Melt in your mouth T-Bone steaks for Valentines Day

Valentines Day at our house was filled with love. I have came to the conclusion that my husband and I will not get a romantic Valentines Day dinner for the next 10 years or more. But that is okay. I would rather have a romantic dinner for four than just dinner for two. Valentines day is about being with the ones you love, not just one that you love. So this past Valentines Day I sat the table for four. 

Our menu consisted of T-Bone Steak, Shrimp, Mashed Potatoes, Mac-N- Cheese (not the box kind), Heart Shaped Bread and for dessert Heart Shaped Jello.                         The homemade menus were a big hit with my family. I think it made the perfect touch to our dinner.

I was so excited on how the T-bones turned out. If you followed along this past summer on my grilling adventures, you would remember that I am trying my best to become a great cook on the grill. I researched and researched on how to grill the perfect T-Bone Steak. After spending days and days on Pinterest and the web, reading up on how to fix the perfect steaks, I decided to try my luck this Valentines Day. I marinated the T-bones in Allegros Game Tame, Geek Seasoning, Pepper and Salt. I made sure that there was plenty of salt on both sides of the steak while they marinated. I read somewhere that the salt helps break down the fat and it gives it a great taste. From what I read, the best way to get that restaurant quality steak, is to pan fry then bake. Doing it that way will make your house smell. I wanted to use our grill, granted that it was freezing outside, I wanted to conquer this steak on the grill. Did you know you can use your cast iron pan on the grill? Why yes you can. 

To start cooking these melt in your mouth steaks, you need to pre heat your grill, you want your grill hot, hot. I have a 5 knob gas grill. I only turned on 3 of those knobs and I placed them on high. As you are starting up your grill grease your cast iron skillet and place it on the rack of the grill. You want your cast iron to warm up gradually. If you don't let it warm up gradually you run the risk of the cast iron cracking. When it is time for the steaks to go on, you first want to sear each side of the steak. Before you put the steak on make sure there is a good coating of pepper on each side. Not to much, enough for your liking. When you are ready to place that bad boy on the grill place it in the cast iron. It will sizzle the moment you lay it on the cast iron. I let each side sizzle for about a minute, to a minute and a half. Once each side had a good brown coating I grabbed my oven mitt and moved the cast iron pan (with steak still in it) to the side of the grill away from the burner that is on. I left only two of my knobs on and I left them on high. When doing T-Bones you want to place the filet on the side totally away from the heat, leave the strip sirloin toward the heat. You will let you steak cook until it is to your liking, flipping it so often, but always leave the filet away from the heat. 

This was the best steak I have ever made. The filet side would melt in your mouth. My mouth is watering so much I think I want to make it again for supper tonight.

After eating this delicious steak dinner I broke out the Jello that had cool whip on it. When I was making it, I hoped that it was going to look more like a heart shape, but it did not. I placed the jello in the glasses, and then I tipped them in fridge to chill. Then I added cool whip to the glass. The kids loved the jello. Even if it did not look so much like a heart. 

After we ate we gave our Valentines their gifts. The roses looked 10 times better the next day.

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentines Day just like we did. Good Luck on making that melt in your mouth steak.

Salmon Kabobs

Summer is almost over. Have you used your grill this summer? Hopefully you have. If not I have got a fast and easy meal for you to cook tonight. And yes, it is for your grill. As you are strolling thru the meat aisle at your local grocery store have you ever noticed those over priced kabobs in the butcher display case? I notice them all the time and I notice the price. Save your money, with just a few simple steps you can create a kabob that looks that good.

What you will need: 

Salmon

Onion

Green pepper

Red Pepper

Kabob sticks

You can add anything your mouth is watering for on a kabob stick.

First cut you salmon in square pieces. Make sure you cut the skin from your salmon if it has skin on it.

Cut your onion and peppers into pieces the size of your salmon.

Once all ingredients are prepped, place the ingredients on the kabob stick. There is no correct order. I do like to go veggie, meat, onion, veggie, meat, etc.

Place the kabobs on medium heat on the grill. Rotate the kabobs until done. 

That is it. This meal is easy to prep and easy to cook and they are so delicious. Your family will love it. Let me know what you added to your salmon kabobs.  If you are looking for other great recipes check these out.

Grilled Salmon
Coconut Grilled Chicken Kabobs
Soda Can Chicken
Pepper Jack Jalapeño Hamburgers


Have shared this wonderful recipe on the following sites:
Snickerdoodle Sunday
Bouquet of Talent Linky Party

Grilled Pizza

Did you know you could cook a pizza on the grill? I thought you had to have one of those fancy fire ovens in your kitchen or outside of your home for a grilled pizza. I was wrong. You can actually use a charcoal or gas grill. You don't even need a pizza stone. Since my family loves pizza and grilling on the grill, we decided to combine the both. 

Gilling pizza takes no time. I think the prep work takes the longest of all.

