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Thrill of the grill lasts all week long

Hey readers. Lindsey is taking some much-deserved time off for the next couple of days and so I am minding the store today here at the Fridge Magnet. Hope you all had a great weekend full of delicious food.

I suspect almost everyone fired up the grill this weekend. Our deck is the home of two grills, one gas and one charcoal. The charcoal grill has become our default cook top on the weekends when we have the time to build the fire and soak some wood chips for that extra smokey flavor.

I just hate to waste anything, especially the great flavor that charcoal cooking adds to food. Since the coals burn bright and long, we try to make the most of the fire by throwing on all the food we can. Yesterday we grilled redskin potatoes, filet mignon and pineapple rings for dinner and dessert.

We also cooked chicken breasts (seasoned with curry powder and cumin) and pork loin chops (soaked in Mojo sauce) that we will use for dinner throughout the week.

The idea to grill potatoes came from a Food Network show with Bobby Flay. We used redskins this weekend, but this method works well with Yukon golds and fingerlings. By grilling the taters, we can get them very crispy with only adding a miniscule amount of fat.

I slice the potatoes into quarter-inch slices, then par boil them for a few minutes. Then I lay them out on a grill pan with holes that allows the flames to kiss the spuds. We got this one at Bed, Bath and Beyond but I think you can find them anywhere that sells grills and supplies.

I spray the pan with fat-free cooking oil, then I lightly spray the potatoes and add a little seasoned salt and pepper. The spuds get flipped after four or five minutes, the grilled side gets salted, and then they just finish cooking. If you don’t like using cooking spray, you can also just brush on a little olive oil. They are unbelievably crisp and delicious.

My husband and I really like grilled pineapple, too. We brush on a little maple syrup to help get a nice carmelization on the pineapple. This is great served with ice cream or just by itself. And we get more than one dessert out of this, too.

What did you toss on your grill this weekend?

So healthy it’s inedible

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Is it possible that potato chips could ever taste bad? One company has figured out a way.

Brothers-All-Natural sent me a box of samples yesterday, which I immediately dug into. The freeze-dried Fuji apple crisps were pretty tasty, with a crunchy, puffy texture and a sweet, natural apple flavor.

But when I broke into their “newest innovation,” the “first-ever freeze-dried potato chips,” you should’ve seen the look on my face. In order to verify my own opinion, I shared them with a few co-workers.

It turns out that what Brothers-All-Natural describes as a “fresh from the farmstand flavor,” my colleague Tad actually described as “what you would imagine potatoes would taste like after they have begun to rot in some dank place.”

Wow. What an endorsement.

I guess my thought is this: While I appreciate food manufacturers’ efforts to produce healthier versions of unhealthy favorites, I don’t think these foods need to veer so far into the “healthy” sphere that they no longer even taste good.

Eat an apple.

Winning skins!

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As opposed to losing Skins….that being the Redskins….oh, okay, never mind.
My sincere apologies to all the Redskins fans out there. And my sincere apology to mice everywhere — although this picture doesn’t match the recipe below, it amused me so much that I just had to use it.
What better way to drown the sorrow of your team’s failure (as a Denver fan, you can trust that I am familiar with that feeling) than with a plate of cheesy, fattening potato skins?
Potato skins are one of those appetizers I could probably make up as I go along. But since I’ve had some problems in the past with that game plan, why not actually follow a recipe this time?
Look for it after the jump. And tell me this: Do you ever make homemade potato skins? If so, what is your favorite topping, besides the cheese?

Read more »

Ode to a pot roast (and a Dutch oven)

The house was cold, I had a half-day off and I hadn’t cooked a nice dinner for my husband in weeks.
This Monday, after returning from the second marathon wedding weekend in a row, I decided to go to the grocery store, pick out a nice roast and haul out my Lodge cast iron Dutch oven.
I’m so glad I did.
After years of trying to get a crockpot roast to turn out exactly the way we like it– juicy and tender and falling apart– I just couldn’t get it to work. Then I purchased my Dutch oven during a sale at Northwest Hardware, and I’ll never go back.
I’m sure crockpot roasts turn out very nicely if you do it right, but I cooked the darn things for 8 hours and still didn’t get the consistency I liked.

Read more »

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Weather Journal

Starting to look a lot like summer

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:03:10 +0000

About this blog

On the Fridge Magnet blog, food writer Lindsey Nair writes about home cooking, local restaurants, entertaining and more. Here, you will also find links to restaurant reviews and our weekly food column, Front Burner. Please also check out our database of Southwest Virginia restaurants resturant user reviews and our recipe database.

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