21 | March | 2013 | And That's All She Wrote!

You guys HAVE to know the secret to the absolute BEST way to do filet mignons! It has NOTHING to do with the grill, either. *shock* Actually, any of my “foodie” friends may already know this but it’s something new to me and I feel compelled to share 🙂 I teased you with a pic on my hubby’s birthday post.

This is a revised recipe I got off of Pinterest. If you haven’t tried cooking steaks this way, PLEASE do yourself a favor and give it a whirl. I PROMISE you that all your family and friends will think you’re the bomb! You know how you go to your favorite steak house and the steak is better than anything you could grill, ever? Yeah, this is how you do it!

Restaurant Style Pan Seared Filet Mignon

Ingredients:

4 8 oz filet mignons

4 tsp sea salt

8 tsp freshly cracked black pepper

2 sticks butter

2 TBSP olive oil

4 cloves chopped fresh garlic

2 TBSP dried parsley

2 TBSP dried thyme

Zest of 1/2 lemon

Directions:

Take 1 stick of butter, softened. Mix well with garlic, thyme, parsley and lemon zest. Form into a log and chill. Generously season each side of the filets with salt and pepper (approximately 1 tsp of BOTH salt and pepper per side – TRUST me, it sounds like a lot of salt but the salt acts to form the crust on the steak and you really DO need it). Heat the other stick of butter and the olive oil in a CAST IRON skillet to a SCREAMING HOT temperature. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sear the filets in the extremely hot skillet for about 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until a nice brown crust forms. While the steaks are searing, continuously spoon the butter from the pan on top of the steaks. When the steaks are done searing, place in the preheated oven (center rack) in the same cast iron skillet. Cook for 6 to 8 minutes or until the temperature reads 135 degrees (medium rare). During the last minute of cooking, take that delicious herb butter that should be chilling and glob a generous dab of butter on each steak. The butter won’t be melted ALL the way when you’re ready to take out of the oven. Let steak sit for 5 minutes before you serve. The juices will stay inside the steak this way.

*135 degrees is medium rare. Obviously not everyone likes the cows to be still mooing so cook a little longer if you don’t like that much red. I think if you’re going to spend the money on filet mignon, you shouldn’t over cook it. You’ll want that tender flavor. 135 degrees is PERFECT for us 🙂

What a week! Can I just tell you that I’ve realized, this week, that I’m INDESTRUCTIBLE? If this week didn’t kill me, NOTHING can. Can I also share with you that one thing I’ve FINALLY gotten through my head is that I should NEVER EVER EVER get too complacent or self assured especially when it comes to my kids? If there’s ANYTHING you’ve ever learned from me, this should be it. I want you to know that when you FINALLY feel like you’re doing something right and that you have at least ONE kid who seems to be rolling right along on the right track, you should probably dig a little deeper. Or maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe it’s a VERY good thing to live in denial. I wish I still lived there! I’ll have to tell you about my little angel later.

Right now, I want to share with you some other fine points of my week 🙂 My husband took the week off so we’ve been bonding. It was his birthday on Tuesday and he likes to take some of his vacation time to chill out and regroup. He COULDN’T have known all hell would break out during this week. *snicker* It all actually worked out very well that he was here though, because he kept me from killing the teenage munchkin. See, I’ve told you all before that there ARE no accidents! It wasn’t a coincident that he took off on the week that I find out about all her shenangins. I think that was a GOD thing. lol Thank you God for saving my lil precious “angel’s” life… I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself had I REALLY wrung her neck the way I wanted to! lol

Here’s how we celebrate birthday’s around here. We do whatever the birthday boy wants to do. Ben LOVES his guns and he’s wanted to get me at the shooting range for a while now. We shot his 9mm, his 357 magnum and the one I personally love shooting, the little bitty BB type gun… a 22.

I can’t say I’m really a fan of guns. I’ve had some pretty nightmarish experiences when I was young. I was the victim so I have PTSD when it comes to hearing gun shots. The only way to sweeten the pot and GET me to the range was to tell me that I could learn to protect myself from those zombies that I’m positive I’ll have to learn to kill during the zombie apocalypse! lmao I’m a HUGE Walking Dead fan:-)

Here’s the mess of guns we used to kill those zombies!

Here’s the 357 magnum that kept jamming up. We would have been up a creek if the zombies got too close and we had to depend on THIS thing working. Time to find a gunsmith 😉

I’m actually a really good shot (most of the time). I’m not sure how smart my husband is for wanting to teach me to love guns. Wise people have told him that this could be dangerous for HIS life. I have to agree. My temper and a gun? Maybe NOT the smartest idea he’s had.

He had to eat this cake all by himself because he’s the ONLY one who likes coconut. Coconut is one of the only foods that will make me gag. Oh and fish. I can’t even bear the smell of fish. But it turned out pretty, huh? It’s a 3 layer, made from scratch coconut cake.