Kabob Kreations

Yes, it's that time of year again -- get the grills ready because summer is just around the corner!! After a recent bout of lovely warm weather, I had a hankering for a fun, warm-weather kind of dinner. With just my trusty grill pan, I decided it was seasonably appropriate to make my sausage and veggie kabobs! Tried this one out on the boyfriend (again -- he's the best test subject for all my culinary creations!) and was very happy with the results! I used a mild Italian chicken sausage for my kabobs, but you can substitute with any kind of sausage that suits your fancy. So round up some veggies, whip up a quick balsamic marinade, and before you know it, your taste buds will swear they've instantly been transported to a lazy summer day! This is a relatively easy dinner that is very budget friendly and fun to make too! I never follow recipes for most of my creations, so here's the basic rundown of what I did. Enjoy!!

1. Give yourself an extra day to prepare! This marinade is best when given at least 8 hours to work, so keep that in mind as you start assembling your ingredients for these yummy kabobs!

2. To make the marinade, I mix two parts balsamic vinegar with one part extra virgin olive oil, then mix in dried oregano and basil, salt and fresh ground pepper. I eyeball these measurements while I'm cooking, but I'd say about 1 teaspoon each of oregano and basil, with 1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper. Again, use whatever works for your individual tastes! :)

3. Assemble sausage, white mushrooms, green pepper, red onion and grape tomatoes. Cut sausage and green pepper into 1-inch pieces, remove stems from mushrooms (leave whole,) cut red onion into small wedges (about 1 inch) and slice grape tomatoes in half. Add all ingredients into balsamic vinegar marinade and refrigerate, covered, overnight or for a minimum of 8 hours.

4. On day of cooking, soak bamboo skewers in water for at least 30 minutes. Soaking saturates the wood with water and prevents the skewers from burning while the kabobs are grilling -- very important if you are using a stovetop grill pan indoors and don't want your smoke alarm going off! :)

5. Remove marinade mix from fridge and arrange ingredients on skewers in whatever order you like, starting and ending with the cherry tomato halves. (For my kabobs, I used a repeated pattern of tomato, pepper, sausage, onion, pepper, etc.)

6. Spray grill pan with non-stick cooking spray. Grill kabobs over a medium-high heat, turning every 5 minutes. Total cooking time should be around 12-15 minutes.

I served my kabobs over a bed of brown rice -- and just so happened to take a picture before digging in! (This was taken right after they were fresh off the grill -- you can actually see the steam rising from the kabobs here!)



This is a really fun and tasty meal that's great for all of the lovely summer evenings ahead! Kabobs are a wonderful way to jazz up an everyday weeknight dinner too, so let your inner cook go wild -- the sky's the limit for what you can grill up in kabob form! The Giddy Gourmand would recommend this particular kabob with a lovely glass of homemade red sangria -- more to come on that soon, as that was another recipe I recently tackled with positive results! Here's to the warm weather just around the corner, and all of the yummy creations inspired by summer!