Early summertime dinner - kebabs

We've been on a grilling kick for dinner here lately.  It's hard to want to heat up my kitchen when it's 80 degrees and sunny out at 6 pm.

The worst part about grilling right now is that there are birds attempting to build their nest in our grill.  We've been keeping the cover on, but every time we open it up there is a ton of straw from the field inside.  Sneaky dirty birds.  If anyone has any suggestions on how to stop this please let me know.  Unlike my very strong distaste for squirrels, I do not want to have to gas the birds out.  The grill just seems like a safe spot for a nest.  I can't blame them for that.

Last night's non-St Patty's day dinner was possibly one of my favorite dinner's I've made in a long time.  Joshua and I both agreed that it was significantly better than our dinner out the night before.  It tasted like summer, and happiness (if happiness had a taste besides chocolate).  We picked up some "happy chicken" and "happy steak" from the grocery store and made kebabs.  I hate putting labels on what I eat, but I have a mostly vegetarian diet.  I do this more for ethical reasons, and I don't exactly love how I feel after I eat meat most times.  I found some top sirloin yesterday though that was local and organically raised, and didn't cost a million dollars.  I was sold, and I had one happy boy on my hands.  I don't plan on buying this regularly, but it was a nice treat last night.

For the kebabs, I cubed the steak and chicken.  Then I made this marinade for the steak, which claims to be the "best steak marinade in existence".  I'm not sure it was that good, but it was pretty darn good.  For the chicken I used my favorite Trader Joe's Soyaki .  I let those hang out for about an hour while I chopped vegetables.

 I used my favorite little mini peppers, a red onion, some mini Idaho potatoes, button mushrooms, and a few cherry tomatoes.

I quartered/halved the potatoes and microwaved them for 5 minutes to precook them, since they usually take the longest out of anything in the kebabs.







Then I made the following quick vegetable marinade
-1/3 c canola oil
-1/3 c lemon juice
-1 t minced garlic
-1/2 t sea salt
-1/4 t cracked black pepper

I poured this over the chopped veggies and let them sit for another 15 minutes.

To assemble the kebabs I just skewered everything, putting 2-3 pieces of chicken and steak on each and the rest was veggies.  I like to make sure that I use something solid like potatoes on the ends of the skewers so everything doesn't fall off.

those look pretty!

Then we sprayed the grill with a little olive oil cooking spray so things wouldn't stick and cooked them on med-high for 10-15 minutes, or until the meat was cooked through.   I'm pretty sure we flipped them every 5 minutes so things would cook evenly (very technical I know).

grill master

When everything is cooked just remove them from the grill and serve.  These would be awesome with a side of brown rice or quinoa.  We just ate them by themselves.  Bonus - There are a ton of ingredients left that we plan to use tonight for dinner again.  They'll probably be even better since things have had a chance to marinade for 24 hours.  I.can't.wait.

Question of the day - 

How did you enjoy the unseasonably warm weather this week?