Day Seventy-four--Steak with Whiskey Cream Sauce

Wooohooo, this was a great dinner. It was fairly easy to make, but some planning and organization was needed. Here's what we had:

Steak with whiskey cream sauce, perogies and green beans with a balsamic glaze

Ok, so here's how it went down. Let's start with the perogies. We've been missing perogies. I just can't buy them anymore because they aren't organic. They are full of preservatives and I just can't do it. Tim's cousin Emily posted last week that she had made some and they were successful so I bummed the recipe off of her and made them. I made the dough first thing in the morning so it could chill and be easy to work with. After lunch I boiled the potatoes and sauted onions. This all got mashed together with some fresh grated cheese. This was my filling. I rolled out the dough and made circles with a cup.

Then I put a little bit of filling in the each circle and folded the circle over, crimping it closed with a fork. I was worried that the dough would tear and the filling would ooze out, but it was really forgiving and was a lot of fun to work with.

Once they were all done, I put them in the freezer so they would be easy to work with when it came time to cook them. Then I worked on the green beans. I snipped the ends of them and quick boiled them. Then I made the glaze. It involved a couple of pieces of bacon. After the bacon is cooked, I fried up a chopped onion in the grease. Then I added a tiny bit of brown sugar and some balsamic vinegar. It bubbled and got thick. This is when I poured it over the green beans. I think it was supposed to be served warm, but I wanted a cold green bean salad so I put it in the fridge until dinner.

Fast forward to dinner time. I made the whiskey cream sauce first. Again, it was really easy to do and went really fast. It was onions cooked in a little butter and then some whiskey added to it. Stand back when you pour the whiskey in. Whew. Then you are supposed to add beef broth, but I didn't have any so I used mushroom broth. Then you are supposed to add cream but I only had half n half. It all worked out and was delicious. All I had left to do was cook the rib eye steaks. I cooked two of them and really only needed to cook one of them. The kids didn't eat the steak and Tim and I ended up splitting one of them. I have one steak left over in my refrigerator right now.

This dinner was a great dinner. The meat was so tender and the cream sauce on top was so delicious. We were all fighting over the green beans and the perogies were an ultimate success. In fact, I had so much filling left over that I have dough in the fridge again so we can make perogies for lunch again. I'm watching a neighborhood friend this week and I figured the kids would enjoy something different from peanut butter one day. Plus, it's a fun project for them to build their own perogies.

I think that is all I have for now. I need to work on menus for next week and get my shopping list ready. I'm hoping our hellish heat wave will be over.

Day Forty-eight--Pork Chops

I think we should call tonight's dinner a cowboy dinner. It was a damn fine cowboy dinner. It was another one of these "almost didn't happen" nights again though. The plan was that Tim was going to work on the loaded potatoes mashed potatoes and I would do the green beans and the pork chops. I was going to start it all off with making home made chocolate syrup so it could cool off before dessert. My plans were shot when I was in the process of writing the recipe of the syrup down and my laptop just flipped off and had no power. I know the battery was full, and at first I thought maybe we had a power surge, but it was unplugged. Instead of putting Tim on the potato duty he was put to "fix my laptop" duty. Needless to say I'm glad it's still under warranty and it's being shipped out this weekend to get fixed.

Back to dinner:

Fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and garlic Parmesan green beans

Ok, so here is how it went down. I made the chocolate syrup first. Aidan actually was a huge help and did the stirring for me while I threw a few red potatoes in a bowl and chucked them in the microwave. While Aidan was stirring, I also chopped up some garlic and fried a few pieces of bacon. Aidan got bored and I had to finish up the chocolate syrup. No problem, it was almost done. When it was done, I pulled it to the side and let it cool. I checked on the potatoes. I hardly ever use my microwave. I've never cooked anything in it. For the most part it's used to heat up leftovers. I had no idea how long it would take the potatoes to cook. Come to find out it was just over 15 minutes. While the potatoes were still cooking, I cleaned up the green beans and snipped the ends off of them and got them to boiling. Then it was time for the pork chops. These babies were beautiful. Again, they were from a local farm and were good for you pork chops. I dredged them in a mixture of flour and seasoned salt, and black pepper and then put them in some hot canola oil to fry up. At this time, Tim came and said he didn't know what was wrong with my laptop. I know it's bad because Tim can fix anything. He took over the frying of the pork chops and I tended to the green beans. I drained the beans and cooked up some garlic and grated Parmesan cheese and then threw the beans back into the pot and stirred them together. While I was doing this, both Connor and Aidan came in and offered to help. I let them make the potatoes. I had already cut up everything and all they had to do mash and mix. They threw in the butter, chopped bacon, sliced green onions, sour cream and some of those french fried onions, you know, like the ones you put on top of a green bean casserole. Amazingly, everyone was done at the same time. I plated up and we all sat down and enjoyed. I invited Mr. Jack Daniels to meal with me with some coke. Thanks Deb for the coke. We don't ever have soda anymore but Aidan was begging Debbie for some soda this afternoon and she sent some over.

