Over the years, @mrsbozz has gotten into the habit of preparing meals on the weekend to make things easier for us through the week. For example, she will put together several casseroles on Saturday or Sunday so that when we get home on Tuesday, we can just pop it in the oven to heat up. Since everything it already cooked, it's more about heating things up.
It just gives us a little more free time in the evening before we have to go to bed and wake up to do this life thing all over again the next day.
This past weekend she was making her list of meals for the week when she looked at me and asked a question she frequently asks: "it it going to be nice enough to grill this weekend?". That's a pretty relative question because I grill through all four seasons here in Michigan, but with hardly any wind and no impending snow, it was a better weekend than most to fire up the grill.
My brother in law holds the belief that if you are going to fire up the grill, you have to be cooking more than one thing. He would never heat up coals just for a couple of bratwurst. Personally, I don't hold to that belief, but I will admit, there is a lot of open space on a grill, so if you are going to get it going, you may as well maximize the potential.
It was still a little snowy on the deck Saturday evening when I fired up the grill. I waited until the deck lights came on to take a photo. You can just see them in the background and the snow still on the deck stairs.
I don't know why, but there is something about an air chilled dark beer that just hits a little differently. I've got a six pack of Yuengling Black and Tan sitting in my garage. With temps falling into the teens overnight and not getting above freezing during the day, it leaves the beer the perfect temperature for cracking open while I am manning the grill.
If you ever get the chance to try the oldest brewery in America's black and tan offering, I highly recommend it. It's so delicious!
As I said before though, this was part of our meal prep for the week. The bratwurst on the bottom were for dinner on Saturday night as well as some of the veggies in the basket. The two bratwurst that look the same were jalapeno cheddar for me, the one at the bottom was sriracha bbq chicken for my wife.
Believe it or not, she can actually handle hotter food than me most of the time.
After about ten minutes, I gave everything a little flippy flip or shakey shake. The chicken was for fajitas that we have yet to have this week. Meanwhile, I think @mrsbozz kept some of it aside to put in her lunches through the week as well. The chicken breasts in the US are insanely huge (due to all the chemicals, hormones, and genetic altering I am sure), so just two of them goes a long way when it comes to meals.
Those are actually two half chicken breasts. You can't see it in the photo, but I cut them along the bias and pounded them thin. The rest of the meat I processed into chunk chicken for casseroles or shredded chicken for other uses.
In the foil packet we have onions and cut up potatoes that we used for our meal on Monday night. It consisted of a meat free lentil and tomato ragu blend that we spooned over the potatoes and ate in a bowl. It's actually quite delicious despite there being no meat.
I will confess, while I ate the lentil dish without meat on Monday night, on Tuesday when I took the rest to work for lunch, I added my leftover bratwurst to the dish and it definitely elevated it to the next level. Don't tell my wife though!
If it looks like the veggies are a little over-seasoned, yes, they are. The bottle that we were using didn't have a screen like we thought it did, so when we tipped it up, pretty much everything game out. The veggies always turn out really nice on the grill. They get a smokey flavor that makes them really appealing. I try to keep them off the direct heat so they don't char too much.
Looking back, we decided we should have steamed the brussels sprouts a bit more. They weren't bad, but they ended up being a little less done than the rest of the veggies.
I'm the sort of person who tends to over cook my chicken. I don't necessarily mind if it gets a little dried out. I would rather eat dry chicken than have to deal with salmonella poisoning. Plus, if you marinade the chicken before you grill it, it really doesn't dry out that much anyway.
Here's a better view of the lights on the deck in the background as I was getting ready to pull everything off the grill. You can tell the sun was a bit lower in the sky by then, so the lights were showing up more.
We bought these quarter sheet trays from Gordon's Food Service when we first got married and they work really well for carrying stuff to and from the grill like this. We actually use them more for carrying stuff around than we actually use them for baking I think.
As usual, I snuffed out the coals so they would be ready for my next cook.
I sliced up the chicken and we put it in a container to use later in the week. I also sliced up the bratwurst so it would be easier to eat since we weren't putting them on buns. Check out that smoke ring on the jalapeno cheddar brats!
We also put the potatoes in a bowl so they would be ready for the lentil meal later in the week.
Finally, I made my plate. A little yellow mustard for the bratwurst and some shredded parm cheese for the veggies. The mac and cheese was from a box, but it was delicious anyway!
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