You will need the following basics: 

Gas Grill or Charcoal Grill

Cheese - I used pizza cheese

Sauce - you can make you own. I used a organic pizza sauce in a can. I forgot the name.

Pizza dough - I used Pillsbury Pizza dough

Corn Meal

Oilive Oil

Toppings - anything you desire

We used

Onion

Green Pepper

Pepperoni 

Pineapple bacon hot dog wiener (lol... yes I know how odd. I was not sure how the pizzas was going to turn out so I cooked some hotdogs just in case)

To start off, pre heat your grill on low heat. While the grill is preheating cook your toppings to the perfection you would like.  Please note the toppings will not be on the pizza long enough to be cooked. I learned this the hard way on the first round of pizzas. While your toppings are cooking, roll out your pizza dough. Don't make your dough to thin. I cut my dough in half. I wanted to make smaller pizzas. I did my unrolling on foil. The top part of the dough brush with olive oil and sprinkle lightly with cornmeal.  Leave the dough on the foil.

Before placing the dough on the grill, rub your grill grates with olive oil. This will prevent your dough from sticking.  To place the dough on the grill, take the dough on the foil and flip where the foil is on top leaving the dough on the grill grates.

While the dough is on the grill grates brush the top side with olive oil. When the dough gets all bubbly it is time to flip. Grab a pair of tongs and flip. Once flipped, quickly place sauce, cheese and topping on the pizza. Let the pizza cook until done. 

Watch out, I burnt my first pizza, but it still tasted good. 

This was my second one and it turned out really good. 

Do you cook pizzas on the grill? If you do, how do you cook them? I would love to know how your experience goes.

Check out these other great grill recipes

Grilled Salmon
Coconut Grilled Chicken Kabobs
Soda Can Chicken
Pepper Jack Jalapeño Hamburgers

If you have a grill recipe and would love to share it I would love to have you as a guest blogger. Just let me know and I will set you up a date. 

I have linked this post to the following sites:

Wonderfully Creative Wednesdays #30 

Diana Rambles: Pin Me Linky Party

My Favorite Things Saturdays

Pepper Jack Jalapeño Hamburgers

One of my good friends told me about this recipe that is totally delicious. Every time this is cooked at their house there is rave reviews and no left overs. I will have to agree with them on this. The night I cooked it, there was no left overs. I never thought about placing all these ingredient's together at the time of marinating.

Items needed:

Hamburger Meat

Greek Seasoning

Pepper Jack Cheese Shredded

Jalapenos

Worcestershire Sauce

Salt and Pepper

Take all ingredients and mix them all up in a bowl. I did not give measurements because it varies per pound of meat that you have. Just add as much seasoning, Jalapenos and pepper jack as you like. On the Worcestershire sauce just add enough to moisten the meat. Once you mix everything up, let the mixture marinate for over 6 hours.

When the meat is done marinating, pat out each hamburger to your desired thickness. I tried to get at least one jalapeno on each burger. I think I put to much Worcestershire Sauce on my burgers.

Grill each burger to your desired texture. I like my hamburgers well done.

Below is the final result. The burgers were full of flavor. We placed our burgers on flat bread and added Wickles (pickles), mustard and ketchup to complete our meal.

I hope you enjoy these burgers just as much as my family did. Check out these other great recipes for the grill.

Grilled Salmon
Coconut Grilled Chicken Kabobs
Soda Can Chicken

Check back each week for more delicious grilling recipes and grilling tips. As always I love to hear how your try at this recipe turned out. Did you add something else or leave something out?

Do you have a favorite grilling recipe that you would like to share? Send me a message and I will set you up a date to be a Guest Blogger.

Soda Can Chicken with guest blogger Donna Mott

Today I am excited to have Donna Mott as my guest here on the blog today. Donna Mott is known as the “Blendermom” thrown in the mix of a blended family. On her blog www.blendermom.me which was just recently voted the 3rd top step parenting blog of 2014 on www.voiceboks.com She loves sharing her faith, her joys, and her trials of being both a biomom and stepmom. She has also written stepfamily and parenting posts for www.familyfusioncommunity.com and www.upliftingfamilies.com. Today we are blessed to have her share with us, one of her families favorite grilled chicken recipe. 

 Soda Can Chicken Finding a great recipe that will feed my family of 5 can sometimes be difficult. Because the grocery store runs great specials on whole chickens, I have tried numerous different recipes and they all seem to come out the same with the outside skin of the chicken being flavorful and the meat tasting somewhat bland. That is until I found soda can chicken. This is a family favorite and it is a variation of the original beer can chicken grilling recipe.

 Ingredients:
5-7 lb whole chicken
1 can of soda (we love to use Pepsi but any will do)
Vinegar
1 whole lemon
Olive Oil (~2 Tbsp)
Sea Salt Favorite Seasoning (I use cajun seasoning or asian seasoning.) Enough to cover chicken + 1 tsp.

