Summer BBQ

Nothing says summer more than catching a nose full of your neighbors cooking burgers on the grill.  The power of someone else's dinner can completely change your own plans.  Often this summer when I smelled a sizzling steak, Johnsonville brats, or BBQ chicken, I entered a dreamy trance of desire.  Hopefully my efforts tonight caused my neighbors to wish they had the secret handshake that would allow them into my BBQ world.

The day started when my sister Mary and I decided to go to the local farmer's market.  There we bought colorful, tempting, and organic produce grown right here in Western Michigan.  As we walked towards my van, we marveled at the number of bags and volume of vegetables and fruit that we bought for only twenty dollars.  We both have lived in Grand Rapids for over twenty-five years, yet neither of us had ever shopped at the farmer's market.  How could this wonderful place of inexpensive vitamin enriched foods be passed up for so many years?  We determined that we would make the corner of Fuller and Fulton a seasonal habit.

After unloading all the bags of food from my van I walked over to my son Ted's house to grab the grill he had “borrowed” a month earlier. Walking home pushing the grill, my mind turned to my refrigerator and all the possibilities for our dinner.  Today we bought some beautiful sweet red peppers, I used ricotta cheese, salt, pepper marjoram , shallot, and garlic filling.  I sliced each pepper in half, filling them and place them on the grill until the some of the bottom was caramelized from the flames, about thirty minutes.  Next, I thinly sliced zucchini, dipped them in olive oil, added Italian seasoning and placed them to grill for about twenty minutes.  Lastly, I put five homemade brats from a local butcher on the grill with the peppers.  The idea was to let the seasoned juices add to the flavor of my peppers.  At dinner time the idea about the farmers market was confirmed.  Where veggies are concerned, there really is nothing better.