Grilling out on a Saturday night!

What’s on the menu for Saturday night? Perhaps something new? How about grilled Jamaican jerk chicken with a side of spiced oven-baked potato fries and freshly steam green beans? And don’t forget the dessert! Roasted marshmallows for S’mores! Delish!


I knew I was in the mood for a new kind of chicken marinade. I came across jerk chicken when I was checking out the Food and Wine website and had realized here was something I had yet to try! When I found the recipe I was set on testing out, we did not yet have a grill, so my plan was to bake it in the oven.

David and I were running errands on Saturday and as we were roaming around Target I came across the “Patio and Garden” area (David happened to be checking out the hybrid bikes there at the time). Of course! Grills! David had said a few times before that we would eventually get one for our place – we just hadn’t seen a good price though. So here I am surrounded by all these grills within our price range and I’m plotting to see if David will go for it this time. It was also on my mind of how great it would be to grill-out tonight, especially if we were going to be having jerk chicken.

I catch up with David and in my sweetest tone with big puppy-dog eyes, I ask him about the grills. Here I am trying to sell him on the idea of buying a new grill, and it actually looks like he’s going to go for it! So I give him a kiss on a cheek and tell him how great it would if we purchased one today. He doesn’t say no, but he doesn’t say yes… he says he’ll think about it while we continue shopping around target. Okay, so we have a maybe – better than nothing, right? Of course walking around target was driving me crazy though. I had two things on my mind: 1.) the grill and 2.) Was David going to say yes?

As we are nearing the end, we go back over to the grills and David starts to say no to the idea. Maybe the price wasn’t good enough, but he began saying we didn’t look at enough stores to really see what kind of grill would work for us. So of course I begin to throw a small fit since it seemed like we would never get one. He has been saying we would get a grill for months now and we had already been to a few stores to check out grills within the past month. So from my perspective, RIGHT NOW was a good opportunity to finally get the grill! With David sensing how upset I was, we compromised and decided after we checked out of Target we would go look at a few more places to compare grill prices. If we didn’t like what we saw at other places then we would head back to Target.

We stopped at Home Depot… no, too expensive, especially with the sizes…

Then we stopped at Tractor Supply Co… one grill that was big enough to feed an army! Definite no!

From there we stopped at Sam’s Club… again prices were ridiculous… and the grills were huge!

So we began heading back to Target. But wait! We had to pass Lowe’s first… may as well check out grills there! Aah, yes – heaven! We decided on a charcoal grill which had a great size for the price. Thanks Davie!!! Love you!! There is even a place to attach a smoker (but we won’t purchase that until later down the road). As an early birthday present to David, I decided to buy him the grill cover since the grill will have to sit outside, as well as a charcoal chimney starter (it heats the coals in no time!).

We headed back home… I called David’s mom to invite her for dinner and celebrate the newest addition to our home :) David started putting together our new grill and I began to prep for dinner!

I used the food processor for the jerk chicken marinade – what fun! I don’t use the food processor too often, but I should! It just makes everything so much easier! Well, for the exception of the clean-up part!

Let me tell you something – David was made for the grill! The jerk chicken turned out delicious – moist and juicy and cooked perfectly! And nice grill marks too! While David was busy cooking the chicken, I worked on the side dishes. My second attempt at the healthy French fries came out fabulous!

Overall, the dinner was great! We had great company! And thanks to Jacki, we were able to end our great meal with S’mores!

P.S. Did I ever tell you how much fun I have lighting marshmallows on fire?! Ha!