Honey Mustard Steaks

I was inspired by this recipe from Sugar N Spice Gals.  I wanted to make this, but discovered that I did not have any pork chops.  I did, however, have an abundance of beef steaks.  One of the benefits of buying a cow from a local farm instead of getting meat at the market ... you get steaks for the price of hamburger!

Ingredients:

• 4 beef steaks of your choice (I used porterhouse)
• 1 T butter
• 1 T olive or grapeseed oil
• 1 c thinly sliced onions
• 4 to 5 cloves of sliced garlic
• 1/2 c roughly chopped mushrooms
• 1/3 c honey
• 2 T mustard (yellow or brown for a bit more heat)
• 1 T worcestershire sauce
• A handful of fresh chopped parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste

Make It:

1. Salt and pepper your steaks and sear them for a few minutes on each side.
2. In a large skillet, heat the oil and butter over medium to medium low heat.  Add onions and saute for about 3 minutes.
3. Add garlic and saute for another couple of minutes.  Then add the mushrooms.  Saute the veggies until your onions are translucent.
4. Stir the honey, mustard and worcestershire into the veggies.  
5. Add steaks to the skillet mixture and simmer until they reach your desired doneness.
6. Add the parsley at the last minute.  Top each steak with a bit of the veggies when you serve them.

Here is an illustration from Simply Recipes that helps you know how done your steaks are with out cutting into them.

Easy Cheesy Garlic Bread

This is by far my favorite way of making homemade garlic bread!  In my pictures I am demonstrating how I made some quick garlic toast for lunch to go with my soup.  You can use sandwich bread, a loaf of french bread ... I have even used left over hotdog and hamburger buns!

First, set your oven to about 400 to 425 degrees.  (depending on how your oven bakes, mine is pretty much spot-on so I bake at 400).

Place your bread on a baking sheet and drizzle it with oil.  I use extra virgin olive or grapeseed oil.  Bake until it's toasty.

Next, chop a handful of fresh parsley and peel a clove of garlic.

 

 While your toasted bread is nice and hot, rub generously with your clove of garlic.

Place your bread back onto the baking sheet and sprinkle with your favorite shredded cheese (pictured is provel) and the chopped parsley.
Put it back in the oven until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Experimenting With Cake Mix - Take 1

I decided to bake cupcakes tonight. After watching several episodes of DC Cupcakes on Netflix, I was craving dessert! I wanted to do something different though. They had all of these wonderful flavors on the show, of course I was not going to be satisfied with a plain jane vanilla cupcake!

Initially, I was planning to substitute the oil with strawberry puree...but then I added oil on accident. Argh! So, I ended up substituting half of the water with strawberry puree. The recipe turned out fine, they were moist and flavorful. They did not, however, taste like strawberries ... just vanilla. I did have to take about 4 minutes off of the suggested baking time.

So, the cupcakes tasted good even though they ended up being just vanilla.  Next, I pulled out my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe!  You can find it here, at Glorious Treats.  I wanted to make the strawberry flavored frosting, but only had about a teaspoon of puree left.  So, I halved the recipe and added the little bit of puree.  It had just a hint of sweet, strawberry flavor.  Not too bad.

I am going to try this again.  Next time, though, I will substitute the strawberries for the oil and add more strawberries to the frosting!  I guess if I had enough puree to substitute all of the water, the flavor might have been stronger.  My plan was to cut out some of the fat though, so substituting for the water doesn't help with that!