One of the things I love best about summer is my ability to delegate the cooking to my grill-master husband! And believe me, I have it down. The grill is not just for meat. I have figured out ways to have my husband grill virtually every component of the meal! If we eat on paper plates, I don't even have to do the dishes! All that is required is a little bit of prep.
Today we grilled chicken and vegetables. Although I bought a few staple groceries yesterday, most of the money went toward ingredients I needed for two egg casseroles (which I had previously promised for a Sunday School breakfast.) This meant that today we cleaned out the fridge. Here is what I had left in the fresh vegetable drawer: four miniature potatoes, one sweet potato, carrots and celery.
I took the root vegetables, peeled and chopped them and put them in a Ziploc bag with olive oil, kosher salt and fresh thyme (from the pots on the deck). From experience I have learned that this prep storage method keeps the potatoes from turning brown.
Just before grilling, I transferred the vegetables onto two pieces of foil configured like a "+" sign and fold all four ends in to form a sealed package. These vegetables cook on the grill right in their package. With a tight seal, you can flip them over half-way through. The vegetables need to cook about 30 minutes.
The only thing we were missing was - something green! I remembered the celery and thought - why not? Food Network Star Bobby Flay grills everything and he has nothing over my man!
When I brought out the oiled and salted celery stalks, my husband put up a bit of a fuss. He mumbled something about being kicked out of the manly-cooking-with-fire-club, but eventually those stalks made it to the open flame.
As usual, even the celery was cooked to perfection.
Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I googled "Grilled Celery" and came up with this link for Grilled Celery with Blue Cheese. The Blue Cheese (or any soft cheese like goat cheese or Boursin), would definitely bump these stalks to an "A" rating.
http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/grilled-celery-stuffed-blue-cheese-10000001185023/index.html