August 1, 2020

WEEKLY MENU 08.02.20

Our Weekly Menu 08.02.20 starts August with a bang! We’re taste testing, grilling, satisfying cravings and celebrating Bert’s birthday.

Do you have a Hot Air Balloon Festival near you? Check out Hot Air Balloon for a full list. (Hard to believe that’s a thing, huh?) It’s a perfect excuse for a road trip – something fun and easy to look forward to while getting you out into the fresh air. I’ve never had a ride in a balloon, but I’ve always been fascinated by them. I adore watching them from the ground!

The hot air balloon is the first successful human- carrying flight technology. The first untethered manned hot air balloon flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes on November 21, 1783, in Paris, France,^[1]
The first hot-air balloon flown in the Americas was launched from the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia on January 9, 1793 by the French aeronaut Jean Pierre Blanchard.^[3]
Wikipedia

Nifty and pretty!

We’re starting the week out with a Sausage Off! What does that mean? We’re taste testing a couple different sausages, basically. We all love sausage, although Baby Boy is the designated “Sausage Machine”. A friend of ours brought us some “must try” sausage with explicit cooking directions. We did a little taste the other night, and it was fabulous. We’re taste testing to see if the difference is in the cooking. I almost always par-cook sausage by boiling it before we grill or bake.

We were instructed to toss this sausage directly on the grill.

Holy cow! We loved the texture and the flavor. Have I been doing it wrong all these years? Obviously, the only way to find out is a taste test. We’ll let you know how it goes.

It’s Bert’s birthday on Monday. You can see below that I’ve scheduled Grilled Salmon on the Weekly Menu 08.02.20. It is unlikely that we’ll eat that at home, but it’s very likely that Bert will order it out for dinner. I like that birthdays around here include a night off for the cook.

Happy Birthday Bert!

On Wednesday we’re having a BIG SALAD, which is always a favorite. The antipasto salad is basically a chef’s salad with better deli meat. We’ll add salami, capicola and pepperoni and round it out with vinegary pickled artichoke hearts. We’ll skip the olives because I’m the only one that likes them. We’re going to serve Creamy Parmesan Dressing with it – which has fast become a family obsession. There’s something about homemade dressing that takes a salad to the next level. We’ll keep the kitchen cool and eat like kings at the same time.

The boys made me a fire pit for Mother’s day (check out pictures HERE) and we’ve been talking about cooking on it ever since. We’ve got the worlds best hot dog maker here in Erieland, so everyone will cook their own over the fire. Obviously, we’ll have some s’mores too.