More Grilling

and a confession.

First the grilling. One of my favorite summertime meals - spiedies.

While PhillyGuy manned the grill, I chopped up a bunch of brussels sprouts and half a sweet onion, tossed with olive oil, kosher salt and pepper.

While those roasted up, I made myself a fairly simple salad.



Romaine, red pepper, cucumber, and some olives mixed with chunks of feta and an olive oil/vinegar mixture that I picked up at the grocery store. Since I didn't bring my favorite vinegar to make a salad dressing, I relied on the oil from the olive mix to flavor the salad - which it did just fine.

I topped my salad with a bunch of spiedies.



For those unfamiliar, these are an upstate New York (well, Binghamton area - which is really not at all "upstate") tradition. It's just marinated chunks of chicken breast, but I can't quite replicate the marinade at home, so we stock up like crazy whenever we visit PhillyGuy's parents.

And now the confession.

This entire vacation, I've been scared to run.

This is kind of embarrassing. I brought plenty of workout clothes. Duck has a great path running along the main drag which is perfectly shady in the mornings. I have my shoes. I have my industrial-strength sports bras. My knee hasn't been bothering me at all, and I've been routinely running a couple times a week - not much, maybe 3-4 miles of intervals or repeats at a pop, but still.

Every day on vacation, I've told myself that I am going to start the day with a run. A short one or a long one, it didn't matter - I intentionally left my Garmin at home, figuring it would be a nice break to just put on my shoes and GO without worrying about time or distance.

And every day, I get nervous and make an excuse as to why it's not a good day for a run. Why am I nervous? I honestly don't know. I usually don't feel like going right away when I wake up, and then later in the day, when I DO feel like going, I talk myself out of it, rationalizing that it's gotten sunny and hot(ter), or that my husband wants to hang out. As if I couldn't even do 30 minutes or so, or as if 75 degrees is unbearably hot for a run.

I don't get this at all. I'm trying not to put too much pressure on myself, and hoping that I just snap out of it in a couple of hours or days or whatever. But I don't like this feeling, at ALL.

Whew. Got that out. Now to enjoy our last day of vacation.

Duck Continues

Vacation is great.

I get to drink plenty of vino - a random $10 bottle recommended by the kid at the little wine shop down the street.

And - since wine isn't particularly good at quenching thirst - plenty of Pepsi Max on the side.

Bringing your own food means that you pare down to the very basics.

Beautiful weather means your husband grills (and reads a giant textbook while he's at it).

It means multiple levels of deck to sit out on - each one with its own type of furniture.

Steak and roasted green beans, mushrooms and onions?

Okay, fine.

Not a bad first night.

Dusting it Off

...the Keurig, that is.



It's been a hot, HOT summer. Lots and lots of iced coffee. For the past three months or so, the LAST thing I wanted was hot coffee.

But now the humidity's dropping, the temperature's falling (at least in the mornings), and, of course, advertising is in full swing, making my yearn for all things fall. Including my secret weapon:



couple of shakes of pumpkin pie spice in the bottom of my cup, and I have an instant ticket to fall. The only problem is that the spice doesn't dissolve - which means a wet, soggy pile at the bottom of my cup. That has a tendency to slide down and kind of plop on my lips when I, um, hold the cup vertical to drain as much as possible out of it when it's empty. (Classy.)

If I made coffee by the pot, I'd put the spice directly into the grounds, but alas, I am the only coffee drinker in the house, and I don't want to waste so much (delicious) coffee. So, Keurig pods it is.

Another decidedly UN-fall, but delicious breakfast:



Fage 0, banana, peach, granola. I haven't had granola in about six months - it was one of my staples that got tossed when PhillyGuy and I started following the P90X nutrition plan back in March. When you're limiting yourself to a serving or so of carbs a day, you don't want to blow it on 1/3 of a cup of granola, you know? At least, I didn't.

But who am I kidding? I started replacing that daily sweet potato with a daily bagel anyway. Pretty sure this is better.

PhillyGuy and I ended our long weekend with a great dinner on Monday night. We headed out to Whole Foods to pick up some fresh fish to grill.



Big ol' halibut filet. Look at that pretty skin!

PhillyGuy grilled it simply, with salt, pepper, lime juice and paprika. I did my usual roasted veggies with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Locatelli and rosemary.





While everything was cooking, I may or may not have had a little appetizer of Stacy's pita chips with Bobbi's honey chipotle white bean hummus. (In case you were wondering, SO FREAKING GOOD.)





All finished:





I love grilling.

View from the Top

One of my favorite things about summer is grilling out with PhillyGuy.

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?