Saturday, August 31, 2013

Dinner at My House? There WILL Be Meat!

Anyone who knows me well has probably heard me say, when referring to any meal, "If there's no meat, it's a salad."

Let me clarify that just a bit. First of all, I really only say that about Dinner... and probably Lunch. Breakfast doesn't count. Secondly, I actually LIKE a salad - on the side of my dinner - I personally don't want a salad AS a meal unless it has meat on it. And finally, I will even admit that I will, on occasion, have a dinner of spinach lasagna with a salad & crusty bread (no meat involved). So I know I'm contradicting myself there as well. But as a general rule - and again, only speaking for me, personally - I live by this equation:  No meat = Salad.

That being said, I'm sure you've gathered that Mr. Redeye, being the outdoorsman that he is, is quite the meat-eater as well. And he does love to fire up the grill with whatever he may have brought home from the hunt. This weekend he's headed to the Mississippi Delta for the big Labor Day Weekend Dove hunt - I'm looking forward to reaping the benefits of that in the next week or so.

My husband (aka Redeye, Red, Jim, etc.) travels a lot for work and of course, spends a lot of time at the hunting camp. So I'm usually home a good bit of the week by myself. When he IS home, chances are at least one night we're going to grill something. More often than not, that will be steak, and I certainly don't complain - he's mighty good at it. As a matter of fact, he's dubbed himself The Grillmaster, and well, I'll let him have that.

See where he burned his moniker into the grill table?



He does have a tendency to cook more than we will eat in that one sitting, but lucky for me, I've found plenty of things to do with the leftovers. I want to tell you about one I tried the other night.




Grilled Steak and Fresh Mozzarella Flatbread

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/grilled-steak-and-fresh-mozzarella-flatbread/detail.aspx


These open-faced sandwiches were really tasty! They did need a little salt & pepper, but other than that, I think the recipe is great as written. I bet a little fresh tomato would be great on them as well. I, of course, used leftover steak (part of a T-bone) that we had seasoned with our usual blend. This was a great use of the leftover steak & so simple to throw together - I'll be making them again often.

Like I said, Jim's gone a lot. So another thing I do to make dinner easy for myself when he's out - or when he needs something & I'm not home - is to freeze individual servings of various things that can easily make a meal. You can almost always find individual servings of spaghetti sauce, chili and taco meat in my freezer. Let's face it, ground beef is just so easy to work with and versatile. Did you know that a 3oz serving of lean (95%) Ground Beef only has 5.1g of total fat, 2.4g of saturated fat, and less than 95mg of cholesterol and only about 150 calories? That's better than the same size portion of a skinless chicken thigh! It's actually Good for you, folks! Even better than that, it's Tasty!

Last week I cooked a big batch of taco meat. We made Taco Salad using this recipe for dinner that night and I froze the rest of the meat for later.

Confetti Beef Taco Salad

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/confetti-beef-taco-salad/detail.aspx


Who would have ever thought that simply changing up the way you combine the same usual ingredients would make a taco salad SO much better?!?! I'm here to tell you - It was DEEE-Licious!!! I made a dressing by combining Ranch dressing & Taco Sauce. Yum!!!! I ate this three time that week! You simply have to try it.

So, as I said - If you're coming to dinner at my house, you can pretty much count on having meat - quite likely that meat will be Beef, because well, you know: Beef. It's What's For Dinner. And that's definitely OK with me.

To find lots of other helpful Beef recipes and tips, visit BeefItsWhatsForDinner.com  
#ItsWhatsForDinner

I am an AllrecipesAllstar Brand Ambassador (a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com. Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews my personal blog.  The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are all my own. 

2 comments:

  1. Would love to try the grilled steak flatbread sandwiches. Might have to steal your recipe this week. Thanks for the wonderful idea!

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    Replies
    1. Robin, they're really right up your alley! The recipe link is right below the photo. And they'd be so easy if you have leftovers from steak night!

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