As promised, I'm here today to tell you about that dinner fiasco the other night. It all started because I had some cube steak (That's what we call it down here in the south) in the freezer that needed to be cooked up.
Now, I think I should give you a little background at this point. You see, me cooking cube steak is about like me cooking pork chops. I can't do it. For some reason, the dish always turns icky! Don't ask me why, I don't know. It just does.
Anyway, I bought this cube steak a while back in hopes that I would make a wonderfully delicious meal. So it sat, and it sat, and it sat in my freezer until I couldn't stand the sight of it any longer and broke down and pulled it out.
"I'm going to cook you up and you will be yummy!" I says to the package of little buggers.
I actually found a recipe that I thought,
hey, if I alter this and change that it just might work. Mind you, this original recipe was for pork chops, which if you remember, I'm not so great at cooking up in the first place. But I was determined, dang it!
So that night I set out to make the devine dinner for my family! Cube Steak in a Mushroom sauce, Mac 'n Cheese, rolls and Strawberry and Spinach salad.
First, the pieces of cube steak were HUGE! Way too big for my pan. I should have opened the package, cut all the steaks in two and then froze in seperate batches. I mean to say that these pieces of meat were huge would probably be an understatement. But at this point it was too late. I had to cook them all. So I started out on my mission.
Step 1: Cook the steaks.
This took way longer than it should have. Because they were so large it took me twice as long to cook them. Not only were they large, but they were thick as well.
Step 2: While steaks are cooking get water on for Mac 'n Cheese.
This was easy. Done!
Step 3: Cut up strawberries and mix dressing.
While working on step three, I was running back to step 1 to check the steaks and flip the steaks and put more steaks in the pan to cook.
Step 4: Assemble salad.
Well, this took longer than I thought. I cut up all the strawberries and feed some to my daughter and then I had to mix the dressing. I actually started to get into a groove until... I smelled something that didn't smell quite right. Then the lightbulb went off.
ARGH! The steaks are burning!!!As luck would have it, the steaks themselves did not burn, only the pan. But that pan was to be used for the mushroom sauce. And I can't serve up burnt mushroom sauce. Oh no!
When I say burnt, I mean the pan was black! In no way, shape or form could I use it. I had to pull out another pan and make the sauce. So there was no goodness to be used from the pan from the steak seasonings.
The sauce did mix up ok and after that the rest of the meal came together fairly quickly. I had three large pieces of cube steak that were not put back in the sauce to simmer. There simply wasn't enough room. And surprisingly enough, the dish turned out more than just edible, it was pretty good. My hubby said he'd eat it again if I made it. I thought the main dish was a little bland. Maybe because I had to cook the sauce fresh without using the seasonings from the steak pan. Dunno.
The absolute best part was the salad though. And I will let you know about that little dish in an upcoming post. Until then, Ta!
While we were there we visited Mercier Orchards. What a wonderful place. On our first visit, I purchased a small jar of Bunch O' Berries Jam. Well, that didn't last long. Oh my word at how much goodness had been squeezed into that tiny little jar.
Thankfully, a friend of hubster has family in Blue Ridge and went for a visit. This kind soul brought me back, count them, three big jars! Oh yeah. That's right!Now we're enjoying this yummy goodness again and this time, maybe, it will last until our next trip to the orchard!
