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 Thirty-eight--Friends over for dinner

What an amazing dinner we had last night. I'm sorry I'm posting later than usual but I'm slow moving today. Our good friends came over yesterday to spend the day. We spent a couple of hours wandering around looking at various artistic endeavors on display out our Fine Arts Fiesta. We had fun explaining to our boys the point behind "punch bug" punching...it's NOT just picking a color of a car and then punching, but when you see a VW. We came back to the house and I got a couple of loaves of bread rising so that we could have fresh bread with dinner.

Around 4 pm we started getting things ready to roll. I had made a big batch of couscous salad earlier and the bread was baking. Tim got the steaks all ready and then he and the boys head out to the grill. Carrie and I set the patio table and I got the asparagus all dressed with olive oil, salt, pepper and minced garlic. For once, everything was done all at the same time. It couldn't have worked out any easier.

Steak, Couscous salad and roasted asparagus

We ate outside and enjoyed a beautiful bottle of wine. Then we enjoyed an amazing port wine. Then we enjoyed some of Tim's favorite whiskey. Then we enjoyed some tequila. Yes, it was one of those nights. The kids entertained themselves and let us adults have some "play" time. We stayed out until it was dark the mosquitoes were swarming. It really was a perfect evening shared between good friends and we all enjoyed some great food. Who needs anything more than that?

I hope everyone is having a great weekend. It's time for me to now figure out what will be on next week's menu and figure out when I want to get out of my pajamas and go to Wegmans. That might be tomorrow. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Twenty--Steak with beans and zucchini

Wow. Twenty days. That's pretty cool. I know that for the most part we are all feeling better and I'm happy because we aren't throwing our money at crappy fast food places any more. How many days left? 345. Hmmm, I don't have a problem with cooking for all of those days. I'm kind of enjoying the cooking process now. What is killing me is trying to come up with menus. Also, the cost.

Ok, here comes my rant that I've been working on for two days. Produce. I was mentally keeping track of my produce as I weighed and put my labels on my produce. Two red peppers=$4.51. Four or five small sweet onions=$6.37. My produce consisted of: cabbage, potatoes, romaine lettuce (not pre-cut and bagged), red peppers, organic lemons, avocados, asparagus, organic tomatoes, onions, organic carrots, a red onion, and organic apples. Cost for said produce: $58.40. Granted, I did get a couple of organic things. The apples were only twenty cents a pound more for the organic. The bag of organic carrots was only 2.39. What killed me were the avocados and the asparagus. Come on, asparagus is in season now. Shouldn't that be cheaper? I can't wait until our farmer's market is up and running again. It will take some getting used to with making menus and shopping lists out earlier, but I am hoping things will be cheaper. I'm also planning on buying extra in season items so that I can freeze or can them to enjoy in the off season.

Tonight's menu was supposed to be grilled tuna steaks on top of beans and zucchini but again, the cost issue made me mad. The ahi tuna was $20.99 a pound. I needed four tuna steaks and they looked to be good sized steaks and I figured it was going to cost me close to 80 dollars for tuna steaks. Uh, no thank you. I left the seafood counter disgusted. I'm thinking we aren't going to be eating a lot of fish. I didn't pick anything else up to replace the tuna and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Tim suggested that we get one of the many steaks out of our freezer and grill that up. That is what we did.

Steak with beans and zucchini

The recipe was a Jamie Oliver one and super duper simple. The cannelloni beans were just cooked with a little bit of olive oil and a clove of garlic. The zucchini was grilled and then tossed with a tiny bit of olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. It was delicious. Aidan liked the steak, but said the beans were too "beany" and he took one bite of the zucchini and gagged. Connor, on the other hand loved it all and ate most of the zucchini. Tim and I both liked it all. I can't really remember what the rest of this week holds as to menus. I'm hoping they are mostly vegetarian because I'm kind of getting sick of meat. Tonight was supposed to be tuna, but we made the best out of it. Thanks to the grill master Tim for the grilling duties again and a huge thanks to Dad B and Laurie for the most impressive grill. We are using it a lot. Happy cooking!