Grilled Coconut-Lime Skewers with Peanut Dipping Sauce.... and some vegetables.

So I found a recipe that I really wanted to try. It's for Grilled Coconut-Lime Skewers with Peanut Dipping Sauce from my "Savoring the Seasons with Our Best Bites" cookbook, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite cookbooks. 

Remember this guy from my last post?

I realized this recipe is for meat, not veggies, so I decided to throw some in so I could justify making this. 

I went to the store and got my meat and veggies along with a bunch of ingredients I would never get otherwise (minced ginger, Sriracha sauce, coconut milk, Thai curry paste, etc.) The lady in the meat department gave me some advice about flank steak. Apparently you need to cut it against the grain for it to melt in your mouth. Cutting it along the grain will make it super chewy. I had no idea. Thank you Harmon's meat lady, you're awesome.

As you can see from my first posts (from last year...) squash is kinda my default veggie that I add to stuff. I figured they would be easy to put on a skewer and throw on the grill.  

I made up the marinade which includes: a can of Coke, minced garlic, minced ginger, soy sauce, Sriracha sauce, ketchup, cocnut milk, lime juice, and brown sugar. The recipe calls for the chicken, flank steak, shrimp, and veggies to marinate for 4 hours. 

So...what can a girl do for 4 hours while she is waiting for her meat and veggies  to soak in a delicious homemade marinade?

Watch North & South of course!

This BBC mini-series is UH-mazing! If you are a sucker for Jane Austen type romance stuff, this is for you. Watch it. It's on Netflix and it's got 4 episodes that are about 50 minutes each. So there you go. It's perfect. 

After the show, my mom helped me skewer the meat and veggies. What am I saying? She didn't just help me, she did it all. I just danced around the kitchen and annoyed her, but she loves me so it's all good. 

Thanks Mommy, they look awesome!

Time to throw the shrimp on the barbie! (along with everything else)

Also, my Mom did this part again. She's great. 

TA-DA!!! Looks good right?

The Peanut Dipping Sauce is in that red cup/dish thing. It was so good. Like crazy good. I totally forgot to take pictures of me making it. You make it in a saucepan and it contains: olive oil, minced garlic, minced ginger, soy sauce, brown sugar, creamy peanut butter, Thai curry paste, and coconut milk. So you use a lot of the same stuff for the marinade which is nice.

My dinner plate.

I snuck a picture of my sister and daddy eating my food. They actually took a skewer of squash... I was SHOCKED! and happy :)

Everything was delicious, especially with the Peanut Sauce, but I'd say the chicken was the best with the sauce. 

 5 seconds later... It was real yummy. 

I'm kinda likin' this cooking thing. Stay tuned for next week's veggie adventure!  

Grilled Chicken and Berry Salad

So I decided to start the summer off right with a grilled chicken and berry salad.

I used a recipe from this awesome cookbook I got as a party favor from a fancy dinner in Washington D.C. It's the "Savoring the Seasons with Our Best Bites" cookbook. All the recipes are sorted by seasons, it's cute. 

This recipe is incredibly similar to the Summer Chicken Salad from Zupas and it was DELICIOUS!

So I made the dressing. I've like never made homemade dressing before so I was shocked when it turned out so good! I had to improvise and use garlic and onion powder instead of real garlic and onion, but it still turned out great .

 All the stuff in the salad dressing.

Now for the green stuff.... 

Combo of romaine lettuce and spinach

 Added some grilled chicken. Thank you George Foreman. 

 What the salad is supposed to look like:

What the salad actually looked like:

Not bad huh?

Like 30 seconds later...

 Like another 30 seconds after that. 

Well, I'm calling this a success! It really was crazy delicious. I liked that it was sweet, but not too sweet. Definitely gonna have to remember this one!

Round 2

Ok, so I created this blog a year ago and as you can see from my lack of posts... I kind of gave up.

Vegetables: 1
Sarah: 0

But NOT THIS TIME!

It's time for Round 2 of my epic battle with vegetables. I'm altering the rules of my adventure a little bit so that I actually stick with it this time. Baby steps right?

Anyway, so instead of trying a new veggie a week, let's go for just eating vegetables. Period. Sounds pretty lame for an adult to have to start there, but hey, it's better than nothing. 

Ok, here we go!