It's Grill time baby!

Summer is here the pool is up to temp, 89*, sweet summer loving is in the air!
Um, can you tell this is my favorite time of year?? Maybe it is the Pisces in me, but a whole season to spend in water, oh sweet sweet jeepers!
Today I decided to do a little cooking on the grill, it is not an easy cooking skill to master this damn grill thing! But we spent 5 grand on an outdoor kitchen, so I am bound and determined to cook more then hot dogs and frozen burgers!!!

I was inspired by our dear friend Chuckie Burgess, he invited us over to his mansion last weekend and served us up quite the gourmet spread, he is a retired Marine (can I get a OO-RAH!) and motorcycle police officer and jack of all trades if you ask me, yeah does his own garden and landscaping too, he can eat live grasshoppers and kill scorpions! I hope my hubby is taking notes for when he retires in 4 years, gotta keep those boys busy or they can get into some trouble!

So today it was all about grilling chicken and shrimp. Chuckie had 3 kinds of shrimp and some chicken he had cooked up, so I set off to find some marinades and recipes.

I chose McCormick Grill Mates dry spice in the bottle for the chicken, roasted garlic and herb, and Grill Mates in the packet chipotle pepper. Cut up the chicken into chunks and put into baggies to marinate for a few hours.

I chose ragin cajun spice for the shrimp, and a recipe for homemade marinade on all recipes for grilled shrimp, from a guy named Ron. Also grabbed Weber zesty lemon dry bottle spice mix.

Got everything marinating in their own baggies, when it was time to cook I fired up the grill and oiled it down. Had my skewers soaking all night, Did the chicken first. I knew it would have to rest and I knew the shrimp would only take a minute or two....

got them all skewered up and hit the grill...

Here are my results:
In the chicken category:

The Roasted garlic and herb mix by McCormick was ok, but not great, kinda iffy. 2 stars.

The Grill Mates Chipotle pepper packet was amazing!! I could eat that chicken all day! Yummy!
5 stars!

In the shrimp category:

Ragin cajun was fabulous! I put a little too much, gotta go easy on this, and I like heat, but I was over the top...if it was toned down this would have been awesome! 5 stars!

Ron's recipe off the internet, boring, no flavor, I had high hopes with a homemade recipe, but this fell flat. 1 star cause it was edible.

Weber Zesty lemon, OH NO! tastes like soap! ewwww! gross! What a waste! 0 stars, well maybe -5 stars!

labeled and marinating

The chicken labeled on foil all cooked up!

The shrimp labeled and ready to go

the marinades

The winner of the chicken dinner!

The winner of the shrimp dinner!

There you have it, some grilling fun had by me, I learned a little and enjoyed my saturday on the grill! Good luck and if you have any tips or recipes to share please leave a comment! Thanks!
Jackie