I love our balcony. When we were first married and looking around to upgrade from our one bedroom apartment (which was tremendous and perfect for our first years living together, but suddenly became tiny and cramped once we started getting wedding presents...I know, I know -- tough life, but YOU start living with "ok, so the china goes under the bed...hmm...toaster oven can sit in the hallway...who the heck bought us a countertop rotisserie?!?" and see how you like it!) a balcony was one of our top must-haves.
We've slowly been building it out. In JANUARY (yes, JANUARY) of last year, we bought a grill. FYI, the winter is a great time to buy a grill. SUPER cheap. I put the base of it together out there in 35-degree weather so that we could make burgers for our friends that first weekend. A few months later, the second time we had people over to grill out, PhillyGuy picked up this table and chair set.
I love the grape mosaic on it - it makes me think of red wine, which is up there with "red meat" as one of my favorite things in the whole world.
A couple months ago, I added flowers to the scene.
I have absolutely no idea what kind of flowers these are. I went to Home Depot, looked for something that did well in lots of sunlight, and then picked the ones with the prettiest colors.
It's an exact science.
Grilling out is definitely one of my favorite things about summertime. PhillyGuy handles the meat (TWSS):
We do pork chops pretty regularly, seasoned with dill and salt and pepper. This time, we had both pork and steak, probably because whoever was taking the meat out of the freezer didn't realize that the bags were different.
While he's grilling and doing manly things on the balcony, I roast some veggies. It's always a variation on a theme: the "main" veggie (recently I've been into asparagus or green beans), chopped mushrooms, and Vidalia onion.
Everything gets tossed in a mixture of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, parmesean cheese and some combination of savory seasonings, like rosemary and thyme.
We grill all year round - with the grill just outside the door, it's not so bad to hop out there for a minute to turn the meat and jump back in. There's just something so very SUMMERTIME about grilling, though. I'm definitely not finished with our balcony yet - I still feel like I'm not using the space as well as I could be - but it's great to sit out there on our little bistro set and enjoy the warm weather with a freshly grilled pork chop and roasted veggies.
Favorite summer meal?
Love that table & chair set!
ReplyDeleteThe apartment that my ex and I lived in right after we got married was two bedrooms but it was in this old house so it was awkward and small....with NO storage space. A couple of years later when we finally had a house we discovered all the fun things we had gotten as gifts that had never left their boxes, it was great!