It's Grillin' Time, Sprout!

The weather has (finally) been absolutely beautiful the past few days, and things are blooming all over the place. We did our best to enjoy it today, when we weren't shopping. Or napping.

We drove to Lowe's with the sunroof open (Yes, Shrike's car has a sunroof. She is very cool!), looked at plants a bit while we were there (us and everyone else in town), wore shorts (!) to walk the dogs and grilled for dinner.

The past couple of summers, we've gotten into a routine of grilling just about every Sunday evening, and we really enjoy it. It's so nice to be outside in the backyard, cook with real fire, and just enjoy the loveliness of a spring or summer evening.

Our standard meal has generally been steak, baked potato and veggie kabobs.

The last couple of summers, I've grown onions, bell peppers and tomatoes in containers on the patio, and I just love picking an onion and a pepper, washing them off with the hose, kabobing them right there at the patio table, sticking them on the grill, and tossing the remnants right into the compost bin.

I feel so primative!

Today, however, we didn't have any steaks in the freezer and definitely no veggies growing, so we had to get creative.

We did have several chicken breasts on hand, a bit of onion and lots of potatoes that need to be eaten soon.

So, what we ended up with was Cajun chicken and potatoes. I marinated the chicken in a bottled Cajun marinade, and sprinkled the potatoes with Tony Cachere's Cajun Seasoning (for those of you not from Cajun Country, that's pronounced "sash-uh-ray's").

I over did it with the Tony's and not only were the taters a bit too spicy, but also way too salty, so we had a lot of that left over.

I did manage to salvage them, though. For starters, I rinsed off as much of the seasoning as possible.

(For some reason Shrike had a problem with that. She said it was gross, washing them in the sink. At first, I thought she was kidding, but she sounded pretty serious, so I'm not sure. I don't get it. I pointed out that she drinks Kool-Aid made with water from that same sink. It's not like I soaked them, I just ran some water over them.)

Then, I diced them up, and mixed them with cream o'mushroom soup (1 can), Velveeta (about 2 oz) and some shredded cheese (about 1/2 oz). I heated that all up in the microwave, stirring occassionally, until the cheese was melted, then sprinkled more cheese on top and baked it for about ten minutes.

Meanwhile, I cut up the leftover chicken (it was quite yummy, I glad we cooked extra) and mixed it with some rice.

Here's what you don't want to do . . . .

When your rice is done cooking, and you move the pot to a different burner to cool off, you don't want to leave the first burner turned on.

Then, when you pull the Cajun potatoes au gratin out of the oven, you don't want to set them on the burner that the rice just came from. That's still turned on.

I was mixing rice and chicken and packaging it up in serving sizes, when I looked over to see the potatoes just a-bubblin' away over there!

I did notice in time though, and there was no harm done!