Help is on the way...I hope!

So, you know you have finally arrived at adulthood when you spend your snow days chatting with your girlfriends about the price of daycare and that dreaded question, "What's for dinner?" Menu planning seems to be a common problem, at least among my friends. It's the same ol' thing over and over and over. You know what I am talking about...those same five meals you cook week after week after week. No one in your family gets excited about them, but as my dad would say, they "fill an empty spot" and you don't have to think too much about them, so you continue to cook them over and over and over.

It's time for a dinner time revolution! Your "I'm so sick of this, I'd rather eat Spam!" might be my, "Wow! I never thought about that!" So, let's share recipes, menus, meal plans, etc. and see if we can't all help each other out of that dreaded dinner time rut.

My hope for this blog is for us to share recipes...some we are sick of, some we love no matter how many times we have them, some we've never tried at all. So, I will try to update regularly (who knows how often that will be...maybe once a week) and you respond accordingly. So...let's get started...first task...share the recipe/meal that you make so often you don't care if you EVER have it again! (Just respond to this post...we'll see how that works.)

Here's mine:

Cubed Steak

3 cube steaks

Dales marinade

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

2 Tablespoons cooking oil

*you may also cook sliced onions and/mushrooms if you would like to. I usually cook those before I cook the steak and remove them from the skillet before adding the steak.

About an hour before you want to have dinner, put steaks into ziplock bag and cover with Dale's marinade. Refrigerate until ready to cook.

Mix flour and seasonings in a shallow bowl. Mix egg and milk in a separate bowl. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Remove the steaks from the refrigerator. One at a time coat with the egg mixture on both sides and then with the flour mixture. Repeat. Place in a single layer in the skillet. Cook approximately 5 minutes on each side or until outside is brown and crispy and the meat is no longer pink. (I will confess that I always cut these open to be sure!) On a good day, I can pull off a pretty decent gravy by removing the cooked steaks and then browning about 3 tablespoons of flour in the skillet and then slowly adding about 3/4 of a cup of water. I make no guarantees on that one.

Cubed steak is very inexpensive and most people like it. It is a good meal...the first 200,000 times you eat it!

Now, it's your turn!