It’s a good thing it’s grilling season.

Yes, during the winter months I do miss barbecued dinners, but that’s only one of the reasons that I’m looking forward to the late spring and summer months this year.

Autumn and I have decided to remodel the kitchen a little, so that means soon I will disconnect the stove so I can get to the back wall and remove the old formica backsplash.

Between painting the cabinets, refinishing the countertops and new backsplashes, we’re going to be without the stove for a while.

That means one of two things: Autumn is either going to do a lot of grilling (she’s the barbecue queen in our house), or we’re going to be going out to dinner a lot.

Either way, it’s a good thing.

We tested the barbecue this weekend with very tasty results.

Last week at Safeway, we found a couple bargains in the clearance meat section. One was two preformed hamburgers with cheese and bell peppers already included. The two patties weighed 11⁄2 pounds and the half-off savings brought them down to $3. We separated each pattie into two burgers and made two dinners out of them.

Add a homemade pasta salad and we had dinner all weekend for around $5.

The other was marinated chicken breasts. The package was just under $6 before the 50-percent off. I imagine the leftovers from that will find their way into dinner salads for a few days in the middle of this week.

Eating out

With the holidays, we didn’t get much of a chance to eat out this past week, but we did manage to sneak in a few new places.

Our Memorial Day weekend trip started with a brake job for my car in Ashland, so we took advantage of it to walk around town a little bit while the car was being fixed.

We found the cutest little bakery called the Apple Cellar Bakery on Ashland Street. While they have a breakfast menu, we decided to have a “Morning Bun” and then got two Almond Cresents to take to Sunday brunch the next day (I’m still trying to wrestle the Oven French Toast recipe from my sister-in-law, and when I get it, I’ll share it with everyone).

The Almond Cresents were amazing, so if you find yourself near Ashland one morning and have a hankering for pastries ...

The other was this weekend at Morgan’s Country Kitchen near Florence. We had been trying to remember them for breakfast for quite a while now, and decided to stop Saturday on our way to the Oregon Coast Garden Center in Waldport.

We both got the Denver omelettes, Autumn got the hash browns and I tried the home fries. It was a sizeable breakfast and the potatoes came out crunchy — the way I like them — even without ordering them that way.

I still have to go back for the homemade cobbler they advertise on the sign in front of the restaurant, which is about a mile and a half south of the bridge on the west side of U.S. Highway 101.