Grilling with Brickhouse: Garlic Herb Grilled Tomatoes

Yesterday we talked about how to make some yummy Grilled Tomato Basil Chicken for your main dish.  Today we are going to make a super simple side dish - Grilled Garlic Herb Tomatoes featuring Brickhouse Cheese!

Grilled Garlic Herb Tomatoes

Ingredients:

2 tomatoes (preferably heirlooms!)
1/8 lb Brickhouse Garlic Herb Cheddar, shredded
Salt and pepper to taste

Wash your lovely tomatoes and slice along the 'equator'.

Place cut side down on a hot grill until you get some nice grill marks. (About 10 minutes or so.)

While you are waiting shred the cheese...

Be sure to shred enough to snack on while you are at it!

Flip the tomatoes over and generously sprinkle the cheese on the cut sides.  Grill until desired consistency.  (I grilled them about 10 minutes longer - until the chicken was ready.)

Serve with Brickhouse Tomato Basil Grilled Chicken and some corn on the cob and you have a delicious summertime feast!

Grilling with Brickhouse: Brickhouse Tomato Basil Grilled Chicken

Summer just begs celebrating by grilling out, and here at Brickhouse we're spicing up our grilling with some cheese - not just any cheese of course!

For our main course we added a yummy surprise to the center of our grilled chicken - Tomato Basil Cheddar from Brickhouse Cheese!

Brickhouse Tomato Basil Grilled Chicken

Ingredients:

2 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 Cups Italian salad dressing
1/4 lb. Brickhouse Tomato Basil Cheese
2 skewers or toothpicks

Marinade chicken in the fridge for 3-6 hours.  Make a slit in the chicken that forms a pocket, tuck a generous chunk of Tomato Basil in to this pocket and secure closed with a skewer or toothpick.

Open the chicken, but don't cut all the way to make a pocket!

Fill the pocket with some Tomato Basil Cheddar!

'Sew' a skewer or toothpick into the chicken to hold in the cheese.

Place on the grill and cook until juices run clear (about 20 minutes, depending on the temperature f your grill).  

Serve with some fresh corn on the cob and Brickhouse Garlic and Herb Grilled Tomatoes and you have a summer feast fit for a king!

Wordless Wednesday

*Disclaimer:  We have had some concern about the fact that this doesn't look like a Jersey.  Several years ago we tried crossbreeding some of our cows that were having problems with mastitis in hopes of increasing their offspring's resistance.  We crossbred 4 of our Jerseys with New Zealand Ayrshires (another dairy breed).  We have sold all of the cows from those crosses, this is a steer we kept from one of those crosses.  It's hard to tell from his color, but he is 3/4 Jersey and 1/4 Ayrshire.  He is in with our young heifers (the ones in the background) so he has company until it is time to harvest him.  Good eye, readers! Good eye!

Afraid to crack that egg?

We've all done it.  You are digging in the fridge and find a mysterious carton of eggs.  How long has that been there?  Are they still good?  Do I dare crack one to find out?  Never fear!  Here's a sure fire way to tell how old those eggs are!  

With all of the chickens running around here we sometimes have a surplus of eggs and lose track of what order they were collected in! When that happens we pull out a bowl or glass of water and give the eggs a little bath.  If they float we know they are old and need tossed, if they sink we know they are nice and fresh!

Just like this...

 The brown egg just happens to be really old, so it floats like a cork.  The white egg is fresh so it sinks all the way to the bottom.

So what exactly is going on here?  Well egg shells aren't as solid as we tend to think.  They are actually porous to allow gas exchange in case there is a chick growing inside.  Over time the dense liquid inside the egg can evaporate and shrink, allowing more air to displace the space left behind.  Eventually the egg is so much lighter that it floats when placed in water!  Obviously this doesn't happen all at once so there is a gradient of where the egg stays once placed in the water.  The freshest eggs lay right on the bottom, the oldest float to the top, and those in between - well, they settle somewhere in between the top and bottom.

Surfing around on the web you will find lots of opinions about what to do with the "floaters".  Some say toss them, some say that as long as they were stored at an appropriate temperature you can use them for boiled eggs - here at the farm we like to play it safe and toss all the ones that float.  We also try to use only the freshest eggs in things we might consume raw (like cookie dough!).

So next time you encounter those 'mystery eggs' confront them confidently with a bowl of water and you will never be surprised by that awful sulfur smell again!



For liability reasons I must remind you that suggestions from Brickhouse Cheese are not to replace safe handling practices of your food.  Brickhouse Cheese takes no responsibility for illness that might occur from any of our suggestions or recipes.

Mighty Mouser: Miss Kitty

Mmmm that was a tasty snack, got some more?

Miss Kitty is the Momma cat around here. She is the physical mother to several if our young cats and figurative mother to some of the older!  She came to the farm three winters ago.  Like most of our cats we aren't sure where she came from and assume someone dropped her off.  She was in rough shape, as we worked to nurse her back to health it quickly became evident that she was "with kittens".  Unfortunately, she chose a poor place to have them and we lost one to the cold before we could get her and them in a warmer spot.  She has proved her worth since then and become a wonderful addition to our mousing team.

Showing off her pretty tortoise shell while being camera shy.

Miss Kitty is a unique color of cat called a calico - it means she has three colors, white, black and orange.  Calicoes aren't common, and due to the required genetic combination for this color they are almost always female.  Only about 1% of calicoes are male, and of those males 99.9% are sterile.

Dad has always preferred calicoes for farm cats for multiple reasons.  The first two are kind of interconnected, calicoes are very good mothers and they are very good mousers.  Whether they are good mousers because they are good mothers or vice versa could become a protracted circular argument, but that doesn't make either fact less true.  The other reason Dad likes them is he thinks they're very pretty :)

Miss Kitty has lived up to the general calico reputation, she is a great mouser and mother - she even tries to mother cats that aren't her kittens! 

While being rather camera shy Miss Kitty is a very affectionate cat.  She is one of the first to wrap around your leg on the way to the parlor.

She would much rather give lovings than photos.

Add these traits to her beautiful fur features and it's no wonder that she made it to the rank of "Mighty Mouser"! 

Chick Update!

Remember these little guys?  

Well they aren’t so little anymore!  

These young’uns have long since graduated to a chicken house of their own and have started grazing outside with the rest of our flock!  

While they aren’t ready to lay eggs yet they will be soon.  

Exploring outside the coop!

For right now their job is to keep growing so that they are ready to contribute when the time comes!