Outdoor cooking, yum!

In my ongoing determination to avoid heating a house that is being air-conditioned (lightly, or so I intend), I have been hanging all laundry to dry except underwear and socks -- a fairly successful project thanks to the Oklahoma heat and wind. I have also been avoiding the kitchen. Well, actually, the stove and oven. And rice cooker. And somewhat the microwave. I can affirm that I use the coffee maker and the fridge, LOL! This is helped along by the house being pretty warm during the day and early evening -- and therefore I have little interest in hot meals, either the making or the eating of.

But. One must eat! Herein lies a new turn of events.

Tonight the boys had no baseball games or practices scheduled. A lull, a gap in the schedule. Dear husband seized the moment and decided to grill a hunk of beef that was stashed in the freezer. Once that info arrived over the phone line this afternoon and the beef began thawing, I started a search for a side dish I could cook on the grill. I have a nice pile of various relevant cookbooks newly borrowed from the library (grilling, Dutch oven cooking, outdoor cooking, campfire cooking, etc.), and my two new cookbooks acquired at the 2006 Chuck Wagon Gathering in Oklahoma City.

End result: a delicious meal that was a big hit, and NO heating up the kitchen! We had grilled eye of round roast with a light covering of olive oil, crushed peppercorns, and kosher salt; very simple, biscuit-like "spider bread" cooking in a cast-iron pan on the grill; and a salad of mixed greens. Every man, woman, and boy x 2 in the household loved it all, hurrah!

I would've baked apples on the grill, too, if we'd had aluminum foil...