Kathryn Renard

Hello, everyone! It’s Romance Writer’s Weekly blog hop time. Welcome to everyone who’s hopped over from Leslie Hachtel’s blog.  This week’s fun (and delicious) topic comes from my friend Brenda Margriet.: Summer is almost here, and with it barbecuing season. Let’s share grilling recipes!

I love grilling! Okay, truth be told, I love it when someone grills for me! My husband is the person most likely to grill, but he’s a simple man with simple tastes. Steaks, burgers, dogs. And I am happy to eat them all. But, in my former life as a journalist, I had the pleasure of doing a story on renowned cookbook author and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman. He wrote my favorite cookbook, the one I use more than any other,  How to Cook Everything.
So, what did he make? Some fancy fish dish? Did he come up with an amazing new way of doing fish? Nope! Grilled pizza. It was fabulous. His recipe involved homemade pizza dough, which he assured me is super easy to make. I’ll have to take his word for it because I confess I’ve never made pizza dough. Because, I ask you, if I was meant to make pizza dough, why would Trader Joe’s be so delicious and inexpensive? My husband and I take the easy way out and use TJ’s dough. We roll out the dough balls, brush it with olive oil, season it with Kosher salt and maybe Italian herbs, and cook it right on the grates, we don’t use a pan or a stone. Our family likes to eat it fresh off the grill as an appetizer. Our eight-year-old twins love it.

I do make my own pizza sauce which is very easy. We don’t usually use sauce when we grill, just when we bake it in the oven. I take one 28 ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes (I use Wegman’s Organic), 2-3 cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tsp salt, and 1-2 tbsp of Penzey’s Pizza Seasoning (if you don’t know Penzeys, you’ve been missing out. They have terrific spices and spice blends. Penzeys.com) These are all approximations, I basically make it to taste, and you can too. The best piece of cooking advice I ever got was to not be afraid to substitute. I used to panic if a recipe called for, say, oregano and I had none, now I now it’s usually not a catastrophe. I hope you decide to try out pizza on the grill, it’s easy and really good.

As it happens, my latest book The Comeback has a romantic grilling scene between our hero, moody Navy SEAL Elijah Hart, and brilliant and beautiful Montgomery University student Maddy Cassidy. Here’s an excerpt…enjoy!

Maddy stood up and went to peek at the grill. “Mm, those look good.”

“How do you take your steak?”

“Well–done.”

“No, you don’t.”

Maddy laughed. “You’re right, medium–rare. I just wanted to see what you’d say. But what would you have done if I really did take my steak well–done?”

“Um, pretend the steaks had gone bad and cooked you hot dogs instead.”

“I like hot dogs,” Maddy said. “I’d certainly rather have a hot dog than an overcooked steak.”

“By the way,” Elijah said, “you look beautiful.”

Maddy smiled and ran her fingers through her long brown hair. “Thanks,” she said. She was wearing a blue ombre maxi–dress that she had worried was too dressy and a faded red denim jacket.

“I like the fact that you don’t pretend you’re not pretty.”

“That makes me sound full of myself.”

“Not at all.” Elijah placed the steaks on the grill. “It means you’ve got confidence. And confidence is sexy.”

Bibi made a baying sound.

“Uh–oh. I think she’s jealous,” Maddy said and leaned down to stroke the smooth fur on the top of the dog’s head.

“I think she counted the steaks, and knows she’s out of luck tonight.” Elijah said.

“Is Bibi short for anything?”

“It means ‘lady’ in Afghan Pashto,” he said.

Afghanistan, that’s where he lost his leg.

Maddy swallowed. “Well, she’s beautiful.” Maddy knew she sounded lame, but she wanted to stay out of dangerous territory. She didn’t want to bring up his service. But it was just so much a part of him.

“Thanks.” Elijah’s lips curled into a half smile.

Standing next to the warm grill felt nice on an early fall night. She shrugged out of her jacket. Her shoulders were exposed by the halter top of her dress.

Elijah’s eyes dragged up her body and settled on her face. He set his tongs down on the side of the grill and took a step toward her. He buried his hand under the hair at the nape of her neck. He brought her closer, leaned down, and kissed her.

Maddy’s put her hands flat on his chest. It was hard and warm through his cotton shirt. She kissed him back tentatively.

He pulled back and looked into her blue eyes. “I figure it’s better to get that out of the way early,” he said. “This way, you don’t have to wonder all evening if I’m planning to kiss you.”

Wow.

What had he just said about confidence being sexy? He was right. It was.

“Have a seat while I finish cooking.”

Her knees were wobbly as she walked toward the patio furniture. She was suddenly famished. Being kissed had a way of raising her appetite.

Especially being kissed like that.

Well, I hope your grilling adventures include the man of your dreams. The Comeback has a five-star rating Amazon, give it a read! But before you do that, hop on over to Brenda Margriet’s blog to check out her grilling recipes.