Steak Au Poivre with Disaronno

It had been far too long since I had made a delicious rendition of Steak Au Poivre, so it was time to pull this bad boy out of storage.  I was definitely not left disappointed. 

Ingredients:
Seasoning (I used Alpine Touch, Mediterranean Basil,  Spicy Montreal Steak, and Garlic Powder)
3 Steaks (Cut of steak depends on your preference)
Unsalted Butter 3 Tbsp
2 Cloves Garlic (Minced)
6 Package Mushrooms Sliced
2/3 Cup (3 fl oz) Amaretto (I used Disaronno)
2/3 Cup Heavy Cream
1 Tsp Tarragon

Directions:
In a Large Frying pan over med-high heat melt 2 Tbsp butter.  While the butter is melting season the steak on both side with the seasoning of your choice.  Add the steaks to the pan to cook.  Turning once for a total of 6-8 minutes for medium rare and longer if you like your steak done more.  Transfer the steaks to a plate and store in the microwave to keep warm. 
Add the remaining 1 Tbsp butter to the pan and melt over medium heat.  Add the mushrooms and garlic, saute' until softened (about a minute).  Stir in the amaretto, cream and tarragon.  Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to simmer until slightly thickened.  Simmer for about 1-5 minutes.  Turn the heat off and return the steaks to the pan to soak into the sauce.  Serve by spooning sauce over the steak onto the plate.  Enjoy!

Cook the steaks and you can also make garlic mashed potatoes at the same time

Saute' the garlic and mushrooms

Serve & Enjoy!

Orange Mint Chicken Drumsticks

I was wanting to do something with mint, and happened to have drumsticks needing to be cooked.  Viola; Orange Mint Chicken sounded delicious, and here you go:

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Orange Juice
1 tsp Orange Emulsion
1 Tbsp Dried Mint (Juiced)
Seasoning (Alpine Touch & Tarragon)
5-6 Chicken Drumsticks

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix the Oil, Orange Juice, Emulsion. and seasoning together in a bowl.  Roll the drumsticks one at a time into the mixture and place into a deep pan (I covered with tinfoil to make cleaning easy).  Once complete, pour the remaining mixture over top of the drumsticks in the pan and the sprinkle with additional seasoning.  Cook for 40-50 minutes or until done all the way through.  Serve & Enjoy!

Mix the Oil, OJ, Emulsion and Spices together in a bowl

Roll the Drumsticks in the mixture and place on a foil covered cookie sheet

Take out of the over after about 50 minutes

Serve & Enjoy!

Wine-Infused Leg of Lamb

This is an extremely easy AND extremely delicious recipe!  I am a big lover of lamb, but you could also do this with a nice beef roast. 

Ingredients:
1.5 lb Leg of Lamb (Larger if you are wanting to serve more people)
Seasoning (Garlic, Rosemary, Sea Salt)
Red Wine (I used Sangiovese)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Season the lamb and add it into an oven safe baking dish.  Pour enough wine in to come to the top of the lamb but not cover.  Put in the over for 30-40 minutes for medium rare.  Serve & Enjoy!
*If you want an alcohol free dish, substitute chicken stock. 

Season the lamb and place it in the baking dish

Add the wine and bake

Remove from oven, serve & enjoy

Burger Stuffer Trial

For my birthday my mom got me a nifty new burger stuffing tool.  With as much as I love cheese stuffed burgers I have been wanting to try it out.  Here is the recipe and directions for the delicious result! 

Ingredients:
1 lb hamburger
Seasoning (Barbecue, Burger Seasoning )
1 Egg
Cheese Slices
Hamburger buns if desired
Condiments as desired

Directions:
Put the hamburger into a bowl and season generously, add an egg.  Mix it all together with your hands.  Grab a big handful of burger mixture and pat it into the burger stuffer.  Press down to make a hollow middle in the burger.  Take two cheese slice and fold them into the hollow middle.  Press down again and remove from the burger. Shape the burger around the cheese.  Repeat for remaining burgers.   Cook in a pan on med-high heat.  Press down with a spatula to flatten some for the hamburger bun.  cook until desired level of completion (you may have to cook in several batches depending on how many burgers you created).  Serve and enjoy!

