Hold the meat – What did I eat at my Memorial Day cookout?

Woo! Happy Memorial Day! I actually took some time off for the first time in forever and stayed mostly offline for the weekend. As a result, I feel as though I’ve just awoken from a coma. It’s kind of weird. Anyway, during some of my time with the real world, we celebrated the holiday by having family and friends over for a cookout. Luke broke my heart buying meat at Costco, an embarrassing amount of cheese was consumed, and we grilled. Oh, how we grilled.

Okay, first off, I should say I’m a liar. I literally didn’t even lay eyes on the grill; there was definitely no “we” about it. The actual set-up was much better: I stayed in the house and grazed on the different appetizers we had laid out, while Luke went down and grilled food, and a third person acted as the intermediary and delivered it to my food-hole. God Bless America.

When Luke broke my heart at Costco, it wasn’t because he bought meat, if you guys have ever read this column before, you know I don’t have a problem with that. What made me sad is that he dropped this giant tube of red meat into the cart and the price tag said … $60. Sixty dollars for a bull leg or whatever. It was insane. He looked at me all proud and said, “this is a really great price.” $60 for a tube of meat is not a great price! It is a TUBE OF MEAT.

In fairness, I should probably mention that it was a fillet. Of beef? A beef fillet? Is that a thing? I don’t know, but if backstrap is a real thing, surely beef fillet is, right? All I do know is the people who ate it said it was delicious and the GIANT TUBE OF MEAT is just about gone now (and for what it’s worth, it was most definitely on the pinker side of medium-rare). It’s just so disheartening when you leave Costco having spent $175 and all you have to show for it is a tube of meat, some coffee, and like, half a dozen avocados.

Anyway, back to the menu: Other than the fillet, everything else was vegetarian. We had chips and salsa, including some banana salsa that I picked up from my farmer’s market. Banana salsa, by the way, is quite good, despite the fact that it sounds disgusting. It was pretty spicy, but the banana flavor was an interesting touch. Luke also made his homemade guacamole in both spicy and non-spicy versions.

As far as the grill went, we kept it pretty simple for the vegetarians: we had Morningstar Grillers with Dubliner cheese melted on them. We also grilled some portobello caps that are as ridiculously good as they are easy to make. All you do is take the caps and marinate them for fifteen minutes in balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, and throw them on the grill.

My friend Elizabeth, she of the boozy chocolate cake and the quinoa-stuffed zucchini, contributed her amazing fruit salsa, the secret ingredient of which is crack. Or heroin. I’m no drug expert, but I’m pretty confident that one of those two substances adorns this dish in abundance.

My sole contribution to the proceedings (other than my appetite) was my potato salad. I’ll do a post on it soon, but it’s great. It’s a super simple and easy recipe, but for whatever reason, people go completely nuts over it. While it does include mayonnaise, I put in as little as possible.

So that was my Memorial Day cookout. It pretty much ended up being a veggie feast (there was also a green bean casserole and veggies with dip involved). What did you guys eat this weekend? Did any of you have meat tubes? Do tell.

Clacked by Kona Gallagher
on May 26, 2009 @ 19:11 EST5EDT