Chili-Rubbed Baby Back Ribs with Espresso Barbecue Sauce

Sous Chef got a new grill for his birthday, since our old one was slightly rusted out and the whole inside of it caught on fire last time we used it. The popular choice for the inaugural dinner was ribs. We had our neighbors over and dined al fresco. It was a fun night with good food and friends.

This is my go-to ribs recipe. I always follow the cooking instructions, but sometimes change the spices in the rub and use plain barbecue sauce. On this particular night, I followed the recipe as written. The rub provides a nice level of heat and the espresso in the sauce has a nice flavor. We had baked sweet potatoes and cole slaw with dried cranberries on the side.

Sous Chef gives the grill two thumbs up, he's excited about the increased cooking space and the more precise heat control. I'm excited that he's done with school and he'll be home more often to cook with it!

Grilled Rib Eyes with a Vegetable Medley

Well, it's Wednesday and I'm finally getting around to posting Sunday's dinner. It's been a busy week so far. We celebrated Alex's birthday on Monday and yesterday I worked for hours in the yard. The weekend was busy also, baseball season has started. Alex's team had games on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday's game was late in the afternoon. When the game was over, we had to come up with something quick for dinner that we could pick up at the grocery store on the way home.

We decided to fire up the grill and cook some steaks. I love rib eyes marinated in McCormick's Montreal Steak Marinade. It's easy to mix up and the meat only has to marinate for 15 minutes. In the mean time we chopped up some carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, and asparagus and tossed them in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Everything cooked on the grill at the same time. Sous Chef finally got to use this handy grilling basket that he got for Christmas to cook the veggies.

The boy's loved the steak. Alex had seconds! Dylan complained about the vegetables, but what else is new?

Grilled Rosemary Garlic Shrimp

Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day here in Charlotte. After an early morning baseball scrimmage, we spent most of the day, hard at work, in the back yard. My husband revved up the chain saw to clean up in preparation for a new fence. I continued to attack the weeds that had taken over my flower beds and grown in the cracks of my patio. My intention was to have this grilled shrimp Saturday night, but by the time I made it inside to double check the recipe it was close to 4:00pm. The shrimp is supposed to marinate for at least 4 hours and I hadn't even been to the grocery store yet. I decided, instead, to whip up some Nachos that we could eat while watching basketball and postponed the shrimp plans until Sunday.

Sunday was not as nice as Saturday. The rain started mid morning, I had the pleasure of sitting through a Tee Ball practice in it. The shrimp was marinating. Rain or shine, Sous Chef was going to have to go out and grill it!

It kept on raining, but we managed a delicious dinner anyway. I served the shrimp with a wild rice blend and asparagus. The kids liked this. Only rice was left on their plates. My youngest especially enjoyed squeezing lemon juice all over his plate.