Blast from the Past - Shish kabob - fun and easy instructions

Due to a technical issue, earlier posts on this blog were deleted. These posts are being reshared with Momanthology readers.  This blog post was originally published on June 24, 2011

Although I love winter holiday food - cookies, hor dourves, dips, pasta, turkey and ham dinners, etc - my FAVORITE is summer food. Nothing is more fun than picnic food - indoors or out. I love cookouts, baked beans, pasta and potato salads, ice cream, fruit pies and more. 

Last night we made shish kabob.  This is easy, tasty AND, if prepared with healthy ingredients, also nutritious!  I marinated chicken in a terryaki glaze the night before. On the way home from work I stopped at the store to pick up fresh veggies and bamboo skewers - The first grocery I stopped at was out of these so I stopped by two other stores before I found some. I picked up the last two - apparently we are not the only people that love shishkabob.  If you see skewers, stock up because they are apparently a rare commodity.....  I finally made it home and enlisted help in preparing the skewers.

Ingredients:
6 marinated chicken breasts
1 yellow pepper
1 orange pepper
1 red pepper
3 medium onions
zucchini (2)
yellow squash (2)
2 cups of uncooked rice
1 tbs of butter or olive oil
salt to taste

Prep:
Marinate poultry or meat overnight in sauce of choice (barbecue, terryaki, Italian dressing, etc)

15 - 30 minutes before preparing, soak bamboo skewers in water

Cook rice in a rice cooker (2 cups of water to every one cup of rice) - add a few dashes of salt and oil or butter prior to cooking

While Rice is cooking, prepare chicken and veggies
- cut chicken on one cutting board into large chunks
- cut onion on the other cutting board - halve and then quarter.  Reserve 1 cut onion for later.
- put meat or poultry and bamboo on skewers (moistened, not dry), alternating with onion and with a small space between each to allow even cooking.
- place finished skewers
Clean cutting board used for chopping the onion. 
On clean cutting board chop remaining veggies into squares (peppers) and rounds (zucchini and squash)
skewer veggies and place on a separate dish to avoid cross contamination of the veggies and meat.

Skewers are ready to grill!

Grilling:
We started the chicken about 10 minutes prior to the veggies- the veggies tend to grill quickly.  While Ryan was doing that, the rice was ready.....I scooped into a bowl and covered, set the table and called the kids in  to wash up. 

Serving:
Dinner looked (and smelled) so good the neighbor kids somehow invited themselves too :)  This served 2 adults, 1 teen and 4 children with enough for left overs.  For the smaller children we took the veggies and meats off the skewers so they would not hurt themselves.  My teen, husband and I ate ours off of the stick and served with rice.