Monday, May 11, 2009

The Day After Mother's Day

Chicken and Shrimp Kabobs

Yesterday was Mother's Day and I offered to host a dinner for the X, our kids, and the X's parents, who to me will always be Mom and Dad.

My goal was to make an excellent meal worthy of my culinary acumen, and stay within my budgeted calories for the day. Of course, I also wanted everyone to enjoy themselves!

I started preparing Saturday night cutting skinless chicken breast and marinating it overnight in a mildly spicy southwestern style marinate. I also processed jumbo shrimp in this manner.

I made a mixture of 92% ground beef and ground round, plus some spices and shaped 8 nice 5 ounce burgers and these too were refrigerated.

I then cut and sliced 2 quarts of Strawberries and put them in the fridge with a cup of Splenda. Smaller portions of Blueberries and Red Raspberries were bagged with Splenda as well.

Sunday morning after a 12 mile 70 minute workout on the exercise bike, I got cleaned up and began making Kabobs. I cut up onions and red pepper, and along with cherry tomatoes and small button mushrooms I built the Kabobs pictured above. It took about 90 minutes to make a total of 12.

I made a nice salad with cucumbers, lettuce, onions, and tomato, and I baked corn on the cob, which I prefer to boiling. I sliced onions and tomato for the burgers, and plastic wrapped these plates and left them in the fridge.

We all sat down and had an excellent meal of the Kabobs and about an hour later I made a round of Cheeseburgers, grilling onions on the grill at the request of the X and her folks.

For dessert I mixed the berries and served them with sugar free cool whip. For those not watching their weight there was also whipped cream and Ice cream.

Everyone enjoyed the food and had a great day. After every left except for Scott and Danielle, Danielle and I enjoyed an hour of Left 4 Dead on expert mode.....fun stuff!

On and off during the day, I kept thinking of my Mom, and how much I missed her. I tried to dwell on happy childhood memories of her which helped. Hard to believe she has been gone for 18 years!

The X sent me an e-mail this morning thanking me for such a nice Mother's Day, which really made my day.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I have only two things to say: yum yum!

Barry said...

Looks good! Will be capturing the recipe -- looks simple enough I can do it while wandering in the walker (one month since I fractured the femur!).

Blandishment Blog said...

David - They were excellent!

Blandishment Blog said...

Barry - The next time I make them I will be sure to write down the spices and such I used!

Barry said...

Ah! Chris' eleven secret herbs and spices! (grin)

(Did you know the right_angle bracket - g - right_angle bracket is among the not allowed HTML tags?)

Blandishment Blog said...

Barry - Not so much secret as just cooking on the fly and not taking measures of what I used.

And you'd be surprised what the comments engine won't take in HTML and what I have to do (manually edit the posts in HTML) just to get a picture to open full size in a new browser window!