Grilled Steak with Garlic Butter

It was about a month ago that Eric got home to find a backhoe digging a big hole in his front yard and our friends Dan and Jenn came to the rescue, inviting us over for dinner. Dan was going to fire up the grill and cook... something, but he wasn't sure what. Eric on the other hand had a great rub ready to go and really wanted to try out making some flavored butters. It was a match made in perfection. Eric brought the rub and the butter and Charisse and Jen handled the rest.

Using a fancy butter on a well seasoned steak is almost always going to be fantastic. The butter melts along the steak as you eat it, almost as an after thought to the flavors in the steak and the rub. The rub gives the steak a kick going down but doesn't hide the natural beef flavors and doesn't overwhelm the other courses. If it tastes like your shooting Tabasco sauce, your doing it wrong. Choosing the right flavored butter is key, and should be picked to be a counter point to the rub. The sweeter the rub, the more liberties you can take with the butter, without the butter becoming the main attraction.

The Hostess "Cup" Cake

The Hostess Cupcake. Iconic. Nostalgic. Slightly Waxy. Some of the many descriptions that come to mind whenever someone mentions those little individually wrapped cream filled chocolate cakes. Forget the Twinkie, Hostess even alludes to it being the single most popular snake cake in history, something most people who were young up anytime in the 70's all they way through the 90's can probably attest. Packed in millions of school lunches and probably millions of adult lunches as well, the Hostess Cupcake with its squiggly swirl of vanilla icing on top was for many people a generational snack. Eric's dad loved the things and growing up, so did he. Charisse's mom also has a soft spot for the little chocolate cakes, and mentioned something to Charisse a few days before her birthday. So after some searching around, Charisse hit up the idea of making her own version of the little cake for Monica's birthday and our friend Susan brought the candle. It's a good thing that Charisse decided to make the cake... bigger, because it was a huge hit and darn tasty. 


Two home made cakes with a marshmallow icing in between. Charisse changed it up a little bit going with the marshmallow frosting on the outside as well, accented with a chocolate ganache. The little flip flop didn't seem to bother anyone as the cake disappeared almost before we could get pictures of it. Lesson for all the food photographers out there, when you make a cake for a party, make two. One to photograph, one to eat. If the cake turns out right and you try and telling everyone to wait while while you take pictures you may end up with a shortened life expectancy. I mentioned this candle earlier, but I figured I should tell you a little about it and why it was so neat. This candle, called a "Musical Birthday Cake Candle Sparkler Fountain Flower" is a big plastic lotus flower that when lit erupts into a shower of sparks and fizzlesticks (who knows what a fizzlestick actually is, but it seems to be an accurate description) then the flower opens up and has a candle on each spinning leaf while it plays Happy Birthday. Really was pretty spectacular. Hit the break for some pictures of it and the cake! 

Watermelon Salad

Exotic salads seem to be an obsession of Charisse's lately and this one definitely fits into the exotic salad category.  This was a very unexpected combination of flavors, from the sweetness of the watermelon, to the tart lemon juice we were a bit skeptical at first.  But Charisse thought it would be a "pretty" salad and we went ahead with our concoction.  A few tips for this salad that we discovered: use seedless watermelon, it makes the cleaning and cubing process quicker.  Also this salad NEEDS to be kept cold, although it still tastes great, when it starts warming up, the watermelon and cucumbers start giving up the water in them and your salad starts to look like soup.  So I would suggest keeping in the fridge until ready to serve or if you are having a buffet style, chilling it over ice.  

Fiesta Burger

In the spirit of summer, we've been trying to do as much "summertime" food as we can; burgers, BBQ, fruit and ice cream. Today we've got one of our own burger creations: the Fiesta Burger! We'd been hoping to have a taco night, but found that we were missing some key ingredients (taco shells? tortillas? Nope, didn't have any of those). So we had to think about what else we could do with ground beef and cheese and had one of those "duh" moments. Eric still wanted tacos though and Charisse said something along the line of "why don't we do a taco burger?" Taco Burger? Had we lost our minds? Probably, but the idea sounded so crazy it might work. Or we'd be ordering pizza. Thankfully the pizza guy stayed home and we dug into these burgers like... hungry sharks going after... fiesta burgers? Okay analogy fail.


These burgers are a great, unique summertime treat. Covered in Guacamole and a Cilantro Lime Sauce, theres a light almost tangy flavor that really helps the taco flavored meat patties. Best served with a strong Mexican Beer or our personal recommendation, a well made Margarita on the rocks. 


Hit the break for the how-to and of course more pictures...

American Flag Cake

Last weekend was the 4th of July, so we had some friends over for a BBQ potluck and Charisse prepared a nice cake, with a colorful surprise! The idea of a red white and blue cake is something Eric's sister Elaine discovered around memorial day, and Charisse applied her own cake recipe to produce this patriotic dessert. We tried to snap as many pictures as we could, but believe you me, this cake vanished faster than anyone could say "Mmmm, let me have another slice". Let us know what you think and hit the break for pictures and recipe!

Meatball Sub

Just about every day, Eric walks by the Subway in the train station in San Francisco. Every now and again, there is something cooking (okay, something being heated in the microwave) that smells so good it ruins Eric's commute, because he sits on the train, hungry. That something is the meatball sub. Now granted, Subway's try at it doesn't taste nearly as good as say the Amato's sandwich in Saratoga but a meatball sub smells like a meatball sub no matter who makes it. And it always makes Eric hungry.

So the other day he gets home from work and found his thought process going something along the lines of "meatball sub meatball sub meatball sub meatball sub say hi to wife meatball sub meatball sub meatball sub say hi to dog meatball sub meatball sub stop drolling meatball sub meatball sub". Needless to say convincing Charisse to whip up a batch of meatballs and some sauce was a pretty easy sell. We'd like to point out that you can also serve this sauce and meatball combo over noodles, it makes a dish called "Spaghetti and Meatballs".

Skillet Cornbread

We hope everyone had a happy 4th of July weekend, we know we did! We've been busier than normal lately, so posts have been hard to put out on time, but things are back to normal, and have we got some great things for you. Later this week we'll show you how to make a good meatball and turn that into a meatball sub and we'll have a watermelon salad (we've done a lot of cooking lately). But today, we've got another One Pan Meal, Skillet Cornbread. Okay so it's not a whole meal, but it is pretty easy and tastes great. Just about everyone on or from the Western US  is familiar with Marie Calanders, home of many awesome pies and the 4PM early bird special. Marie Calanders is also famous for their cornbread. We both remember growing up on Marie Calanders cornbread and pie, which is a winning combination on its own! As everyone knows, we love our cast iron skillet, so we jump at the chance to cook with it anytime we get one, and firing cornbread in a skillet just adds that special something.

Hit the break for more pictures and recipe!