Filet Mignon with Creamy Goat Cheese Sauce

So Joe and I are pretty poor.  I mean we pretend we're not because we get "paid" our loan overpayments at the start of each semester so we can do things like eat and pay rent.  Now that things like my impending graduation and the necessary period of at least two months between me graduating and taking the NCLEX, and then between taking it and getting my scores so I can apply for jobs are becoming more of a reality we're trying to be a little more budget-conscious.  But then again, you still have to celebrate now and then!

I took a standardized test yesterday morning that I did quite well on (yay!) and then had our syllabus day for one of my summer courses and realized that apparently that is our ONLY day of class other than presentation days (double yay!) and that I have 13 days before I even have to go back to school for anything (triple yay!) so I was in a very good mood.  I texted Joe on the way home to grab some cans Old Style at the store because it is a day for day drinking and corn hole (a.k.a. Bags, as they call it in IL)!  But that's for another post...

After some lazy afternoon drinking, we headed over to Trader Joe's to pick up some groceries.  Several beers deep, we picked up a successfully strictly-to-the-list bag of groceries and headed home to cook!  As I had reason to celebrate and Joe is on spring break (that lucky duck!), we splurged a little on some filet mignon and schemed about a sauce to go on top. Bleu cheese is a little overpowering for such a scrumptious steak, so we opted to invent a goat cheese sauce (Hannah- you'd be in heaven, I swear).

Our final menu consisted of:

Steak

Creamy Goat Cheese Sauce

Green Beans

Roasted Potatoes

Okay so at this point I segue over to Joe for the meat expertise, cause it's basically a foreign language to me.

Irish Soda Bread

This weekend was St. Patrick's day, also known as my anniversary, so it's a pretty exciting weekend in our house!  In honor of our mutual Irish heritage I decided to try out something totally new - Irish Soda Bread.  Joe is especially fond of dense breads, and this is super simple and takes very few ingredients so it was destined to be a great new addition to our recipe book.

I based my creation off of this recipe.

The Ingredients:

1 cup buttermilk - OR - 1 cup milk and 1 tsp vinegar stirred together and left to sit for 10 minutes

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 Tbs sugar


Mix dry ingredients, stir in buttermilk.

If it's too sticky, add some flour.  If it's too dry and won't stick together, add a dab of milk.  It probably won't be perfect.

You can also add exciting things like nuts or dried cranberries or more sugar, but it was my first time so I went basic.

TOO STICKY!!!  Add more flour. 

Now that looks more like bread dough.

Don't forget one of the essential essential elements of Charm Hour- your drink of choice.

And you gotta go Irish on St. Patrick's Day if not always.