Grilled Rib-Eye & July 4th

July 4th, a reminder of America's independence and freedom as a nation and as a people. It is a reminder that FREEDOM is certainly not FREE. Great men who went before paid a great price so that Americans can enjoy the kind of liberty that they have today. So, I pay homage to the great leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, and all those brave men and women who fought for their vision of "a land for the free" to come into a reality. As well, I'd like to thank all those soldiers who are in the battlefront defending this country and the principles it stands for. Thank you so much for putting your lives on the line. God bless you, God bless America!

With that said, I am also thankful that July 4th is a non-working holiday. It fell on a Friday so we have a 3-day weekend. Yipee!! But my hubby and I both have no family in Florida, our best friends are in South Africa (as missionaries), and gas is so crazy expensive to drive anywhere --- so we had nowhere to go!! ... LOL. Actually, that's not entirely true. We do have other friends, but we just chose to stay in the house. We had a truly lazy day; we slept in and just watched pay per view movies. I do thank God that after all these years, we still find it a pleasure to hang out with each other.

But in a true July 4th tradition, we have to fire up the grill, right? So we did that in the afternoon. For our July 4th celebration, we choose to grill rib-eyes (hubby's fave cut of meat) and corn on the cob. I made coleslaw salad and had Bush's grilling beans. We also had garlic bread. Quite a spread for just the two of us, huh?

It's such a pleasure to collaborate with Mr. J. He likes mixing up spices, and that's just what he did for the steak. And after surveying what we have in the fridge and pantry, he also came up with a steak sauce - a mixture of horseradish, mayo and pineapple... Sounds weird huh? But it came out good. I'll tell you more about it as I explain to you how he made it.

As for me, we had coleslaw mix in the bag, so I decided to make a the coleslaw salad- KFC style. I've always liked KFC's coleslaw, and so, I tried to imitate that - which I think I did a good job of. It tasted yummy. But hey, you might say I'm biased because I made it. Well, you just gotta try it yourself, won't you now? For the beans... we'll we just had to try this new product. But since it's from the can, we didn't do a whole lot except added sauteed onions and a bit more seasoning to it.

It was a nice celebration. It was like going out to eat, except that we did not spend a lot. Plus, we have leftovers in the fridge, so I don't have to cook anything for tonight. That's the way I like it! :o)

Recipes will have to follow when I get it from Mr. J..as for now, hope you had a good July 4th celebration as well.

The Last Supper

Just a few days before they leave for their 3-year missions trip to South Africa, we had the pleasure of having our dearest friends, the Logans – Kevin, Holly, Emily & Katie – join us for dinner at our home last Saturday. As in the past times, it was a joy to have them, but this particular Saturday was somewhat a bittersweet time, at least for me, knowing that we’re going to be missing these people who we’ve come to consider not just as friends, but as family.
Before I go all mushy here……….Needless to say, I wanted a special dinner for them. Alas, it was not so hard to think of what to cook because I know that both Kevin and Holly are smitten (haha!) with my hubby’s steak – the “Joe-steak” as Holly has called it to be. (Actually, Holly DID request the Joe-steak..)

So off I went to the grocery on Saturday, carefully picking out the most beautiful pieces of rib-eye steaks that I could find. Then, I made it a point to season the steak hours before grilling them, to make sure that the meat has marinated well in the spices. The rub that I used was one that my hubby mixed together himself, inspired by Emeril’s Southwest seasoning. His twist was to add about 1/4 cup of dark brown sugar to the mixture.

What goes well with steak? I bet 90% of those who are asked with this question will say “potatoes”. Well , while at the grocery, I got attracted to a bag of fingerling potatoes. They’re finger-sized/shaped potatoes - hence the name - in different colors (some gold, some red, some purple). Fingerling potatoes to me, are tastier, sweeter – pricier, but definitely worth it. And so, I grabbed that.

And then to accompany the potatoes, I also got some pencil asparagus – to be roasted, as well.

Because the steak is already flavorful as it is, both the potatoes and the asparagus need not be complicated. So I decided to do another Emeril-inspired recipe – this one I saw him do during his tv show, The Essence of Emeril. It looked so good and was very easy to do so I remembered this particular recipe very well.

The potatoes are just seasoned with a mixture of fresh herbs - sage, rosemary and thyme - then blanched, sautéed and roasted. The roasting part was my twist to the recipe, as I thought the potatoes would come out better that way.

As for the asparagus, they were sautéed in walnut oil and then roasted and garnished with toasted walnuts, of course. Again, the roasting part was my twist. Can you imagine the smell of my house as I was roasting both the potatoes and asparagus? Hmmmnn… so good!

Then ,there's one more item to the menu –Insalata Caprese (Caprese salad). This is yet another simple but very good dish. The key to this is to use fresh mozzarella (not the processed kind) and use a good extra virgin olive oil. Also, I used a mixture of tomato for different shapes – vine-riped and cherry tomatoes. A little lemon juice, salt and pepper and a chiffonade of basil leaves and …. voila!! A real pretty and yummy appetizer!

For dessert, I did a simple one - some Hazelnut-Chocolate Chip cookies from Giada de Laurentiis’ recipe (I love her!). The cookies, I would say, wasn’t as attractive looking as I would have liked them to be – but do not be deceived! They sure tasted delicious. The only change I made to the recipe was by using ½ semi-sweet and ½ bittersweet Ghirardelli chocolate chips (because I thought I had enough semi-sweet chocolate in my pantry).

It was a joy preparing this meal for our friends. As the saying goes, “ the way to a man’s (i.e. friends’) heart is through their stomach”. So, I hope this meal was good enough to remember us by! :oD

Love you guys, God bless you and the Joe-steak will be waiting for you when you get back here in 3 years! PROMISE!

Weekend Dinner

We had a busy weekend. The hubby took on his bathroom project, while I did some grocery, cleaning and laundry. Yep, multi-tasking begins at home :o) Since we were both pre-occupied, we ended up skipping lunch. Not that it mattered since we had a good brunch that really filled us up. But by 5:00pm, both of us were already starving, especially my hubby who got some work-out on his project.

For dinner, I decided to do my hubby's all-time favorite - rib-eye steak. Having done rib-eyes so many times before, I wanted a new take on it. I remembered watching Giada de Laurentiis in Everyday Italian do some rib-eye steak with black olive vinaigrette. It looked so good, so I decided to try it.

My hubby grilled the steak and he did a good job, as usual. The meat was tender and juicy - just perfect. The combination of the steak with the black olive vinaigrette came out really well. This recipe is definitely a keeper. I suggest you try this yourself.

To go with the steak, I made some savory popovers and caesar salad. This was my first time to do popovers and I would say it came out good. For me, the popover is a cross between a yorkshire and a quiche. They were a bit crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside (yeah, like mentos..hehehe). The popovers are made of eggs, milk, a little bit of flour, parmesan cheese, parsely, salt and pepper. You won't believe it, but the very thin batter did rise up a lot - thus the name. Just remember to heat your pan up before pouring the batter (Emeril's tip). This will help make the batter rise even more.

And then, we had our favorite Caesar salad. I didn't do a whole lot on this except cut, wash and dry the lettuce and put all the ingredients together. I had a store-bought dressing but I'd love to try making a caesar salad dressing from scratch one day. By the way, just a little trivia for you. Do you know that caesar salad dressing has anchovies in it??? Yep, that saltiness you taste in the dressing isn't from the salt - it's the anchovies. You would never have guessed it, right?

Anyway, to the lettuce I added the foccacia croutons, roasted sliced almonds, freshly grated, good quality parmesan cheese.

So that's our early weekend dinner. We truly enjoyed this meal.