is too small, two is too big), and the kabobs also have zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, onions, and red bell peppers.  Cut the veggies into the most uniform pieces possible for more even cooking.  These were cooked on wooden skewers after alternating the chicken and veggies onto the skewers.  There is a difference of opinion about wooden skewers, to soak or not to soak to keep them from burning, but I did soak mine for an hour before adding the chicken and veggies.  I marinated the whole kabobs for two hours in a plastic covered container in the refrigerator, and I also wrapped the ends with aluminum foil before cooking.  Do not marinate chicken for more than two hours in a citrus or other acidic marinade. The acid can actually toughen the chicken by the way it breaks down the proteins if marinaded too long. 

        Here are the marinade ingredients!

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• juice from 1 medium lemon*
• 2 teaspoons dill
• 1½ teaspoons kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

     Cook the kabobs on medium-high heat on the grill for 7-10 minutes, turning the kabobs once halfway through the cooking time.

     *Did you know you can get more juice from a lemon or lime by microwaving the whole fruit for 10 seconds before cutting and squeezing?  It's true!

​     Here's something cool and refreshing! Because strawberries were in season, and because I found this beautiful recipe from one of my favorite bloggers, Mely of Mexico In My Kitchen, I made a Tres Leches Cake (three milk cake) for the first time ever, and it was a huge success!  Click on the picture for Mely's recipe!

     To round out the Memorial Day Weekend, Sis and I enjoyed grilling out at home with our personal favorite on the grill, t-bone steaks.  T-Bone steaks are something I mastered before going to culinary school because they were so often requested at my house.  There's nothing fancy at all about them.  They are marinated in Dale Seasoning Sauce for 30 minutes before putting them on the grill.  I cooked them that way a while back and we like that flavor.  I will admit, I did learn about grill marks at culinary school.  The veggies in the grill basket were left over from when I was making the chicken kabobs, so we enjoyed those again!

     Well, if I'm going to get this posted by the end of June, I have to close it out now.  We were invited by friends and relatives to Florida and made a trip to Destin in early June that I will tell you about later and also about our great hosts and the wonderful Gulf Coast food we had there! In the meantime, I hope you all have a great 4th of July weekend!

     Dished With Love!  Denise