Once while in college, my boyfriend and I and another couple had gotten together to grill some steaks for dinner.  After my friend and I chatted and had a drink or two, the guys brought the finished steaks inside.  As I was cutting into mine, I spotted something green on the steak.  “What is this…grass?”, I asked.  After a lot of man-laughing, they told me they had dropped one of the steaks on the ground.  “Why’d you give it to me?”, I said.  Of course, the gentlemanly thing would have been for one of them to eat it.  But what did they do?  They just wiped it off and put it back on the grill and let whoever get that one.  I took my boyfriend’s steak and gave him the grassy one.

One of the mistakes I made with my husband was to tell him this story – thinking it would be a funny anecdote for one, and also to just let him know he would be eating any of the grilled meat that hit the ground.  Now every once in a while after a few bites of our grilled meat-du jour, he’ll ask me to check my piece for grass.  Ha ha.

Since our grill sits on the deck, I was sure this Herb-Marinated Loin of Pork from Ina Garten’s most recent cookbook,  Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics was grass-free.  The rosemary did look a little like grass, but the taste was nothing like it.  There’s nothing like a great marinade to soak into your grilled meat and add fabulous flavor, and this one is great.  Easy and delicious.

I also baked up some Outrageous Brownies for the Barefoot Bloggers‘ second recipe of the month, chosen by Eva of I’m Boring (she’s really not).  I chose to halve the recipe just to make myself feel better about the amount of butter/chocolate/sugar I was using.  These were very rich and chocolaty with a little mocha flavor (from some coffee powder).  We had to try them after they came out of the oven, even though the recipe says to let them cool and refrigerate them before cutting.  I just scooped some into bowls and they were seriously delicious.  I think I liked them better that way than after they were cool, actually.

Make sure to check back and I’ll have the yummy vanilla ice cream recipe for you…