Light Delights

Hey, y'all

All the recipes that I'm cooking today are just perfect light delights

for eating out of doors. I'm doing a wonderful grilled red pepper scallops

that's going to be succulent over that wood fire. And then I've got some beautiful big tomatoes

and I'm going to stuff them with a wonderful light chicken salad

And then my friend Carolyn's Jell-O cheesecake. And believe it or not, it's kind of on the light side, but delicious

And then an assortment of fresh fruits, and I'm going to be topping them with a tangy honey dressing

So what y'all say, let's get to Michael's Smokehouse and start cooking

Today I'm going to enjoy foods that, you know, are not real heavy

I got my frying pans in the house. We're doing away with those today

and I'm just gonna be cooking on this grill. And I'm gonna be starting with a wonderful dish

grilled red pepper scallops. And these are real easy to put together

I've got my scallops. I'm gonna put the zest of one lemon

which is really gonna be nice when that flavor gets into that scallop

And now I'm gonna put a few tablespoons of olive oil on them

I'm gonna put some fresh pepper. and just a little house seasoning

And my house seasoning is one cup of salt, a fourth of a cup of garlic powder

and a fourth of a cup of pepper. Don't those look good

All right. Now I'm going to wrap these in a roasted red pepper

I've got some on the grill now. You can see they're just roasting away

See how that skin turns black on them? That's perfect. We want them to just kind of char away

All right, now I've got some that I've already roasted, and when you take your red peppers off the grill

you want to drop them down in a paper sack, Make sure that top is sealed real good because they're going to continue to steam

And by them steaming in that bag, it's going to make it easier for us to get those skins off

So let's come in here and see that? The skin is loose on them, and it just peels right off

Look at that. All right. So we'll want to cut our bell pepper this way so that our strips are long enough to go around these sea scallops

All right. Now, if you don't want to go to the trouble, you can use a jarred roasted red pepper

But I just love the idea of roasting them off myself. It, like, sweetens them

It's as good as candy. I'm using wooden skewers that I've soaked in water

so that they don't catch a fire. Okay. All right

Look how good that looks. Mmm. So look at those

Does that not look wonderful? All right, now, before I put these on the grill

I want to give them a light spray. Just a light cooking spray

So let's come on over here. Oh, you can see our peppers are roasting nicely

I'm going to just slide those out of the way so I can drop the scallops on the grill

Now, you don't want to cook these too long. We want to just cook these

until the transparent look of a scallop is gone. Hear that sizzle

It's like it's screaming. Ow Ooh Oh these are gonna be absolutely delicious When we come back I gonna take those off the grill

and show you what they look like completely ready. And I'm gonna be making a tomato stuffed with chicken salad

And then I'm gonna be making my friend Carolyn's strawberry gelatin cheesecake

So I'll see you back in the smokehouse in just a minute

Hey, y'all, welcome back. I'm just taking the scallops off the grill

and they look just delicious. These look perfect. You can look at them and tell that the transparent look

that scallops have is totally gone. They look wonderful, don't they? So let's see what we've got

Look at that. You can see that it's still moist inside. Mmm, the scallop and the roasted red pepper

are just a perfect match. Oh, am I going to enjoy eating those

All right, let's move on to our next dish. Tomatoes are in season right now

Look at these beautiful big tomatoes that I have. I'm going to mix up a wonderful chicken salad

to stuff inside of these tomatoes. All I'm going to do is just cut the top

off of my tomato. And then I'm going to come in here with a paring knife

and just kind of loosen that up, Make a couple of cuts this away and that away

And then I'm going to take an ice cream scoop, and I'm just going to scoop the tomato out

Now, you can save this tomato and use it in other dishes

and they'll lend a delicious flavor to another dish. Okay, so now I'm going to take my tomato

just going to sprinkle it with a little salt, Put a little pepper down in it

And I'm gonna turn it upside down because the salt that I just sprinkled in there

is gonna pull the excess moisture from the tomato, and I'm gonna let it drain right there

because the next thing we need to do is to make our chicken salad

Now, I'm gonna use maybe... Come on up here, bird. Fly on over here

All right. I'm going to use about two cups of chicken meat

I want to make sure that I remove the veins and the skin and the bones and the cartilage

We just want that wonderful, succulent chicken meat. I'm just going to coarse chop our grilled chicken

All right. That looks like two cups. Now to my chicken, I'm gonna add a half a cup of diced red bell pepper

and one and a half tablespoons of a diced purple onion. And I've got one can of whole kernel corn that I'm gonna drain

And if you've got some fresh corn that you can cut off the cob

ooh, use it because that will make it extra good. Okay, so now we're going to make our dressing

And I told you earlier that this is going to be a lighter dressing

Now you see this little bit of drop of mayonnaise I'm putting in here

Alright, so in goes the mayonnaise. And I'm going to add a tablespoon of Dijon mustard

And then I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of lemon juice

straight from the jar. All right, now to this mixture I'm gonna add a fourth of a cup of olive oil plus

two tablespoons. Okay, that looks nice and I'm gonna add a couple of tablespoons of

of chopped flat leaf Italian parsley. And this is gonna give our dressing some color

So looking good. Looks pretty, doesn't it? Okay

And then I'm just gonna pour our dressing over this and let it coat all of our chicken salad ingredients

Look how good that does look We got our meat and our vegetables all in one dish

Oh, God. That was heavy for a lefty. Okay. So, my tomato is ready here

And I do love Boston leaf lettuce. I just adore it. I love the way it feels when you bite down

