Grilled Salmon with Sweet Corn, Avacado, and Cherry Tomato Salad

• I follow whole foods market on Twitter, this is an adaptation of one of their recent recipes.  

(Photo from Whole Foods Market website)

• There's a young farmer right down the road from us and he raises the sweetest sweet corn around.  In addition, our garden is overflowing with tomatoes--roma, cherry, early girl, and 4th of July varieties.  So this salad worked out perfectly. 
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• I used Atlantic Salmon which is rich and fatty and delicious.  Cooked the salmon on a cedar plank in the Traeger Grill.  Doesn't get much better than that.  This can be done in the oven as well, or a charcoal grill for that matter.
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• Sweet Corn, Avocado, Cherry Tomato Salad
• 4 ears fresh corn, kernels removed from cob
• 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
• 1 small avocado, diced
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• Atlantic Salmon
• 4 (4- to 6-ounce) boneless, skinless salmon fillets
•  Olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Put corn, tomatoes, avocado, cilantro, oil and vinegars into a large bowl and toss gently to combine. Set aside.  This salad is so good that it's great on its own.

Lightly brush the salmon with extra virgin olive oil, then sprinkle on the sea salt and black pepper.  Place salmon on a cedar plank (the cedar plank needs to soak in water for at least 2 hours to prevent it from burning on the grill).  Onto the Traeger Grill at 375 degrees for 20 - 30 minutes.  You'll know the salmon is cooked perfectly when the flesh just begins to flake with a fork.

Enjoy friends!

Jalapeno Poppers

The pepper plants this season are going crazy.  After roasting a boat load of Anaheim peppers this afternoon, I had some hot coals left on the weber grill, so I picked jalapeno peppers and, well, the rest is here....

There are a b-jillion recipes out there for poppers, but this is the one we like and it's super simple!  Not to mention yummy!

Take the jalapeno peppers, slice them in half, scrape out all the veins and seeds.

Next smear in some cream cheese -- I used the lower fat Neufchatel -- but really???

Now add a small cube of your favorite cheddar, or what ever hard cheese you like.

This little bundle is wrapped in a thin slice of bacon -- the thinner the better, so it cooks crispy.

I used a foil lined baking pan.

Onto the grill it goes!

The hot coals along with the aluminum foil liner will bake the poppers and the bacon will be crispy!

My bacon kinda slid off the gooey cheese, but what the heck?  Yummy yummy!

These were gone in no time!  Just a quick snack for the afternoon.

Enjoy Friends!

Shish KaBobs

It is unseaonably warm, this evening it is 60 degrees outside.  We decided to grill instead of cooking inside.  One of our very favorites is shish kabobs with venison and LOTs of veg.  So here it is.

For the marinade:  (You can make this with beef, too.)  Take the chunks of meat and marinate with equal parts of soy sauce & olive oil, then add a splash of sesame oil, crumble in some dried rosemary, and add some thin slices of garlic.  Place in the fridge and marinate for a couple of hours.

Get the veggies ready.  

All choices that you like, 

just make sure that they are hearty enough to stand up to grilling.

Cut the veggies into chunks that will work well when placed on the skewers with the meat. 

Toss 'em into a bowl.

Add some Italian dressing to the veggies and toss, toss.

When you are ready, skewer the meat and veg and 

place on baking sheet covered with foil. 

 If you have left over veggies as I did, just make an extra veg kabob!  

You might have a vegetarian friend show up!

Time to fire up the charcoals.  We love our Weber grill!

Look at these babies!  Grill the meat to your liking,

we like ours medium rare.

Time to serve it up, tonight we had brown and wild rice with dinner.

Oh, and the tender tender venison! So so delish!

Enjoy friends!!