One of the (many) benefits of living in the Bay Area is nearly year round good weather. Yes, we have a rainy season and yes, we certainly get some hot days. For the most part, however, we are able to spend time outside daily without being overcome by weather extremes. This is vitally AWESOME if you have kids (our four kids use our backyard as an extension of our living room), pets (our dog spends half of the day outside) and just want to take advantage of fresh air (thank you California).

Thanks to the aforementioned good weather, we use our grill A LOT. This summer we really upped our cooking game with a smoker from Green Mountain Grills. We chose the Daniel Boone Wifi model due to its ease of operation and usefulness of the built in WiFi; we can control and monitor the grill through an app that is available in iOS and Android – it is fairly easy to use.

Another thing we love about our grill is how quickly it heats up. We can decide “Hey! Let’s make shrimp and veggie kabobs tonight” and within a few moments the grill is ready for action. THAT ease of use turns spur-of-the-moment cooking plans into a tasty reality. Because let’s be honest, I don’t want any “hangry” kids in my house. The Daniel Boone has something called Sense-Mate, a thermal sensor which constantly monitors the ambient temperature inside the grill. Also, when weather turns cold, the sensor kicks the grill into Turbo mode, so you don’t have to wait as long for the grill to heat up. Bless that Sense-Mate :).

I have really perfected my grilled and smoked shrimp. It’s pretty simple: take raw shrimp, already peeled but with tail on and thaw. Then, drizzle GENEROUSLY with honey and spoon lots of minced garlic all over the shrimp. Salt and pepper and toss those beauties on the grill and get ready for deliciousness! You can also drizzle a little fresh lime over them before and after you cook them but I forgot to do that this time…

Sophie and I only eat seafood (bring on ALLLLLL of the grilled shrimp please and thank you) but the rest of my family happily loves all meat and chicken. We are able to lay out everything we want on our dinner table in the grill with room to spare. It’s a great size!

Every year before the kids go back to school, we designate a night for a back to school feast. The kids actually call it a feast; it started out as a dinner but then we gave each of the kids the opportunity to include one of their favorite food items in dinner and it quickly metamorphosed into an all out FEAST. This year there was tri-tip, tilapia, grilled shrimp, bell pepper and onion kabobs, stuffed peppers (I did these in our oven instead of the grill but I’m certain that would also taste amazing), mashed potatoes, BBQ meatballs and asparagus wrapped in bacon. All for six people. This back to school feast reached new heights!

I’m on the lookout for more delicious grill recipes so if you’ve got one or many please send them my way; comment below!

*Thank you to Green Mountain Grills for sponsoring this post. We love our grill and are happy to be partnering with GMG.