G5 The Next Grilleration

We have been watching Tangled Tangled and more Tangled! My sweet little girl only wants to watch that movie ALL DAY long! As annoying as it gets to me it's still so cute that she loves it so much! We even have to watch what we say, especially if we've finally gotten her away from the TV and not wanting to watch Tangled.  for that mostly too!

Sitting on her cushion with her "tweats" (goldfish and crasins) and juice watching her favorite show in ever!

 In our attempt to be able to watch grown up shows too (come on its Stanley Cup Playoffs going on!) we were looking into other options to let her watch it, when I found this portable DVD player for a whopping $59.95 at Target! We have a big road trip coming up this summer so I'm sure it will come in handy

sitting on her cushion watching her movie :)

When they sing she wanted to get closer!

Alright so I'm a little obsessed with our newest kitchen appliance. It's a George Forman Grill!! It has changeable plates, which means I can use it for EVERYTHING! At first we planned to just use it for grilling, for example Jesse has been grilling chicken a couple times a week and taking it to school for lunch in a salad. Another great grill we've tried was Salmon fillets, med heat 7 minutes. SO EASY! Tonight we had Kabobs; I have never made them on my own before, never thought of it but I will certainly be making them more!

 For these easy peasy Kabobs I marinaded Chicken in: 

• Olive Oil (about 3/4 Cup)
• Balsamic Vinegar ( About 2 tsp)
• Black Pepper and Sea Salt
• Minced Garlic (about 1 Tbsp)
• Ground Ginger (1tsp)
• Raspberry Vinaigrette (dash or two)

I didn't measure anything just what looked about enough and covered the chicken. I marinaded them for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile I started the Rice cooker (another thing that has become a staple in our house we use it at least weekly now!) and chopped veggies. We used Red and Green Bell Peppers, and Onions (pretty much what I had on hand). Once veggies were chopped I also cut up half a pound of Smoked Sausage, cuz I wasn't really using very much chicken, and last minute decided to use frozen pineapple chunks.

Skewer in order you wish, I like so separate meat from meat so it cooks faster (I don't really know if this is faster I think I just heard it once) and Grillerate it for about 8 minutes/until meat is cooked through.

 But this thing does so much more!
I was reading through the cookbook that comes with it, looking for ideas and such. In this cookbook is a recipe for chocolate chip cookies! It's a pretty basic recipe but I was more interested in the fact that you can make cookies in a Forman Grill!!! Crazy right?! I was so excited! So I gathered my ingredients, I used my own family recipe, and got to work! I haven't made cookies very much since I've moved to Iowa, not from scratch ones anyway, because baking in humidity when I'm used to baking in dry high altitude is WAY different! So I did a little research and learned a few tricks to keep my cookies from being flat and gross! Decrease the Baking Soda a bit and refrigerate between baking batches. Helped a TON! As for the Grillinator part; our grill comes with changeable plates, one of them is called The Baking plate. So I put that in and heated the grill. Once my cookie dough was tasty enough (yes I taste my cookie dough raw eggs or not I gotta know if its good, i.e. if I remembered all the ingredients) I put 6 dollops onto the baking plate and closed the lid. It took like 10 minutes, so not necessarily faster than baking them in the oven especially considering the fact that I can only bake 6 cookies at a time max, and when they are done you have to scoop them off right away so you can start the next batch. Which can get messy cuz they are still way soft, but they came out alright!
I used both the grill AND the conventional oven in order to finish the baking, cuz I didn't want it to take all night.

these are the first 2 batches from the Forman Grill, some stayed together a bit better than others!

I just thought this might look cool

*these cookies are Maia approved*

She approved so much we had to give her a bath she was so chocolatey!

So my love of the G5 Next Grilleration continues, You can call me the Grillenator!

Thanks again Mom for the Grill!!