I really shouldn’t use that little avatar to the left, I should really show one that looks more like this:
Ugh.
I had planned to cook a great dinner for my sister – Erin’s Summertime Kabobs. I had everything all set…
I was going to type up a Bella Cooks post, which is why I was taking pictures of the ingredients.
Doesn’t that look good? All the makings of a delicious dinner. I put it on the grill at a medium flame, and then went inside to cook the couscous while my sister cleaned the string beans.
I should have known things were going downhill when she told me the string beans were really tough. Luckily, I had zucchini in the fridge, so I popped those in the microwave in a Zip n’ Steam bag.
I was cleaning up a bit, and then I went outside to check on the kabobs. When I opened the grill, I was greeted with this sight:
A little charcoal for dinner? Yuck!!
I was able to salvage most of the chicken sausages, which I will have later in the week with the rest of the veggies that were left over. And when I cook those, believe me, I’ll watch the grill carefully.
But what about my sister? She has a broken foot, is feeling sick, and was expecting dinner at my house. This is when I’m glad I shop ahead and have alternatives.
I pulled out some pork chops, put them in a Ziplock with some Chaka’s MMM Sauce to quickly marinate, and popped them on the grill. Luckily, the couscous and zucchini were still good. In fact, they were delicious.
If you didn’t know any better, this meal looks like it was planned, right? It’s actually a bit more complicated than the original meal.
The meal was very good, and my sister liked it. I’m so grateful that she’s flexible and likes as many foods as I do. I’m also really glad that this didn’t happen when I was having other people over. If I had just one more person, I wouldn’t have had enough for the three of us to eat the same thing. Can you imagine how embarrassing that would have been?
The lesson here?
- Watch the grill, especially when the food has olive oil on it.
- Be prepared. It was great that I had other food in the fridge.
- Be flexible. I kept my calm and quickly prepared the second dinner.
Oh no. I did something similar a few weeks ago with a baked potato on the BBQ. It was so disappointing as I was looking forward to it and didn’t have an alternative on hand.
haha I love the running from the flames pic!!
I’m glad this happens to other people, too. I hate it when dinners get botched, but it looks like you had the perfect back up! <3
Too funny, I had a major quesadilla burn in the kitchen on Sunday, probably first seriously burned food I’ve made in well over a year. Maybe we both had the jinx! When we have people over for dinner there have been multiple times I’ve been very nervous about how things would work out, but we’ve always said that our back-up plan is to call for pizza and assume our friends would understand. It’s never come to that, but if the quesadillas had been intended for anyone other than myself, it would have happened yesterday!
Ooh, and what happened to your sister’s foot? That’s got to be a major bummer and inconvenience for her.
Can you believe that she broke her foot in yoga class?!
I guess there was a very handsome instructor, so my sis was trying to go a bit farther in some of the poses and tweaked her foot. She walked on it for months, even though it hurt, and what was probably some sort of sprain or slight fracture turned into a break when she finally did go to the podiatrist.