My First Grillout As A Visitor

Today is a landmark event for this blog.  For the first time I am conducting a grill session outside the comfort of my own home (which was an adventure in an of its own).  I am at my parents' house in the Washington, D.C. area for my nephew's baptism, and The Bride and I wanted to cook dinner for the family.  We had initially decided to make a couple of lasagnas and to keep everything low-key.  When we learned that one of our guests was a vegetarian, I saw an opportunity to try a vegetarian recipe from The Guide.  I had been eyeballing the Portabello Burgers With Roasted Peppers on page 329 for some time, and today it seemed appropriate.  

Another first for me was to be able to use a food processor.  I have one (sort of), but I don't use it very often because it is a pain to clean and I like my immersion blender so much.    In went most of the tapenade ingredients.

A few seconds later I had a finely-chopped start to my tapenade, and was able to add the remaining ingredients.  I did choose to omit the anchovy fillets as I wanted to be respectful of the vegetarian.

Portobello mushroom caps have a serious set of gills on the underside, but if you gently scrape them with a spoon they will come right off.  This will help with taste, texture, and appearance.

You have have seen me roast peppers before on this blog, and this was no different.  Here they are, fresh off the grill, covered in plastic wrap so that the blistered skins are steamed off for easy removal.

At this point I am nearly completed.  The caps came off the grill, I had peeled and cut the peppers, and put the final touches on the tapenade.  At this point I was also trying to turn four different directions at once as I had many other things I was trying to pull together for the rest of the dinner.

I'll be honest...I never tried it.  I had two pieces of lasagna, mac and cheese, and grilled garlic bread.  I was far too full to assemble a "burger" and try it.  The vegetarian, however, did tell me that it was truly delicious.  I'll take her word for it.  I apologize for not being able to go into much detail, but tonight was a little exhausting.