MEATBO
Being the twenty-first year of The Meatwave, we don't have a lot of firsts anymore, but I'm proud to say that a couple weeks ago we had our very first no-meat Meatwave! The impetus behind this was my buddy Bryan's birthday coincided with the cookout and since he's vegetarian, I didn't want there to be anything he couldn't partake in on his day. I also aptly named the event MEATBO, or a Meatwave Eating and Teammate Birthday Occurrence.
We started off the day with these grilled vegetable tarts. I had grilled the squash, red onion, and asparagus that adorned these in the early morning, before the intense heat and humidity set in. Then I baked off some cheese sprinkled pieces of puff pastry, assembled the tarts, and quickly stuck them back in the oven to melt some of the parmesan I had grated on top. These were a great room temperature dish that folks were able to enjoy all throughout the early evening.
I had two different sandwiches as main course offerings, with this mushroom and leek panini being my favorite. I paired grilled mushrooms and leeks with a dijonnaise and fontina. It wasn't a ton of ingredients, but everything went really great together with the mushrooms providing an earthy heft, the leeks a slightly sweet oniony note, a little sharpness from the dijon, and the creamy cheese being welcomed against the crusty ciabatta.
Broccoli melts were the second sandwich and I chose these because a spot my house called Lakewood Social has a great version that pairs up the broccoli and cheese blend with caramelized onions and pickled red onions. My only qualm with the sandwich is I think it would be made all the petter with a touch of red pepper flakes to contrast with the sweetness, so I added that to my version and was left wholly satisfied.
I also cooked up two side dishes with these potato skewers with pesto coming about because my basil had gone really crazy and I needed to trim it back a lot. I thought potatoes and pesto alone sounded a bit too simple for my taste, so I added red onions into the mix and those added a nice sweetness and crunch that I think would have been missing otherwise.
My last dish was a good make-ahead one—grilled kale and red pepper pasta salad. While grilling the other veggies in the morning, I also tossed some kale and red peppers over the coals, which later got mixed with mezzi rigatoni, red onions, mozzarella pearls, toasted pine nuts, parmesan, and a balsamic vinaigrette to make a very tasty salad that was great at room temperature, but also cold since I thought a chilled dish would be the best fit on this hot day.
We get a lot of great menu contributions at each Meatwave, so much so that I stopped photographing them all because these posts would just go on forever if I still tried to feature them all. However, sometimes I get extra excited about some things and don't want to forget them, and I felt that way about this dip tray made by Adam and Cat with a smoky eggplant dip and also a roasted golden beet dip that were both fantastic. I haven't made a beet dip before, so I may just have to try one out for myself soon.
And now onto all the amazing people who made this yet another memorable Meatwave. The birthday boy Bryan gets the first shout out, blowing out the candles on a cake that I did an A-plus job writing on.
Evan was sans Meredith this time around, but we gave him the KC hat to eat his ice cream cake out of since that's the city Meredith was inhabiting on this day.
We got a great line-up here with the two dip chefs Cat and Adam along with Christina and Chelsea, who couldn't bring Ravioli this time, but I was able to stop by their place the next day and got some quality puppy time in.
We always have these loungers out, but they rarely get used, so it was nice to see Anna and Chris getting some relaxing in on them.
Chris brought along the now very big puppy Stella, who deserves a close-up even though she's in the photo above.
And I always need to end with my biased favorite Meatwaver of all time—Betty. Betty made good use of a new party addition of a 5-gallon jug for ice water so we can keep everybody cool and hydrated along with well fed.
