Summer, Grilling

Summer.

Windows open all night.
Flowers in my yard.
Farmer's Market music which is almost universally bad but so bad it's good.
Baby plants for sale.
Cut-offs.
Porch in the sunshine.
That swelling feeling as your skin burns just a little.
Ice cream.
The blackberry bushes coming back with a vengeance.
Leaving the windows down with no fear of a midnight rain. (Or theft, or vandalism, for that matter. This is kind of the safest place ever, too.)
Packing.
Smoothies.
When a dollar buys 3 ears of corn.
Gloves and hand tools and dirt and weeds.
Arm out the window on the highway.
The way light looks on maple leaves. How can they be so green??!
Sandals.
Running in shorts and a tank top early in the morning, and still being warm.
Wanting to eat nothing but fresh vegetables and grilled meat.

It's been a good summer for grilling already. My roommate kindly left her grill here when she skipped town, and my fiance has been buying briquettes and getting quite skilled with lighter fluid, building pyramids of coals, long tongs and shepherding flame. What a guy.

There are so many options. We've done a few things:
Grilled corn on the cob (left a few layers of husk on to keep kernels moist as they cook)
Pork chops (rubbed with salt & pepper first)
Grill potato fries (wedges, sprinkled with some oilive oil, S&P and grilled slow)
Chicken breasts (with a bit of lemon juice, S&P and some chicken seasoning)
Kabobs of onions, peppers, zucchini, mushrooms

Last night we did Grilled Tilapia with Mango Salsa and it was fabulous.

(ingredients pile)

(marinade)
 (filets soaking up the goodness of lemon and oil and garlic and parsley and basil)

We shared cooking duties, as usual, although he ended up doing more than I. :) I bought some fish the other day & mentioned it as something we should have next grilling. He found this recipe. I grabbed a couple things at the store and made the marinade (which the tilapia sits in for an hour - or 3, if you're like me). He started the grill. I peeled and cut up the mango and he chopped peppers and had the stinging jalepeno hands. I chopped fresh cilantro and reveled in the smell that he doesn't particularly care for; he measured and mixed. And then he grilled the thin filets of tilapia over the hot coals for some perfection of about 2 minutes per side, while I stood close enough to soak up all the smoke, and make small panicked noises when I thought the fish was going to slide through the grill, and poke it with a fork when it was done, just to be sure, and tell him how awesome he was. We make a good team.

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the finished product. My sister and her fiance arrived and things got exciting. There was a new sparkly ring to admire. The food was all getting done. Hunger happened. Wine was uncorked. So no photographic evidence of the end result, but it did look similar to the recipe photo. I guess our salsa was a bit juicier.

*the only alteration we made to this was I used all fresh herbs, and we used about 1/2 the jalepeno.