Hello all you foodies,

Hope this column finds you healthy, happy and thinking “Let’s fire up our grill“!

Maybe it’s due to the fact that I am a native Southern Californian, but I love my grill.  My motto has always been:  If the great one up above had truly meant for me to use the broiler in my oven, he/she would have never had someone invent the grill.

Really-even if it happens to be raining-I have a 5‘wide umbrella-I hold it for my husband while he grills whatever it is that’s on our grill.

I am not one of those people who do the “very gourmet” thing either.  Nope, I buy the best quality of ingredients that I can afford for the occasion, add my appropriate marinade or dry rubs and let the product “speak” for itself.

An example:  Our son graduated from the University of California, Irvine a year ago.  We had a party for about 45 of his friends and our relatives.  We went to Costco-just for the start.  Cake by Costco, bought Fuddrucker buns, veggie trays and gourmet salsas, chips and lots of various non-alcoholic beverages and paper products.  We went to our local market for gourmet toppings for the various burgers we were about to grill up.

The burgers:  salmon, angus beef and turkey.  We also grilled purple onions, red peppers and some ortega chilis.
We had plenty of “usual” burger toppings.

On the flip side-we recently had the family over, which still meant a crowd of 12.  We dry rubbed some rib-eyes, grilled some asparagus with olive oil, garlic and rosemary and then we wrapped up mushrooms with onions and garlic for those who wished to top their steaks with it.  We also baked potatoes on the grill.  I served a dessert of everyone’s choice of 4 different types of sorbet.

As I said, nothing gourmet-but thanks to our grill, very delicious and easy for yours truly.

Wednesday-let’s talk about some of my marinades!