Memorial Day!

Memorial Day weekend with friends or family at the cabin means it’s time to break out the recipes and get a menu together. We believe that for the hosts to enjoy the weekend as much as their guests you must keep it casual with everyone pitching in to prepare meals and cook together.

We always plan for extra food because face it, if the weather is beautiful more company than planned are likely to show up and there’s never anything wrong with delicious leftovers. Just make sure you have plenty of refreshments to go around. Stay hydrated, people!

First up we have Fish Tacos with guacamole and Grilled Mexican Sweet Corn! We used halibut for our recipe, as well as sour cream (Top the Tater Fiesta is a personal favorite), salsa, Big Rick’s Chipotle BBQ Sauce, and shredded cheese (obviously).

We like to keep breakfast on the simple side by picking up the Sunrise Blend fruit bowls and a couple of Butter Cinnamon Pull Apart, coffee and a Bloody Mary bar.

Fresh Brats are a favorite for lunch and we are really enjoying the new chicken brats from our chef’s meat case in two flavors Cheddar Fajita Chicken or Philly Cheesesteak Chicken, absolutely delicious! Our meals always include delicious sides from the deli such as the Calico Beans or Texas Caviar, and the Homestyle Potato salad is always a hit.

One meal of the weekend usually includes a slow-roasted meat such as beef brisket or a pork shoulder. Order an untrimmed whole (in the bag) beef brisket from our meat department, to slow roast, you don’t want to have the fat trimmed off or you will lose the moist texture.

About an hour before you are going to begin cooking the meat, place brisket on a baking sheet. Remove the brisket from the cryovac bag and pat dry with paper towels, combine the spices, we keep it simple with a dry rub of coarse ground black pepper (1.5 to 2 tablespoons) and (1.5 to 2 tablespoons) of kosher salt and season the entire brisket, we like to sprinkle a small amount of paprika on as well. Let the brisket stand for approximately one hour. We lightly brown the brisket on the stove top and then transfer to the prepare grill or roasting box, place the brisket on the grill with the fat cap on top and slow roast at a temperature of between 200° and 225° until the beef reaches an internal temperature of 195 to 200°. This will take several hours but so worth the wait! (Pro tip: enjoying a tasty beer will make the wait more bearable).

We slice it thin and serve on buns and serve it with fresh sweet corn or this delightful sweet corn salad recipe. Our bacon jam recipe is a mighty fine addition to serve on the brisket sandwich, as well as plenty of other recipes.

Did somebody say Bacon Jam? Yup, we thought this would be a perfect thing for the weekend, as there are a number of different foods to pair it with. We decided to make some gourmet gouda grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, to go with our mighty fine homemade condiment. We had slices of bacon to go with the sandwiches as an alternative, since the bacon jam had quite a kick to it.

Burgers always make for an excellent meal plan, so Laura and I decided to make a Chicken Ranch Burger. This is one of our favorites and its fairly simple to put together. If you’re in the mood to spice things up even more, add a little of that bacon jam to your burger!

Lastly, no weekend/day/meal is complete without dessert, so for this occasion we made a fresh rhubarb cake! It’s a fairly simple recipe, though we still had to recruit (bribe with wine) some help from a friendly aunt (who also provided the fresh rhubarb). If you don’t have a friendly aunt with rhubarb, we have some available fresh in our produce department!