Memorial Day Cookout - Meats on Sticks

Memorial Day is a time to pay honor to those that have served before us and for those that currently do everything that they can to protect and serve our great country. However, the holiday does mean one more thing and this is cookouts. It is the "official" start to the summer cookout season. All across the country grills were fired up and meats were smoked or grilled to perfection. My house was no different on this Memorial Day.

This year I decided to go the meats on sticks route and went with beef and chicken kabobs. A good kabob is a thing of beauty and will leave you plenty satisfied. Some like to put their meat and veggies on the same skewers, but I choose to have the meat on their own and the vegetables on another. Only reason for this is because of the cooking times. Everything was marinated in the same Gourmet Warehouse of Hilton Head's Low Country Marinade. This stuff goes great with anything and played perfect with this selection of meats and vegetables.

As for the rest of the meal, I decided to make a pasta salad and then bought some potato salad from Publix. Just wasn't in the mood to make the potato salad this morning and the red skin homestyle one at Publix is pretty darn good. The pasta salad was just pasta, peas, onions, garlic, cherry tomatoes, feta, and Newman's Own Light Lime Dressing. Just a little of this goes a long way and this salad was perfectly dressed. A few hours chilling in the fridge gave the pasta salad time to get to the right serving temp and for the flavors in the dressing to work their way into every bite of the salad.

Nothing tops off a cookout quite like fresh ice cold watermelon, and this cookout was no different. Seedless might be on the label, but I don't think I have ever run across a watermelon that was 100% seedless. This was pretty close, but still no cigar.

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day holiday weekend.

Meatloaf Dinner at Sweet Potatoes in Savannah

Their meatloaf is one of their everyday menu items and it is covered in a Sweet Potato Glaze. The creamed sweet peas are amazing, but they aren't always on the menu. It is one of those things that you just have to catch them on the right day and you never know when that day is. The other side was just some green beans cooked in bacon. Sure, the meatloaf looks like a giant mess...it is a giant hot mess and soooooooo good.

Jerk Chicken Fingers & Caribbean Rice...

I marinated the chicken in a jerk dressing and then breaded in jerk seasoned bread crumbs. I then bake them off at 400 degrees until done, usually 15-20 min. I then made a jerk dipping sauce for them, along with the Caribbean rice and sweet peas. The kid doesn't eat the rice, so the peas were more for him than anyone.