 First off you will need a large bowl or the kitchen sink filled with water. Take a 5-7 lb whole chicken (cleaned out, contents inside removed) and place into the water. Then pour a little vinegar in the water. (I use ~1 cup of white vinegar) Let the chicken soak in the water anywhere from half an hour up to 2 hours. Discard the water and rinse the chicken inside and out and pat dry. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze the half and rub all over the chicken inside and out. Use the other half of lemon if necessary to cover the entire chicken. Next rub the entire chicken inside and out with olive oil. Last, sprinkle the entire chicken inside and out with seasoning making sure to coat the outside well. Sprinkle salt over the chicken inside and out as well to taste.
Now we are ready for the fun! Open the soda and pour out 1/3 cup. Cut a hole on each side of the opening in the top of the can to make 2 small holes. Take a teaspoon of seasoning and pour it into the soda can, but you may want to do this over the sink because it will foam up. Next, insert the soda can into the cavity of the chicken and fold the wings in. Carefully place the chicken on the grill so that it is sitting upright, balanced on the can like a tripod. Grill the chicken for 1-1.5 hours on low to medium low or until the meat thermometer shows 160 degrees in the thickest part of the chicken.

Carefully remove the chicken from the can, slice, and serve.

Donna loves this recipe because any flavor of soda and seasoning can be modified to your family's taste and preferences.

I can't wait to fire up my grill and try this recipe. It sounds so delicious. Thank you so much Donna for sharing one of your families favorite grill recipes. Please swing by the Blendermom's site and let her know how you like her recipe.
Do you have a favorite recipe? Would you like to share it with us? If you would like to be a guest blogger please contact me thru email or in comments.


Check out some of these other great grill recipes:
Grilled Salmon
Coconut Grilled Chicken Kabobs

Does your grill grates look like this?

How well do you know how to cook on the grill? I am not a pro and every year I want to learn how to become a better griller. So this year I have made a decision that I am going to try to become the best I can be. 

To start off the grilling season I would recommend giving your grill a good cleaning. Most grills over some time in their life will develop some rust on their grates. Especially if they are out in the elements. You don’t want your food tasting like rust. 

About a year ago I noticed rust starting to form on the sides of our grill grates that was hardly used. I did not know how to solve the problem at that time. So I put it out of sight and out of mind. When I cooked on the grill I used reyonolds wrap or a grill plate and I never worried about the outer edge. Over the winter our grill got used a few times. Here we are grilling fish in a snow / ice storm.  I think what caused  most of the  damage is when the grill grates became wet and left in sub zero temps

Then when I opened the grill for the first time this spring I noticed that our grates did not look their best, rust was starting to form and there was a charcoal marinade clumped all over. I am embrassed to even show the below picture. I knew we had to do something or we would lose our grill. The picture looks bad, huh? 

                  

I looked at purchasing some new grill grates. But for the price of just buying grates, I could almost buy a new smaller grill. I thought to myself, there has to be a way, to save our grill. 

So where do you go if you need help? Pinterest!!! I just love Pinterest. You can find anything and everything there. Just like this article you are reading. I searched ways to clean cast iron grill grates. And yes there is many ways to clean them. I wished I would have known about this sooner. 

You will need the following items:

Vinegar

Salt

Garbage bag(s)

A metal grill brush and some type of oil (vegetable, olive or coconut oil).

Place the grill grates in garbage bags add vinegar and salt. Some people say to use 2 cups of vinegar and 2 tablespoons of salt. I just put enough vinegar in the bag to reach the bottom of the grates and I sprinkled salt all over the grates. If I had to guess it was probably about 2 tbs of salt and 2 cups of vinegar. Leave the bag(s) with the grate and mixture set over night. I suggest placing the bag(s) in the yard. I layed mine on the concrete and I noticed the mixture had ran out leaving a white trail.  Some people heat up their grates on the grill before they place them in the bag. I did not do this. But I think the next time I cook on the grill I might let the grates cool just enough that I could handle them and I will redo the cleaning method. My grates were so bad they need several cleanings. 

While the grates are soaking use this time to clean out the grill around the burners and the drip pan. 

When you remove your grates from the bag use the grill brush to remove everything and then spray them off.  To finish up the grates you will need to oil the grates. Oiling the grates will help season the cast iron and help prevent rust from coming back. Also oil the grates before winter comes. It will be an added protector. 

Now your grill should be in top notch condition to grill on.  You will be amazed at the grime and grease that will be removed. The next step is to start making delicious recipes. Check back next Thursday for another session of learning to grill.  I plan to be showing how to cook Chicken Kabobs with Coconut Oil.

 If you would love to share a grill recipe or anything about grilling I would love to have you as a guest blogger during this series. Just comment or email me. 

Happy Grilling!

Check the following grilling recipes:

Grilled Salmon
Coconut Grilled Chicken Kabobs
Soda Can Chicken

How much do you know about CBD OIL? If you would like learn more or purchase any of the HEMPWORX products click here

I have linked this post to the following sites:

Diana Rambles Pin Me Link Party