The Grill – Food Photography & Styling – July Challenge

Finally summer has arrived here in northern Alberta and so far it’s been a doozey.  We’ve had super hot temperatures well in the +30 degree range and my family & I are lovin’ it.

This is the 7th installment of our 12 month food photography and styling group.  I had BIG plans for this shoot, in fact  I planned my menu early in the morning, I then went to town and bought all that I needed and then I fiddled all day getting things just right.  I had some beautiful strip loin steaks and I wanted to make some bite sized stuffed mushrooms too.  My goal was to make the entire meal, except the salad, on the BBQ.  So that is precisely what I did.

I had been snooping around on  http://pinterest.com/looking for a great grilled, stuffed mushroom recipe and ended up tweaking a recipe to my own tastes, you’ll find it below.  It was an easy mixture and very tasty too, be sure to give it a whirl and let me know what you think.  To me the perfect summer meal is no other than a BBQ’d steak, baked potato, salad, mushrooms and a loaf of garlic bread.  This is the meal I set out to enjoy, minus the garlic bread because I forgot to pick one up. 

Normally I would have made a Caesar salad to accompany my perfect summer meal, but I wanted to try something new.  Again on Pinterest I had seen a recipe for a knock off of the Olive Gardens salad dressing, you know the one they serve on those ginormous salads you get as starters when you  eat in their restaurants.  I whipped up a big batch of this recipe from http://www.thesisterscafe.com/2009/05/olive-garden-salad-3 and was really pleased with the results.  I’d say it is a yummy  knock off recipe and I will keep a jar of it in my fridge from now on!

So now that all my ingredients and supper items are ready , I fire up the BBQ and start my feast.  I had set up a table and a few items in the front yard to take some outdoor pictures and give my readers the impression that I was sitting in a comfy chair in my yard, a cool breeze wafting through the air and a cold beer in hand.  Well all I’m gonna say about that is it didn’t happen.  It was sweltering outside and I was rushing about trying to use the sunlight I had to get that perfect shot, all the while drooling over my plateful of food that was getting colder by the minute….all I wanted to do was dig in to that big juicy steak and eat those yummy little mushrooms…it was all I could do to finish my pictures.

But I did, I restrained my self, took the shots I needed and headed inside to devour my supper…..and let me tell ya it was GOOD!!

Be sure to check out the remainder of our culinary circle to see what delicious entities everyone came up with.  And now lets go and check in with Kat Clark.  You can find her delicious post http://katsphotostories2010.blogspot.com/2012/07/grillin-time.html here and be sure to leaves some Love …..