Grilled Twice Cooked Potatoes

Yesterday we grilled out for one of the first times of the season.  It was heavenly.  It might of only been burgers and SA might have cooked them a little past my desired pinkness but it was wonderful! I wanted a different than normal side and for some reason couldn't get twice baked potatoes out of my head.  I decided to go ahead and make them, but for an added bonus round I finished them off on the grill. Oh good night and good morning.  These bad boys were amazing.  SA took them with him to work today and in his normal strange way said they were even good cold!

twice cooked potatoes (oven+grill)
4 large russet potatoes scrubbed and poked with a fork
1 tbsp butter
2 pieces of bacon cut in 1/4 inch strips and fried till crispy
1/4 cup Colby-jack cheese
Greek yogurt(or sour cream)
salt and pepper
paprika

Bake potatoes in oven at 400 until soft and allow to cool slightly. Cut in half and hollow out each side, leaving a bit of potato to hold up the skins(at this stage I also cut off a bit of each end of the potato so the halves would stand by themselves.. In a small bowl combine the potato that you hollow out, butter, salt and pepper and mash with a fork, until butter is melted and smooth.  Stuff butter and potato mixture back into potato halves and sprinkle the top with cheese. Place gently on a medium high grill and cook until the outside is charred to your liking and the cheese is melted.  Top with a dollop of Greek yogurt or sour cream, bacon bits and a sprinkling of paprika.  Chives would of also been wonderful on these but I didn't think to go raid my plant!

Any Perfect Sunday

Today was an amazing day! The sun was shining and it was actually over 80 degrees, which seems to be a rare and splendid surprise for this neck of the woods! The sexy artist(SA)(aka my husband!) and I had a driving adventure and even checked out one of the "health food" stores in the neighborhood. I would strongly recommend Sundance foods to anyone in the greater Eugene area! We bought a new product we are excited to try out, and I will blog about it when I do!!! We also picked up some garlic scape's, a BEAUTIFUL eggplant and a new beeswax candle, which I am pretty much convinced smells like heaven. We took a great detour and let Curry (the eighty pound golden retriever) play in the McKenzie river, and once we got home were both kind of tired and hot, yet dinner HAD to be made!!!
*Fair warning* This will probably be the LAMEST blog post EVER because I took no pictures, but cut me some slack... I hadn't even decided to make a cooking blog at that point!
So I had some organic ground beef that I had been wanting to use and quickly decided to make hamburgers. And what is better than STUFFED BURGERS!!!!

Stuffed Burgers (this makes two good size patties!)
1/2 pound of quality ground beef
2 slices of bacon chopped and fried until very crispy
2 TBSP onion finely chopped
1 garlic clove, smashed and finely chopped
cheese finely grated (We used tilamook GARLIC CHEDDAR because it is the bomb, and one can never have enough garlic in their life!)
1 Tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp of grill seasoning (we used the grill mates garlic burger seasoning) (are we sending a garlic trend here?)

1. Mix together the Worcestershire sauce, grill seasoning and meat.

2. In a bowl mix the other ingredients (onion, bacon, garlic and cheese)

3. Divide your meat into four same size patties and flatten.Once you have the stuffing ready, place it in the center of one patty. Spread it out, leaving plenty of room all around the edges. Place the second patty on top and press the edges together. Make sure that you have a good solid patty that isn't too thick, or it will never cook on the grill!

4. Grill it up!!! Be sure to be careful, or you will end up like me with a blob of cheese that needs to be cleaned off her grill!

We decided that these burgers didn't really need buns, but just some sauce on the side. I used mayo because I love it so and SA covered his in some of the Jack Daniels BBQ Sauce.

Since both of us were being lazy and didn't want to heat the kitchen up as much as possible we decided to try a new recipe I saw on one of the other blogs I follow, Angel in the Kitchen.
It was delicious and I would HIGHLY recommend it. But be careful and make sure you soak your corn a full twenty minutes, or you WILL catch it on fire :)
Also we added crushed peppercorns and left of the Parmesan since our burgers were so cheese heavy ;) Moderation, RIGHT?!

Grilled Corn with Garlic Butter and Parmesan(modified from angelinthekitchen.blogspot.com)
Makes 8 servings

8 ears sweet corn, husks on
1/3 c. butter
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. cracked peppercorn

1. Soak corn in cold water for 20 minutes. This is a crucial step toward not turning your corn into a burnt pile.

2. In a small saucepan, combine butter, garlic, and salt. Cook and stir over medium heat until butter is melted. Set aside 2 Tbsp.

3. Peel back corn husks to within 1" of the bottom. Remove the silk.

4. Brush with the garlic butter.

5. Re wrap the corn in the husks, and secure the husks with kitchen twine.(we didn't do this part but it probably would of made it easier)

6.Grill corn, covered, over medium heat for about 25 minutes, turning occasionally.

7. Cut the strings and peel back or remove the husks. Drizzle with the reserved butter, and sprinkle with Parmesan.

So how is that for a first post?! Since I didn't take any pics of the actual food we ate tonight, I will try and leave a pic...



These are some of the "perfect peas" SA harvested from the garden tonight... tomorrow they will become a masterpiece :)