The dinner was a huge success. All four of us loved every bit of it. Aidan even ate the green beans. He was funny too about the onions in the potatoes. He said, "the onions add a nice texture to the potatoes." Pretty funny coming from a boy who generally hates anything crunchy in his food. He's growing up. I have to say that I think my favorite part was the mashed potatoes. They tasted exactly like loaded potato skins that you would get from a restaurant as an appetizer. Dinner was ended with a small bowl of vanilla ice cream from our favorite dairy with some pretty tasty chocolate syrup. Yee-haw! This meal is a keeper!

Until tomorrow, happy cooking!

Day Forty-four---a couple of days later

Sorry I've missed posting the last couple of days. I'm picking back up today as day forty-four because it's my blog and I can do what I want. =) Friday we spent the day at Hershey Park. It was a long day. It was a fun day. Food-wise we did alright. We didn't get home until close to 8:30 and we decided to order a pizza from a "new" place. It was new to us. It's actually within walking distance of our house and the pizza was delicious. The only excuse I have for Saturday is that I didn't have any food in the house and I didn't have my menu made out. It took me a long time to get those darn menus done too. Have I mentioned that I don't really like making menus out. I don't. Part of my problem is that I feel like I have to keep things new and fun for the blogs sake. In the past we had a few meals that we just rotated through each week. It's been fun trying new things, but it's not fun trying to figure out what to do. I did get my menu done, but not in time for dinner on Saturday night. I had a plan though. I wanted to go out to the farm and see if they had the meat that I needed before I went to the grocery store on Sunday. We have our freezer full of beef, but I needed chicken and sausage this week. I am getting it at the farm now because they are selling meat from another local farm and it's pasture raised and near organic meat. So, we went out to the farm and I got all the meat that I need for this week. Then we went to Wegmans and ended up just getting subs for dinner. We had two nights of eating dinner at like 9 pm. Oh well.

We are back on track today. We had a back yard bbq for the neighborhood. Everyone pretty much brought their own protein to grill and they also brought a dish to share. I made couscous salad again. I also tried a new recipe for green beans that rocked! They will be back again later this week. Well, here's the picture:

Cheeseburgers with chipolte steak fries, green beans and couscous salad

The burgers were very good. I mixed some chopped onions and garlic in the beef. I also added some HP sauce and Worcestershire sauce, an egg and a handful of breadcrumbs. Tim grilled them up and he melted some amazing cheddar cheese on the top. I made the sesame seed buns and these buns were better than my last batch. I need to keep that recipe.

It was a little hectic this afternoon. Thankfully, I was organized. I went out did errands and did the rest of the grocery shopping this morning. I got home at noon and immediately had to start the dough for the rolls. Once that was done and rising, I made the couscous salad. When that was done and chilling in the fridge, I made 2 dozen cupcakes. While those were baking, I separated the dough into 12 buns and let them rest for a bit. Then I made buttercream frosting for the cupcakes. Tim frosted the cupcakes for me while I egg washed the buns and sprinkled seeds on them. They baked and I got potatoes ready to boil lightly before they got dressed with olive oil and a chipolte rub. When those were done, I mixed the beef mixture to get ready for Tim to make them into patties. Finally I got the green beans ready and cooked. It all came together by 4 pm and our neighbors started showing up and I was ready to crack open the Magic Hat summer brew.

A nice evening was had by all. I am tired and ready for bed. Until tomorrow, happy cooking!