Herb-Marinated Pork Tenderloin with Grilled Vegetables

The chaos of selling/buying houses, planning for the move to Kentucky, working, etc. has me a wee bit behind in the blog posts... my apologies...but Masters Sunday, we had friends Morgan and Guy over to watch the end of the tournament and to grill some dinner. We had an open house earlier in the day so I was in search of a make-ahead recipe. Thumbing through one of my many Ina Garten cookbooks I decided on her Herb-Marinated Pork Tenderloin recipe. I followed the recipe to the letter, leaving the pork in the marinade about four hours. (On second thought I used only two pork tenderloins so I cut back on the ingredients proportionally.) The pork was INCREDIBLY flavorful. Ina says she lets them go overnight but there is so much lemon juice in the marinade that I'm sure any longer than 5-6 hours would start to "cook" your pork. I promise you that four hours was plenty in terms of packing in lots of yumminess. I also made a separate marinade for the grilled veggies. I mixed together: 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar juice of half a lemon 3 tablespoons of olive oil 1 tsp honey 1 scant tsp dijon mustard 1 clove of garlic- minced leave from 2 sprigs of fresh thyme 4-5 basil leaves, sliced thinly pinch of kosher salt and cracked black pepper I let this sit for a few hours and then poured it over the vegetables an hour or so before grill time. I used two green zucchini, one yellow, one red bell pepper and one red onion for lots of color. I cut them into roughly one inch pieces and then threaded them onto skewers before grilling. John grilled both the pork and the veggies to perfection. The pork was just medium, barely pink in the center and the veggies were tender but still had a crispness to them. I decided against a starch because we'd snacked on home made pimento cheese toasts before dinner while sipping Arnold Palmer's- a delightful combination of sweet tea, lemonade and vodka. I made my own pimento cheese in this case but you could easily use store bought. I toasted baguette slices under the broiler for barely one minute per side. I then layered a generous spoonful of pimento cheese and a thin roma tomato slice on top. I sprinkled the top with a tiny bit of salt and pepper before sticking them back under the broiler for 20-30 second or just until the top was barely bubbly. After all, it wouldn't be the Masters without pimento cheese.