What's for dinner?

STEAK & POTATOES! Kinda...

Tri-Tip with Santa Maria Style Seasoning and Mashed Garlic Cauliflower

This dinner was great, quick and easy, and very tasty! We season the tri-tip with South Seas Tri-Tip Santa Maria Style seasoning (buy it here or check your local store), put it on the grill and let it cook.  The Mashed Garlic Cauliflower was almost just as easy, cook cauliflower in water, drain, season, and blend (try not to blend too much, it will lose the right texture)! I used this recipe, but I accidentally forgot the butter...Oops!

Nutritional Info come from MyFitnessPal

Serving Size/Nutritional Info*: 

6 oz of Tri-tip, 

1 cup of Cauliflower Mash

Grillin' Week #1: Flank Steak

To bring our weekly dinners back to something more familiar we initiated grillin' weeks.  Similar concept to chopped, the mystery item was the protein.  It was my week to make the selection for Jessica and Scott, and after browsing the meat fridges at Costco, I settled on some nice pieces of Flank Steak!

Scott and Jessica were more than happy to take this challenge... I mean, it wasn't jolly ranchers and pepper jack cheese!  See their Chopped week here!

Scott did the flank steak 2 ways, spicy dry rub and a balsamic Worcestershire marinade.  He grilled both of them up on his beautiful charcoal/gas duo grill.

 

To accompany the steak, they grilled corn brushed with a garlic butter sauce, garlic bread, and my favorite a summertime salad (perfect timing it was the first day of summer!).

Jessica's Summertime Salad

Fresh Strawberries

Fresh Blueberries

Blue Cheese

Candied Pecans

Mixed Greens 

Brianna's Home Style Blush Wine Vinaigrette Dressing

This salad was to die for, I actually had seconds right from the salad bowl (sorry Scott & Jess for my manors, but I couldn't resist).

p.s. I want this... Isn't is so cool/cute for your herbs!!! They bought it the beach art show in Santa Barbara on the weekends.

A Very Happy Anniversary!

Andrew and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary this last Saturday. As huge fans of Top Chef and Food Network, we became familiar with Nyesha Arrington, a southern California chef. Nyesha was one of the selected chefs on Top Chef Texas (Bravo). She was a great chef, but her time on the show came to an early end when she was paired with a disastrous chef who took her down with her. Soon after her departure, Wilshire restaurant reached out to Chef Hunters (Food Network) in search for a new executive chef. As each of the chefs in the competition were introduced, Andrew and I said wait a second, that is Nyesha from Top Chef! Nyesha fought hard in the kitchen and was offered the position at Wilshire. From that time Andrew became a huge fan of her. She proved herself and her talent in the online after competition for dismissed Top Chefs on Last Chance Kitchen  and she held her reign for 5 weeks. With all that said Nyesha has proven she is a very talented chef. To celebrate, we decided we would take that trip to Santa Monica, meet Nyesha and taste the food from the chef herself at Wilshire Restaurant.