Mix up the burger, seasoning and egg

Take a handful of burger mixture and press it into the burger stuffer

Press down to create a hollow middle

Press the cheese into the center and remove from the burger stuffer

Reshape the burger around the cheese

Repeat with remaining burgers

Cook on high heat

Serve & Enjoy!

Basil Orange Lime Chicken Drumsticks

I received so many limes with my bountiful basket yesterday that I had to do something with a few of them.  Orange Lime Chicken sounded delicious, and here you go:

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Tbsp Orange Emulsion
2 Limes (Juiced)
Seasoning (Alpine Touch, Basil, Oregano)
5-6 Chicken Drumsticks

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix the Oil, Orange, Lime Juice and seasoning together in a bowl.  Roll the drumsticks one at a time into the mixture and place into a deep pan (I covered with tinfoil to make cleaning easy).  Once complete, pour the remaining mixture over top of the drumsticks in the pan and the sprinkle with additional seasoning.  Cook for 40-50 minutes or until done all the way through.  Serve & Enjoy!

Get all of your ingredients ready

Mix up the liquid ingredients

Roll the drumsticks in the marinade and then top in the pan with remains, and add a dash of seasoning

Cook for 40 to 50 minutes, remove, serve & Enjoy!

Homemade Liquid Sidewalk Chalk: DIY for Kids

My son (Liam) loves sidewalk chalk and painting, so this was a fantastic and easy way to put both of those things together.  It was really easy to make and we had so much fun.  I was a little hesitant about what it would look like when it dried, but it still shows very clearly!  Such a great thing to try!

Ingredients:
1 Cup Water
1 Cup Cornstarch
Muffin Tin
Food Coloring
*Paint Brush(es)


Directions:
Mix the water and cornstarch and then pour into a muffin tin or small cups.  Add food coloring to make the colors and stir.  Now paint.
*I suggest also taking a cup of water and a paper towel outside with you to wash your brush in between colors.

Get your supplies set up

Pour the water into a mixing bowl

Add the cornstarch

Stir it together

Once it is mixed thoroughly you can get ready to pour it into the muffin tin

Pour the mixture into the muffin tin

Add a couple drops of food coloring to each cup

Stir them together to mix the color into the chalk paint

Have fun making some of your own colors also

Go outside and start painting!

Cheer with glee at how fun it is

Draw a pretty picture

Add in some snakes (Here you can see how the chalk shows up once it is dry)

If you would like to see our past DIY activities, check them out here:

Ombre' Egg Dying

Penguin Learning Game

Kool-Aid Dyed Pasta

Cardboard Owls

Alphabet Train

Make Your Own Rainstorm

Orange Sugar Scrub

Meditation Bottle

Carne Asada: The Winning Dish!

I have to admit that this must be one of the easiest dishes that I made based on your votes.   Not to say that it takes away from being tasty in any way.  Having never made Carne Asada before, I never realized just how quick and easy it was.  The longest time is spent in marinating the dish, and the rest goes by very quickly!  Thank you so very much for your participation and your votes in deciding what I would cook for this month!  As my readers, you are my motivation for keeping this up every single day!   If you have any recipe suggestions, please feel free to share them with me and I can add them in to my monthly vote! 

Ingredients:
1.5 lbs flank or round steak
Marinade:
2 Garlic Cloves (Minced)
1 tsp Cumin
1 Tbsp Alpine Touch (Salt & Pepper)
1 Large handful of cilantro (cut thinly, stems included)
2 Limes worth of Juice
2 Tbsp White Vinegar
1/3 Cup Olive Oil
1 small Yellow Bell Pepper (Seeded & Chopped)

Corn or Flour Tortillas
1 Avocado (Peeled, cored & chopped)
Tomatoes
Salsa
Green Onions



Directions:
Combine all of above marinade ingredients and the steak in a large bowl and soak in the fridge for 1-4 hours. 
Preheat your grill (I just use my George Foreman Grill).  Remove the steak from the marinade. If you are cooking on a pan indoors, you may want to brush off excess marinade as the bits may burn and smoke on the hot pan.   Grill the pieces for a few minutes only, on each side, depending on how thin they are, until medium rare to well done, to your preference. You may need to work in batches. Remove the steak pieces to a cutting board and let rest for 5 minutes. Thinly slice the steak across the grain on a diagonal.