It's almost velvety. Mmm. So I'm gonna stuff each tomato with a piece of Boston leaf lettuce

And then I'm gonna pile it into my tomato. Isn't that pretty

Just that easy. Our tomatoes with chicken salad are ready. Mmm. This is just a nice, lighter bite

Just perfect for a warm summer day. In fact, it's so nice out here, y'all

I'm even gonna do the dessert out here. My friend Carolyn's Jell-O cheesecake

and a wonderful fruit salad with a honey dressing. You don't want to miss this one because it is really, really good

Welcome back, y'all. I'm out here in Michael's smokehouse

just cooking us up some wonderful light delights to eat when he gets home

This next recipe that I'm going to share with y'all was shared with me by one of my old childhood friends

Her name is Carolyn Crum Cundiff, And the recipe is a strawberry gelatin cheesecake

Now I'm gonna start by using two small packages of sugar-free strawberry gelatin

All right, so I'm gonna take one cup of boiling hot water

and I'm gonna pour this over our gelatin and dissolve that. Now I'm just dissolving that gelatin in that boiling water

and now I'm gonna add one cup of cold water. All right, now I'm gonna put this in my blender

Making sure I get all of that gelatin out. Okay. Now to my gelatin, I'm going to add one 12-ounce carton of light cottage cheese

Whoa. Okay. So you can see where I'm going with this, can't you

I'm just going to blend that until it's smooth. that looks so good I could just like stick a straw down in there and start drinking

all right now I'm using two pre-made graham cracker crust so I'm going to divide our gelatin

between our two pie shells. You see how thin that is? But it won't be thin for long

after we put these in the refrigerator and let them set. In fact, I've got some that's already ready

in the refrigerator. Just gonna sit these right here. All right, I'll put those in the refrigerator in a minute

But in the meantime, I wanna pull out some that are ready

Look how good those look. I'm going to top these pies with fresh strawberries

You know, it really doesn't matter how you place them. You just want to put them in, you know, a nice layer

Carolyn and I, growing up, our parents were best friends. So every weekend, you know, our parents saw each other

they grilled out and had cocktails, and I can see them all together right now just laughing

and just enjoying being in each other's company. And Carolyn and I were just obsessed with jackstones

She and I would sit around for hours on end playing jacks

So when I was writing Just Desserts, I said girl you gotta give me a recipe for the cookbook

I've got to have something from you that represents our childhood So she said I've got a wonderful recipe for a light gelatin cheesecake

She said I would really love you to have that recipe for your dessert book So this is the recipe I love you Carolyn thanks I taken another packet of sugar strawberry gelatin

I've added one cup of boiling water and one cup of cold water to this

and now we're gonna pour it over our strawberries, and it's gonna congeal over those

and they're gonna be beautiful laying in that gelatin. Mm. So I'm just gonna divide this equally between our pies

Okay. Mm! Doesn't this look good? All right, now all we have to do at this point

is put this in the refrigerator. We're gonna let it firm up. When we come back, I'm gonna show you the finished product

But I'm also going to be making another fruity dish, a wonderful, yummy fruit salad with a honey dressing

So y'all don't go too far. All right

Hey, y'all. Welcome back. You know, I think I'm fixing to make the easiest dish of the day

It's a fruit salad with a honey dressing. Now I've diced up one green apple, one banana, and one avocado into our bowl

I'm gonna add one drained 11 ounce can of mandarin oranges. And aren't they pretty? They look like little tangerines

And I'm gonna add a fourth of a cup of raisins. And then I'm gonna add a fourth of a cup of chopped walnuts

Now you can use any kind of nuts that you want. Macadamia nuts would be delicious in this

All right, now step on over here with me because I'm going to make our dressing

To make our dressing, I'm going to need one teaspoon of lemon juice

and that's probably a teaspoon. I'm going to add one and a half teaspoons of poppy seeds

I'm going to add a fourth of a teaspoon of Dijon mustard

a fourth of a teaspoon of salt, a third of a cup of honey

Oh, look at that honey. When I use honey, I always think about my little grandma hires

She loved honey. All right, now to this, I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of orange juice

And then I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of canola oil

And I'm using canola because it's nice and light. All right, now you can see that I've put this in a screw top jar

because I want to shake this dressing up. And to just make sure I don't get it all over me

that there's no leak in my lid, I'm going to wrap it up in this towel

so if it leaks, it'll get on the towel and not all over me

All right. Now I'm just gonna pour some of our dressing over our fruit

Gonna gently toss it. Mmm. I'm not gonna be able to keep my fingers out of this fruit salad

All right, so let's come up here. And I'm just gonna put it on my platter

And I'm just gonna pile that up just like that. Oh, my goodness

This is a great ending for light recipes that are really enjoyable for the outer doors

Mmm. It's so good. My girls are gonna love this. Mmm. So let's go over to the table and talk about some of these wonderful light recipes

I've had such a great time with y'all out here today in the smokehouse

You know, it's almost been therapeutic for me to be out here with y'all, just you and me

And I tell you what, you've got to try these scallops with the roasted red pepper

They're so good. And the tomato stuffed with chicken salad, it's tangy but doesn't weigh you down

and it's got a lot of flavoring. Of course, the fruit salad with that honey dressing

But you know the dish that I enjoyed most preparing today was my friend Carolyn's Jell-O Cheesecake

And if you really want to put this cake over the top, you can smother it in whipped cream

Mmm. And it's time for me to go, y'all. But as always, I send you love and best dishes

from my kitchen to yours