Fit Miss TV

We had our first real grill out of the season this week, and we made Mesquite chicken for the first time ever, and it came in the form of kabobs. I wasn't sure how it would turn out because I have never had a mesquite kabob, but it was happily an experiment that turned out well! :) I wish I would have thought to grab the recorder before we started because when we were grilling the colors of the meat and vegetables were just sooooooo pretty!!! But I know that you are smart and can figure out how to poke veggies and meat with a stick, so video not necessary, so it was definitely fine not to have one. As Simon Cowell would say: to have recorded just that would have been "self-indulgent". ;)

Ingredients:

• 1.5 pounds of free range chicken breast cut into about 1" pieces
• 1 each of red, orange and yellow peppers, rinsed and cut into 1" pieces
• 2 portabella mushroom caps, sliced about 1/4"
• 1 vidalia onion (my favorite, you choose yours), cut into 1/8ths
• 2 rinsed zucchini, thinly sliced
• salt
• pepper
• olive oil
• Mesquite seasoning (we got ours from Costco)

1. First, cut up the chicken at least an hour before you even fire up the grill. I place mine in a decent sized glass container, drizzle with olive oil and then place the lid on and shake it up so that the chicken is coated with the OO. Then we eyeball (I am so bad at measuring) the mesquite seasoning (a palmful?) into the chicken and shake it up, making sure that the chicken is coated with the seasoning. Oooooh, it smells good!

2. When Dan fires up the grill, I start slicing the veggies. I start with the peppers and do onions last because my kids don't like onions touching anything that they eat. ;) I set aside all of the zucchini, the small pieces of onion and half of the peppers and mushrooms to be grilled separately. Now, the peppers are nice and curvaceous so I keep all of the flat ones in the kabob pile.

3. I grab a 2 big sheets of foil and drizzle olive oil on them. On one I place the zucchini and mushrooms - one of my favorite combos - and the other the peppers and onions - another one of my favorite combos. I grind salt and pepper over them and then they are ready for the grill. I think that they taste so wonderful as they are that there really isn't need to add much, but sometimes I will add some oregano or thyme - that didn't sound good with Mesquite, so I skipped it.

4. For the kabobs, add the veggies and meat as you like. I typically have peppers bookending the skewers because they don't tend to dry out like the onions do and the mushrooms just get mushy, plus I like for the meat to be packed next to the onions for the flavor. I like to put at least 3 pieces of veggies between each piece of chicken because I am a veggie freak. We only have 2 super long metal skewers, so there is usually meat left over to be grilled all by their lonesome.

5. Now, this next part is something that I have observed and never performed because this is the part where my husband the Grill Master takes over. He covers the grill with foil and pokes holes in it. He sprays it with olive oil in a can. He sets everything on the grill, unskewered chicken included (this makes for great next day salads!) and periodically turns the meat and stirs the veggies in their foil. I wish I could be more specific than that, but I really don't know :p All I do is cut the center of the meat to see if it's still pink so we know whether to cook it longer. I don't know how many coals or what, the husband and I are big on winging stuff, but I know there are better more experienced grillers and cooks reading this that can chime in and add their wisdom. ;)

He likes to top this off with an unfiltered wheat beer, and I with my books. :)