(Optional) Serve with warm tortillas (flour or corn). Warm the tortillas for 30 seconds on each side in a dry skillet or on the grill, until toasty and pliable. Alternatively, you can warm tortillas in a microwave: heating just one or two at a time, place tortillas on a paper towel and microwave them for 15 to 20 seconds each on high.
Feel free to add whatever toppings you would like.  I listed which ingredients I added into it, but cook according to preference.  Serve & Enjoy!

Marinate the steak

Grill it to juicy perfection

Warm up your tortillas

Serve with toppings and enjoy!

 Here are the precious winners if you are interested in checking them out! 

February's Winner: Chicken Cordon Bleu

January's Winner: Sauteed Scallops

December's Winner: Pizza Pot Pies

November's Winner: Lasagna Stuffed Manicotti

October's Winner: Pumpkin Risotto

September's Winner: Burgundy Pork 

Irish Soda Bread

This is the first of 3 blogs to feature recipes for St. Patrick's day in my house!  Tomorrow the main course will be made and the dessert will be finished up after cooling in the fridge tonight.  I have never made Irish Soda Bread before, but it was relatively painless and easy.  The most difficult part was keeping buttermilk on hand for it, the rest of the ingredients are things that you would most likely have around your house anyway if you are a baker. 

Ingredients:
4 Cups All-Purpose Flour
4 Tbsp White Sugar
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 Tbsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 Cup Margarine (softened)
1 Cup Buttermilk
1 Egg
1/4 Cup butter (melted)
1/4 Cup Buttermilk

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Lightly grease a cookie sheet (or place parchment paper down instead). 
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and butter.  Stir in the 1 Cup of buttermilk and the egg.  Turn down onto a lightly floured surface and knead slightly.  Form dough into a round loaf and place on the prepared cookie sheet.  Use a sharp knife and cut an 'X' into the top of the loaf.
In a small bowl combine the remaining buttermilk and butter.  Brush loaf with the mixture. 
Bake the loaf in the oven for 45-50 minutes (be sure to check around the 30 minute mark to see how close to being done it is, adjust time as needed).  Allow to cool for a few minutes, serve & enjoy!

Add the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, powder & butter to the bowl to be mixed!

Add in the egg & buttermilk and mix together!

Lightly flour a surface and knead the dough

Mold into a round loaf

'X' the top of the loaf

Combine the remaining buttermilk and butter

Brush it on the surface (I decided to pour the extra on top)

Serve & Enjoy (shallower cuts for the X would have made the bread not split as much)

Apple Stuffed Acorn Squash

This afternoon I was looking for inspiration on how to utilize all of the produce (mostly veggies) that I have lying around in my fridge before it goes bad.  As I was looking through recipes, I remembered that I had an acorn squash in there.  Having never before purchased an acorn squash I wasn't quite sure what to do with it and if baking it would work in the same manner as it does with a butternut squash.  I came across a lot of delicious different things that you can bake in the squash and since I knew I had apples I had a golden opportunity!  The recipe was fairly easy and delicious, just took some time to bake completely.  Enjoy! 

Ingredients:
1 Acorn Squash
2 Apples (Cored, Peeled, & Sliced/Chopped)
2 Tbsp Butter
4 Tbsp Honey (you can also use some brown sugar to make it taste a bit sweeter if you would like)
Cinnamon

 Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Cut the acorn squash in half and scoop out all of the seeds (once you no longer see anything stringy, just like with a pumpkin than you are done.)  Score the squash (make long cuts into it for flavor) and place into a loaf pan.  Get he apples ready and fill the middle of both sides of the squash.  Cover the pan with foil and cook for 30 minutes.  Remove from oven.  Combine the butter and honey and microwave to melt the butter.  Drizzle over the apples in the squash.  Sprinkle the cinnamon on top and cook for about 20 min or until the squash is soft with the poke of a fork.  Allow 5 minutes to cool and you can serve as a meal itself or you can scoop the apples and part of squash onto a plate as a side dish.   

Acorn Squash

Cut it in half

Scoop out the middle

Score the squash and place int he loaf pan

Add the apples into the middle of the squash

Cover and bake for 30 minutes

Remove from the oven and chop the apples some more if you would like

Mix the melted butter and honey together

Drizzle over the apples in the squash

Sprinkle with cinnamon and return to the oven

Let cool for a few minutes and enjoy the deliciousness!