Friday, June 22, 2012

What's Cookin', Good Lookin'?

I swear, I'm still here! Projects are coming along slow as molasses in January, so I haven't had too much to report on. But I did make this delish meal the other night and wanted to share!

Venison French Dip in the Crock Pot
I got the inspiration and majority of this recipe from one of my favorite go-to websites, All-Recipes (check out the original recipe here). I'm really trying to minimize the amount of meat I buy in the grocery store, so I decided to alter the recipe to incorporate the venison meat that we have in our freezer. We currently only have back strap, steaks, and hamburger meat, so I chose to the use the steaks. 

Ingredients
2 pounds venison steak (thawed or fresh)
1 can beef broth
1 can Campbell's French Onion Soup (condensed)
12 ounces stout beer (like Guinness)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
A few shakes of salt and pepper
1 loaf of French bread
Sliced Provolone cheese

Directions
*Place steaks in crock pot, pouring broth, soup, beer, and Worcestershire sauce over them. 

*Add garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. 

*Set crock pot to cook on low for 7 hours.

*When the meat is done cooking, remove it from the au jus and slice it up, then put it back into the au jus.

*Meanwhile, cut up the bread (cut the loaf in half long ways, then cut up each half into sandwich-sized pieces).

*Place one slice of Provolone on half of the pieces of bread.

*Place in the broiler for 1-3 minutes, keeping a constant eye on the bread. I AM SO NOT KIDDING ABOUT THIS - I left mine in for 4 minutes and burnt it to death. 

*Make sandwich with the sliced meat between one cheeseless slice of bread and one cheesed slice. 

*Serve with a ramekin 0f au just for dipping (and Zapp's crawdad potato chips ;-))

Enjoy!

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Major Kitchen Organization Overhaul Update 5: Drawer Liner

Number five on The List is "Install pretty drawer liner." I crossed it off, but I have to warn you: I'm using the word pretty extremely liberally. Let's take a moment to talk about Contact paper. You can buy very pretty drawer liner online or even at Target. But it's expensive! So I went to Wal-Mart (I know, I know...). It was there that I learned that someone is still living in the late 90s; I'm guessing it's their drawer liner buyer. She needs a ride in a time machine stat. Of all the choices, this was the best I could find:

Yes, it's pebbly
So, after spending 30 minutes in the aisle, hemming and hawing over 4 ugly options, I chose the blue pebbles. I just bit the bullet and reminded myself that this is d r a w e r  l i n e r. No matter how ugly, everything's gonna be ok. 


Silverware drawer with the "pretty" drawer liner
It's in all of my kitchen drawers now and the world hasn't ended...yet. Once I put it in, I actually kind of liked it. Shhhhh....

What do you think?

~Liz

Friday, June 1, 2012

Major Kitchen Organization Overhaul Update 4: Design Boards

Creating design boards was item four on The List. Until two nights ago, I had never made a design board. Now I'm an addict! They are so fun!! I made one for the laundry room and one for the kitchen. The laundry room design board was more fun because we're actually making some big visual changes in there. Most of the changes in the kitchen are happening behind the cabinet doors. 

Laundry Room Design Board

1. The Aesthetic Writer 2. The Quaint Cottage 3. Things That Inspire 4. Lowe's
5. Anthropologie 6. Southern Living 7. Sweet Pickins and Ana White Homemaker

Kitchen Design Board


1. Storage Glee 2. Family Handyman 3. Ask Anna... 4. Remodelaholic.com 5. Real Simple 6. Good Housekeeping
7. I Heart Organizing 8. Breakfast for Dinner 9. Coupon Connections 10. Pinterest :-/ 11. Delightful Order
I'm sorry about the couple of photos that don't have great sources. Lesson learned from this exercise: make sure there's an actual, clickable source associated with a pin before using a pic in a design board. Duly noted.

~Liz