Man Food

I have somehow caught a killer cold and Johnnycakes has been waiting on me hand and foot, well almost. This cold has rendered me useless in many respects and cooking is one of them (Tho I did muster the strength to make the lasagna the other night). While I was napping, Johnnycakes made me a real man's dinner: Meat and Potatoes.

I can't complain! The New York Strip was grilled to a medium well perfection in the back yard and the french fried potatoes had just the right crisp. We had a starchy succotash for our veggie. Delicious!

Thanks Johnnycakes for this sustaining meal. I need to rebuild my strength to beat this cold for good!

Bleu Cheese Mushroom Flank Steak

Johnnycakes has gone "all Raichlen", as in grill master Steve Raichlen, on me. He received the book "How to Grill" by Steve Raichlen for his birthday and has been his own grill master ever since. He's always been a fan of Steve's public television show Barbecue University, but the cookbook has really ignited his passion for grilling. While I don't think the steak came right out of the cookbook, it was certainly the inspiration. On a side note, I think Steve Raichlen is from Baltimore. Can anyone confirm this factoid?

The preparation for the Bleu Cheese Mushroom Flank Steak really began last night when he decided to show me up, as usual, in the kitchen. I was busy carving a pumpkin for homemade pumpkin pie filling, which is no small feat (a future post), while he decided to begin preparing tonight's dinner.

He began by slicing the flank steak in half so the meat was very thin and flat and placed the beef on top of a sheet of aluminum foil. He then seasoned the beef with salt and pepper and crumbled blue cheese. As you can see in the photo, he smeared the bleu cheese into the meat for an even flavor. He followed that by thinly slicing white mushrooms using an egg slicer and spreading them on top of the meat. He then rolled the meat together in the foil, sort of like a jelly roll.

The meat sat in the refrigerator soaking in all the flavors all day before we put it on the grill after work. He grilled the meat in the foil for twenty minutes on each side until cooked.

In an attempt to be helpful, I steamed some frozen broccoli spears and sliced sweet potato fries using a crinkle cutter. After slicing the sweet potatoes, I tossed them in extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and baked them for 40 minutes at 350 degrees and 5 minutes at 500 degrees. Unfortunately, they got a little toasty since we were preoccupied with slicing the steak. I've been burning stuff lately!

I made a tasty dipping sauce for the sweet potatoes. I prefer to dip sweet potato fries in a mayonnaise based condiment as opposed to ketchup.

Garlic Lemon Mayo

1/4 cup of Kraft Light Mayonnaise

1/4 fresh lemon, squeezed

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Combine the above ingredients. Chill for 30 minutes before serving.

As you might suspect, the dinner was delicious. You could smell the blee cheese as soon as we brought the meat inside from the grill. Unfortunately, the roll fell apart a bit when we sliced it but it was tasty, all the same.

I know Johnnycake's is always outdoing me when it comes to kitchen creativity, but can I really complain? He can be my grill master any day!

Dinner and a Draft

Normally, Fantasy Football is a point of contention between Johnnycakes and I because of all the time Johnnycakes spends watching football, researching players and stats and just generally talking football with his friends. Tonight, I actually found a reason to like Fantasy Football! Since tonight was "draft" night for Johnnycake's Fantasy League, he was anxious to eat before the fun began. I was running a little late from work, and when I got home Johnnycakes had dinner all prepared. All I did was fix a plate!

Dinner was a classic "meat and potatoes" dish which always aims to please. He seasoned the sirloin steaks in "Rudy's Rub", a Texas blend of barbecue spices, garlic pepper and salt before grilling them out back. An overly generous portion of sour cream topped the mini baked potato. All that topping was probably overkill but it tasted good! A healthy dose of steamed broccoli helped to round out the meal.

I'll tell you, I hope the rest of football season goes this well. I'll have to repay the favor by fixing him some "tailgate" treats once Ravens football and the season gets underway.

A Steak Dinner

Johnnycakes and I were in the mood for a good ol' fashion steak dinner on the grill. The weather was so beautiful here in Baltimore this evening that we decided to dine al fresco our new picnic table. It's been a little too warm these past several weeks.

We kept things pretty simple by just using up whatever flavors and veggies we had easily accessible in the fridge. I marinated the sirloin steaks in lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper for a couple of hours in the fridge.

We rounded out the dinner with steamed cauliflower, grilled mushrooms and red onions marinated in white cooking wine and olive oil, delicious fresh corn on the cob and a mayonaise pesto sauce to top the beef.

All the veggies were winners tonight and were the true stars in tonight's dinner. I decided that I like steamed cauliflower with salt, plenty of pepper and butter better than steamed broccoli. The jury is still out for Johnnycakes. He seems to prefer the green stuff. The wine flavoring really enhanced the mushrooms and onions which I seem to love anyway I can get them. The corn, from the local farmers market, was super fresh and sweet. The pesto mayo sauce was a last minute concoction. We've had homemade pesto in the freezer for a while and wanted to finish it off while trying something new. I don't think the mayo really added that much to it but it was worth a shot.

The weather was lovely and the food was tasty. What more can you ask for?

A Home-Cooked Meal

Johnnycakes and I are home from the beach. I really don't have much to say about the food we ate at the beach this time accept that we were pretty much gluttons. We are feeling pretty relaxed after 4 long days at the beach.

In an effort to not feel totally disorganized when we go back to work tomorrow, we stopped at the Whole Foods grocery store in Annapolis on our way home from the beach. We needed the essentials; bread, milk, eggs, etc. Plus since Shoppers Food Warehouse is really our only convenient grocery store option during the week, we were excited to try a different and fancy store.

We didn't go too crazy but we did pick up some fancy Ravens Brew Coffee in the Resurrection blend which reminded us of our honeymoon (http://www.ravensbrew.com/res.html) and some Silk Light Chocolate Soy Milk which our grocery store has stopped carrying.

I wanted to eat light for dinner since we have been eating like pigs for the past four days and was leaning towards sushi. Johnnycakes wasn't on the same wavelength and wanted steak.

Whole Foods has an excellent prepared foods selection and we decided on Cajun Ribeye steaks that only required us to throw them on the grill and cook to our liking. Johnnycakes also had way more energy than I did because when we got home he carved a whole in a Vidalia onion and filled the center with vegetable broth, cooking wine and parmesan cheese. He wrapped it in foil and roasted it whole. I mustered the energy to chop a yellow squash into "coins" and shred some carrots for grilling. I tossed the veggies in fresh thyme from our "herb garden" and olive oil.

Before we knew it, we had a very delicious and semi-healthy dinner on our first evening home from the beach. It was a little late by the time we ate. The clock read nearly 9 p.m. but it was nice to inject some normalcy back into our lives after four relaxing days at the beach.

Now I have to put some of those tips in SELF Dishes to the test and try and shed some lbs and redeem myself after all the vacation indulgence!