Nothing says summer like shish kebab!

Hello sweet friends,

This is my Sunday Meanderings cleverly disguised as a recipe post. LOL

I thought I'd share a favorite recipe with you since I made this today.

Rob and I used to own a motor home. It wasn't real fancy but it was wonderful - it was air conditioned, had a full kitchen and electricity, a flush toilet and shower!! and a great heater. Even here in Colorado, we camped from April until November.

Then Krissy went away to college and we realized we needed CASH. We had the tuition and board covered - honestly (don't laugh)- it was the collect phone calls. From our desperately homesick daughter.

Yeah, I'm one of THOSE moms. Bet me my daughter is going to call me collect and I'm going to say no. As a matter of fact, bet me my daughter is going to call me four times a night, collect, and I'm going to say no. Not going to happen. I'm not that mom.

Krissy's first month at college, our phone bill was over $400. And we saw the writing on the wall.

So we sold the motor home. With Kris already away at college and Mandy leaving in a year it wasn't that big a decision to sell it. Rob and I would love to get another one someday so we can take the grandkids camping but that's down the road.

From the time our girls were about 8 and 10 until they were about 14 and 16, we camped almost every single weekend during camping season. We went to family RV parks all over beautiful Colorado.

Both our girls played in summer softball leagues and competed in gymnastics meets all over the state (weekends in Breckenridge were a family favorite). But every single weekend we weren't commited to a game or a meet, we took the girls and quite often their friends camping.

I'm convinced this is why neither one of our daughters ever got into the kind of trouble that a lot of kids get into.

I think it's one of the best things we ever did for our daughters.

But back to my recipe. I got pretty darn good at camping. I had a kitchen with a stovetop, oven and refrigerator. So I quickly learned that camp food doesn't have to be hamburgers and hotdogs. Those are great and we did our share but really, with a kitchen and fridge, you can cook a lot more than that when you're camping.

When Rob and I made shish kebab for dinner, we had total stangers roam right into our campsight (a no-no - campers are very territorial) and ask what on earth we were cooking that smelled so wonderful. This is what we were cooking:

Simple. Meat. Vegetables - mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, bell peppers and onion. And marinade mix.

For shish kebab, you want pretty lean meat. So I buy a roast. This roast weighs just under three pounds. Very economical cut of meat - at Walmart, where I shop, it's currently about $3 a pound. So my roast was about $8. I'm going to get two meals out of this because it's only me and Rob. I'd say this size roast would serve four to six adults so you can adapt that if you're feeding children. Or growing teenaged boys, in which case you might want to buy two roasts. LOL

Cut your roast into big cubes - I cut mine into about 2-inch cubes. I also trim away any fat - we hate fat. Blech.


I've shown you how I marinate meat before. In a ziplock bag. I keep this in the fridge until about half an hour before I'm ready to cook, flipping it over occasionally.

Rob and I like cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, onion and mushrooms. There are so many vegetables you can use when you make shish kebab but these are our favorites. I've cut these into the right size chunks for the skewers.

These are ready for the grill. When you assemble them, allow room on each end for the cook to handle them without getting burned. And warn your cook - wear gloves - the skewers get hot!

The bowl contains the marinade sauce from the bag after I removed the meat. Rob's going to brush this over the vegetables as they cook.

Normally, you'd not use marinade sauce that you marinated meat in. Not safe. But this is OK because it's going to be grilled over high heat and will therefore be safe.

It's just impossible to gauge how much meat and vegetables you need to come out exactly right for your skewers. So I have some backup skewers for the remaining odds and ends.


You need a master grill chef. LOL

Rob is very good at turning the skewers constantly so that the meat gets cooked but the vegetables don't get cremated. This isn't one of those grill jobs where you can walk away for a couple of minutes. The vegetables will burn easily so keep a close watch on them.

Here's our dinner. Shish kebab and wild rice. I slide the kebabs off the skewers into a serving bowl. Our skewers are about twice as long as our dinner plates are wide, so we wouldn't just plop them on the plates. It would be ridiculous. It's so much better to take it off the skewers and serve the food in a serving dish.

And can I just say? Rob and I are two people. It's hard to cook for two people. I grew up in a family of eight. I started cooking for my big family when I was twelve years old. So for me, cooking for two is darn near impossible.

So I've become very adept at cooking things that are good leftover. This is absolutely wonderful when it's reheated in the oven. I just put the leftovers in a glass baking dish, cover them with foil to keep everything from drying out and heat it for a while. Talk about an easy dinner. Leftovers that actually taste good!

Economical. Easy. Smells like heaven when it's cooking and draws new friends to your camp site (if , you know, you happen to be camping). What's not to like?

And really, if you camp, this is easy to prepare ahead of time. Just put your meat into a ziplock with the marinade, prepare your vegetables and put those into ziplocks and put it all in your cooler or fridge. It's very easy to assemble for the camp grill. Rice is easy to make on a camp stove too.

I love to invite friends over to our house for a cookout and surprise them with this when I know they were expecting hamburgers.

Ask me about my spinach salad sometime. To die for. Easy, cheap and just impresses the socks off company.


What a week! I learned how to do finger and toe pricks and give insulin shots. I finally got the wedding invitations assembled, the response cards and directions to the wedding site printed and it's all going to the post office today.

You know, I was feeling frustrated because I wanted these to be in the mail two weeks ago. But guess what? If I'd mailed them two weeks ago, our guests would have had to add postage to the rsvp cards because the cost of postage went up last Monday. So thank goodness I got behind on this project! Anyway, they're ready to go and I'm hugely relieved. Now I have 150 four-page wedding programs to make and tie ribbons through. Ugh.

The surprise birthday party Krissy gave for Andy on Saturday afternoon was a huge success (she actually managed to surprise him - he was shocked) and my sweet son-in-law actually looked happy for the first time since his baby boy was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes ten days ago. It warmed my heart to see him smile again.

(Pssst. Krissy is trying to get pregnant and well, you know, I'm just a little excited about that.)

It's still a little nuts around here. It's been nuts for so long I can barely remember when it wasn't. Maybe I'm just a drama queen and my life is actually boring and I just don't know it. LOL

Can you imagine how quiet my life is going to be when this wedding is over? Goodness, I probably won't have anything to talk about on this blog. :-)

Life is busy but good. I kept little Cameron with me this past week to work with his blood sugar levels until we felt he was a little more stable. He goes back to Nancy tomorrow.

Nancy. Sigh. Our angel in disguise. Thank you, Jesus, for knowing that Cameron would need Nancy, long before we knew he would need anyone but us.

This nana and this puppy are pooped out. We're "dog" tired. But we hope you have a good week. Cameron won't be back until Friday. So we have four days to try to catch up with you all.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you all for being so supportive and encouraging during what has been a dramatic time for me. MomRN2, your card arrived this weekend and you have no idea how much it touched me. Kim, thank you and your mom for the wonderful package of educational material about babies diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and especially the sweet book of Amish devotionals and the book thong. I'll be making some of those just so I can say I made book thongs. :-)

I'm all better now. Really, getting the wedding invitations in the mail has taken a lot of pressure off me and I'm ready to start playing around with all the hurricanes and mirror squares I saved from Krissy's wedding - I think we're going to come up with some very pretty centerpieces for the reception tables. Mandy's last day of teaching is Wednesday. Then she's moving back to Grand Junction and she and I are going to start having some fun with this wedding!

The last month before a wedding like this can be crazy if you let it. I don't plan to let it. What do you think? Think I can stay cool, calm and collected? Sure I can. I just don't need any more surprises!