So this year Easter was HOT. Like, 88 degrees hot. I’ve grown up eating ham on Easter and I’ve even cooked ham for Easter, but this year we decided to grill out instead of turning the oven on. Best decision ever!

I had so much fun looking for cool grilling recipes to try. My hubby wanted to try shishkabobs, so I started looking at tons of recipes for kabobs and side dishes. I wanted to grill everything we ate. 🙂

I did make an exception and decided not to grill our drink. 😉

But I already shared that recipe.

I decided to use ham in our kabobs:

The ham was leftover from a spiral ham I made with an orange glaze on top. It was amazing. The pineapple is just from a can. fancy-schmancy. 😉 Just skewer the pineapple and ham and grill! We used wooden skewers, so I soaked them in water for 30 minutes beforehand.

We had 2 sides: corn on the cob with basil and sweet potato strips. Here’s my man prepping the corn:

He was a real champ – I was feeling awful (just pregnant awful, nothing more) and he did all the messy work of husking, buttering, “basil-ing” and re-wrapping. 🙂 (Those green leaf things you see on the corn are pieces of fresh basil leaves from our little herb pot.)

We had problems grilling the corn because the husks kinda burnt off.

Next time, I think I’ll try securing the husks wtih kitchen string as the recipe recommends. ha…nope, I definitely am not committed to following a recipe if I think I can get it to work another way. In this case, I couldn’t. 😉

And our sweet potato strips were pretty good. I basted them with maple syrup + honey mustard. Some recipe tip I found from Bobby Flay. (only he recommends dijon mustard, which I did not have)

As you can imagine, our little grill was workin’ overtime:

Meanwhile, my little girl and I were chillin’ in the hot sun:

She even got in her little kiddie pool during the grill-fest. She LOVES the water!! 🙂

The corn took a while to cook on the grill, but finally we sat down to eat.

For the record, I recommend having extra glaze to dip your sweet potatoes in. Definitely heightens the flavor experience. 🙂

I don’t know if we’ll make grilling out for Easter our new tradition or if we’ll go with the traditional ham-in-the-oven routine next year. What did you do for Easter dinner? Chinese take-out? Home with the family?

All in all, we had a great day together. That’s what I love about grilling – it usually means more time together as a family. And when you have a daughter as cute as mine…you’ll take all the family time you can get.

😛