Fourth of July – 2011

Hope everyone had a fantastic and safe Fourth of July!

Patrick and I had big food plans for the fourth that had us starting at Whole Foods. However, after we took a look at our finances it was obvious that we would have to scale back on our plans.

We instead ended up at Jewel and just picked up the necessities for the day. We both needed certain things for it to truly feel like the holiday 🙂

We started off with a Pom mock-tail:

I had to have BBQ baked beans. Basically we took canned vegetarian baked beans and added some spicy sweet baby rays BBQ sauce:

These baked beans are the best!  The spicy BBQ sauce really adds a nice flavor to the canned beans.

We both wanted to roast veggies, a mix of sweet potatos and brussels sprouts with some EVOO, white pepper, chili powder, cayenne pepper and garlic powder. I wanted them because I love veggies but I think my husband was ok with them because he got to use the new veggies grilling basket we got from William Sonoma:

I can’t wait to grill lots of veggies using this basket.  It was easy to use and the grill gave the veggies a nice flavor.

Patrick was excited about our main dish. A big porterhouse steak grilled to perfection. The first thing Patrick ever grilled on his fancy grill was a porterhouse so it holds a special place in his heart 🙂

Here is a look at our Fourth of July dining experience…

My steak:

My sides:

After we ate and cleaned up a bit we grabbed the dogs and headed out to watch some fireworks.

I was really leary of taking Cap out because the fireworks sometimes scare him. Not today…I held him in my arms and he was cool as a cucumber. No shaking, barking or crying. He was just enjoying the night.

As usual we like to give the dogs a treat on holidays so they were very excited when we gave them each a bone to naw on:

We also gave them each a bite of steak but they had to work for it…

Shake for steak:

Lay for steak:

A happy ending to a nice low key holiday 😀

Question:

Did you grill out for the Fourth of July?