Another day gone by

We watched Kung Fu Panda last night with the girls. It was hilarious and had a good story to it. I found myself just bursting into laughter quite a bit, and if there was any bad stuff in it, I didn't really notice. It was such a great movie, for me and the kids, and just plain funny.

Tonight, I made pork with mashed potatoes and baked beans. It was kind of a simple little dinner, and with the exception of Faith everyone seemed to love it. Over the pork, I just used some Olive Oil and Balsamic vinegar, thyme and rosemary, then added liquid smoke, Worcestershire sauce, Red Wine, and on half I added some hot spices, Frank's Red Hot, and what I refer to as "rooster sauce," then grilled them up a little on each side and threw them in the oven. But, while I was cooking it in the oven to heat it thoroughly, I basted them with regular ol' Jack Daniel BBQ Sauce. Of course, I added some liquid smoke to the baked beans.

Update

Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged and quite a bit has gone on, but nothing crazy.

A week ago both my kids came down with Strep throat, and I thought I was going to get it too and maybe even made myself feel a little sick... somehow. But, I never did come down with it.

Grace and Faith have really amazed me at their ability to memorize. They've been going to Awana's and they have memory verses that they have to recite and little Faith remembers almost all the verses she's memorized so far. We'll ask her what her verse is and she starts reciting a verse from a few weeks back, and then we'll say, "not that one," and then she'll recite the next weeks, and finally recite the one she needs for this week. Isn't that just amazing. Grace also has a small part in reciting a poem at school and she's got it memorized too. She said the poem to us in kind of a monotonous voice, then I asked her to add some feeling, and without hesitation she began rattling off the poem with feeling and then recited it again in a goofy voice, which reminded me of myself as a kid.

Not only is Grace doing well at memorization, but she's also doing pretty well at reading. It's so exciting to see her progress. She's at the point now where she can read to us at night before she goes to bed, and Faith likes to pretend like she's reading to us.

I love cooking, especially cooking any type of meat, and Jodi and I were watching a cooking show where they made Filet Mignon. I had mentioned I would love to try and make some one day, then the next day while I was at work Jodi bought some for me. I was so excited. After I got off work, I made it up and it was the best meat I had ever had. Ridiculously expensive, but ridiculously awesome.

On Sunday's at Church, I've been taking a class on Greek, where I've been learning a little bit about Greek and trying to understand Biblical Greek. There's so much to understand, but I'm really excited about what I've been learning about the Bible and Translation so far.

I've also been playing Basketball with a couple of guys from my church. The first game, my buddy Andrew and I were a little disappointed due to the amount of time that we were on the bench compared to other players. I guess it wouldn't have felt so bad had everyone on the team subbed off the floor at least once. This week was awesome because we only had 5 guys show up for the game, so I got play the whole game, and although I only scored 4 points, it was 4 more points than I scored last game and people actually passed me the ball this game, so I felt pretty good about it, which gave me the opportunity to make some assists as well.

After I came home from the basketball game, I was hungry. We had a little bit of steak (not filet mignon) left in the fridge and since it was getting late I figured I would have to spread it out a little bit and make dinner for everyone else too. I decided that I'd cut the meat up in pieces and dip them in a tempura batter and fry them up, kind of inspired by the Beijing Beef entrée at Panda Express. I made up a little sweet and sour sauce with pineapples and some rice and it turned out to be a pretty good meal; Grace even had seconds.

Hefeweizen Steak Marinade

I was doing a little research trying to come up with a marinade for grilling my steaks. I found one recipe that had the steaks soak in beer for an hour. I also found another that used lime juice to help tenderize the meat. I figured since I had Hefeweizen that I would use lemon - cuz that's what I drink it with. This was probably the juiciest, tastiest steak I've had in a long while.

Ingredients that I used:
Steak about 1 inch thick
1 bottle of Henry Weinhardt's Hefeweizen
Lemon Juice or a Lemon
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3 tbsp Brown Sugar
Sea Salt (Use a coarse salt or else it will dry out your steak)
Montreal Steak Seasoning
1 Pinch Italian Seasoning (mix of spices)
Butter (I used "Can't believe its not butter made with Olive Oil")

So, I marinated the steak in beer in the fridge for one hour. I added Lemon juice after the hour and let it sit for 30 more minutes in the fridge to work on tenderizing the steak. I drained out the beer and coated the steak in a thin layer of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and rubbed it into the steak. In a separate dish, I mixed 3 tablespoons of brown sugar, sea salt, Montreal steak seasoning and a pinch of Italian Seasoning. I patted that mixture into the steak and rubbed it in. I let the steak sit for 30 more minutes. I started up the grill and heat it up to 450-500 F. When I made it, I stuck the steak on the upper portion of the grill, because we had a little bit to wait for our baked potatoes to cook, I flipped the steak over after 10 minutes. After another 10 minutes, I opened up the grill and lowered the heat and allowed the steak to sit right above the flames for 5 minutes on each side. After that was all over, I brought the steak in and put it on a plate, put a teaspoon of butter (made with Olive Oil) on top, covered it with aluminum foil, and allowed the steak to sit in its juices for 10 minutes. The rest of the dinner finished right on time. The juiciest and tastiest steak with potatoes, and asparagus and it was awesome.

Today, I sliced up the leftover steak into thin slices. Sprayed some Olive Oil into the pan and heated it up over medium-high heat. After the meat was good and hot, I threw on some Mozzarella cheese and served it on bread with mayo. What a good steak sandwich... of course you could add onions and bell peppers for a Philly cheese steak, but I didn't have that stuff.