Happy Birthday Dad!

First things first......Happy Birthday Dad! I won't say how old he is, but he definitely doesn't look as old as his birth certificate says he is :)

Tuesday is my cleaning day (vacuum, mop, etc....) and I, finally, started working on Grandma's present. It needs to be done by next Thursday, I think I can do it.

Just a reminder: February I am planning on blogging about how Mike and I will live on a food budget of $150 dollars. Also look for more crafting stuff in February since I just found out I will probably be having house guests the entire month of March (everyone's spring breaks lined up perfectly so that no one overlaps for more than a day so everyone can come down and enjoy our cute little house and the wonderful Florida weather!).

I don't know why I pulled out some ribeye steak to thaw last night, I really didn't have a plan for it. After extensively searching my go to cook books, I didn't find anything I was in the mood for. So for the first time in a while I popped on over to the Food Network site and typed in ribeye steak. These recipes by Ming Tsai (who I love to watch on PBS Create) caught my eye. Granted I only had one type of pepper, but we still did his basic rub. I also changed up the aioli a bit (no dijon and half olive oil, half canola oil) and drizzled the tomatoes with the aioli. As for the panko fries, that was a no go since I do not have panko breading. Since we were having steak, I searched steak fries and picked this Rachael Ray recipe. I used the oregano, but I had no thyme. Instead I used some seasoned salt I got from Tastefully Simple. Ming had suggested to use the aioli as a dip for the steak and fries, so we did that. I didn't take alot of pictures today (sorry, I forgot!), but here you go:

It came out surprisingly good. Having a simple salt and pepper rub on the steak let me really taste how good the steak was. And the steak fries were super good too. In her recipe, Rachael says to cook them in high oven. I cooked them for 30 minutes at 450 flipping them half way through and re-applying olive oil, oregano, and seasoned salt.

Thats it for today....sorry! Please enjoy this picture of my friend with one of our research geckos on her thumb......she loves geckos!