They have a saying in Michigan, if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes. Honestly, I am guessing that saying isn't isolated just to Michigan. There are likely a vast number of places that have weather and temperature swings like we do and they also probably have some variation of the same saying. In fact, I think I have heard some folks here on HIVE from Scotland say something similar in the past. I feel your pain and
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Needless to say, that saying above hit a little closer to home this past weekend. We started out with a beautiful evening like you see above. The sunsets have been pretty spectacular lately. I just wish I had a bit clearer view to the West. I also wish my phone picked up the colors of the sunset better than it does.
Friday was a busy night for and I. In addition to preparing the baby back ribs that I wrote about here, we also made a batch of Chex Mix. Also known as cereal mix, our variation consists of Rice Chex, Corn Chex, honey roasted sesame squares, cashews, honey roasted peanuts, BBQ Fritos Twists, and Original Bugles.
Mix in some butter, Worcestershire sauce and some other spices and you are good to go. We've actually outgrown our pans that we use and it ends up being a hot mess to mix it every 15 minutes like you are supposed to. We need to figure something else out.
Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day if not a little windy. In fact, here you can see my pasty white legs as I was waiting for the grill to come up to smoking temperature. Yes, it was in the mid 70's, so I was wearing shorts.
Meanwhile, as I was sitting outside, I saw my first robin of the year. The robin is the state bird of Michigan and they tend to make a big deal about seeing your first one here as that indicates Spring is right around the corner. I figured I should get a shot of it for who as been posting photos of the birds over in Estonia. The quality and zoom isn't nearly as good as his, but you can't say I didn't try!
As I was waiting for the ribs to smoke on the grill, I busted out the Blackstone griddle because we needed some stuff cooked up for meals through the week. I started off by frying up some bacon.
Then I cleaned off the cook top and threw on some onions and zucchini that my wife had cut up ahead of time.
As that was heating up on one side of the griddle, I threw some chicken chunks on the other side to get cooked off.
Next came the potatoes that had par-boiled ahead of time. I mixed those in with the other veggies. You can cook them straight on the griddle, but it is a fine line between burning them on the outside and leaving them soft on the inside. A metal bowl you can use to create steam with some water helps, but par-boiling them works really well too.
Finally, I mixed everything together once the chicken was cooked through and added some Franks Red Hot sauce to it. We serve it as is with cheese on top. It turns out pretty fantastic.
It looks like my griddle was still a little dirty. Oh well, it just adds flavor right? This is a super easy dish that might want to check out now that he has his own Blackstone Griddle.
As I finished waiting for the stuff to finish up on the grill, you could already tell the weather was starting to turn. I cracked open a can of Oktoberfest I had left over from the fall and enjoyed the weather while I could.
We woke up on Sunday to find snow on the ground. See what I meant about the weather changing quickly?
The cold didn't bug me for too long though because when I came home from church and visiting my parents, I found that had baked us a heaping pile of peanut butter chocolate chip cookies!
True to form, by Sunday night, the snow was all gone and we were treated to another one of those amazing sunsets. Temperatures are now back in the mid sixties and thoughts are continuing to turn to Spring. Before I know it I am going to have to pick up our travel trailer from storage at my parents and start to get it ready for our first camping trip in May.
It's been a long Winter, but I think Spring is finally almost here!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or unless otherwise sourced