Steak and Potatoes

*Disclaimer: When I started this blog I said I’d post once a week…then the school year started. So I am adjusting my plan and committing to blogging once a month. My hope is to be able to do it more than that, but I don’t want to lie to you. That said, Charlie and I have in fact been eating the last couple of months, and more often than not we cook together! So this is a meal we cooked awhile back…enjoy!

I was prepared for a lot of things to happen post-wedding,  but I was not ready for how many times I’d be asked”How are things different since you got married?” or “What’s it like to be married?”. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not bothered by the question, I just wasn’t ready for it. Ask me what my dress looked like, or how the food tasted, or how many people attended the ceremony, and I have no problem describing it for you. I put a lot of thought into all of those things, but the feeling of marriage? I don’t know. It feels good?

I never feel like that answer is sufficient, but if you know me, you know that I rarely express a lot of joy about anything except a new outfit or an Oreo blizzard, but that doesn’t mean I’m not feeling joy.  So when I say it feels “good” I mean it. Being married to Charlie is really, really good. I imagine over time as we make more decisions together (buying a house, having children, etc) we will start to feel the differences, but in month 4, things are still pretty status quo. That said, being married to Charlie is great, and I feel like to legitimize my feelings I need to identify  some differences since I changed from Miss. to Mrs.

Here are 3 things that have changed since we got married:

We’re in this for the long haul. Charlie and I agree that marriage is forever. So since we got married, really since we got engaged, that sense of permanence has impacted the way we relate to each other. When you’re dating, arguments are an opportunity to suss out what the other person believes or how far you can push them. We’re done with that now. We don’t agree on everything, in fact, we don’t agree on a lot. But where with past relationships a disagreement may have lead to to chat with my girlfriends about what constitutes a “deal-breaker” and ultimately a break-up, there’s now a determination to find a solution. Now, to Charlie’s credit, 97.2% of our spats begin with me. But to my credit, 99.5% of the time he realizes I was right.

I do the laundry. When we were dating, I would always tell Charlie I would find a way to contribute to our relationship. It was like a cute way of flirting and acknowledging all of the things he did for me. He cooks, he cleans, he usually says “yes” to whatever I ask. One time, I promised that I would be the one to do the laundry. I was joking. You know, the kind of “joking” you do when you want a man to fall in love with you even though you have no intention of following through. Now that I’ve got him to marry me you might think I’m off the hook. I got the guy, so why keep lying pretending that I will contribute to our household? Well, turns out I love him so I now I’m stuck doing the laundry. The joke is on me. 

Call me Mrs. This one is self-explanatory. I officially changed my name so I’m working on getting used to that. As a teacher, I waited until to the summer to avoid the confusion on my students’ faces as they tried to reconcile the change. However, there’s  this cultural phenomenon in my school, where students don’t actually use my last name. I’m just “Miss” to them so my new last name doesn’t really matter. Eight female teachers in a room? Don’t worry…they’ll just repeat “Miss” until the right woman answers. I still find myself looking for Osborne on sign-up sheets, or accidentally using my maiden name when I meet new people. Change is hard after 25 years, but I’ll get there.

So three things isn’t a lot, but that’s sort of my point. My life is obviously different as a married woman, and I love Charlie more everyday. But our life together feels natural and I think means we’re doing it right. I married Charlie because I loved the relationship we had before our wedding, not for the one I hoped would begin after the ceremony. If after our wedding things were suddenly different, I think I would feel cheated!  We live together now, which has obviously added some new elements to our relationship, but even that has come pretty easily. I made sure Charlie knew just how messy I was from the start, so the piles of clothes on my floor come as no surprise to him. (Mommy, I’ll go clean up right now!)  We still say “I love you” every night before we go to bed, but now he’s laying next to me instead of saying it over the phone. We still argue, usually about the same things again and again, but at the end of the day we love each other.

There is one more thing that hasn’t changed. My favorite thing Charlie cooks for me is steak. In July, we celebrated our two-monthiversary. Now while I recognize that a monthiversary isn’t really a thing, I really wanted steak. So I reminded Charlie that I had gifted him with 60 days of wedded bliss, and in exchange I wanted him to make me steak. The rules of this blog required that I cook as well, so I I made Twice Baked Potatoes. Yummmmmmm.

Twice Baked Potatoes

• 2 Baking Potatoes
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 Tbsp kosher salt

For the potato filling:

• 1/2 cup 2% milk
• 4 Tbsp of butter
• 1 cup of shredded cheese
• 1/4 cup of sour cream
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp of pepper
• Chopped green onions

First, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Pierce the potatoes with a fork  a couple times and drizzle olive oil on top of each potato. Then, top them with some kosher salt. Bake them for about an hour.

After the potatoes cool cut them in half. Then scoop out the inside of the potatoes and put it in a separate bowl.  (I used a melon baller to scoop it out so that I wouldn’t tear the flesh too much. If you are more gentle than I am, you can probably just use a spoon.)

2 potatoes = 4 twice baked potatoes but even with the melon baller I managed to ruin one of the skins…

Mash the potatoes in the bowl along with the sour cream, milk, butter, salt, and pepper and about half of the cheese. I left the potatoes a little bit intact so they would have a little more crunch.

Scoop the mixture back into the potatoes skins and top with the remaining cheese and green onions. Bake at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes or until you see the cheese is nice and melted.

Steak

• Two Steaks
• Vegetable Oil
• Salt & Pepper
• As Much Butter As You Want
• Garlic
• Rosemary
• 1 small onion
• Mushrooms
• Red Wine

The way we make our steaks are fairly simply. Sear them super hot in rosemary garlic and butter, and if necessary finish off in the oven.

Pre-heat a cast iron skillet coated in vegetable oil until the oil begins to smoke a little. Add the steaks (always season with salt and pepper ONLY), rosemary, garlic and butter. Depending on the thickness of the steak give each side three to four minutes until a nice crust has formed on the outside.

After flipping the steak begin basting it in the delicious rosemary/butter/garlic that has since melted and started getting together for a party. Another 3 to 4 minutes on the second side and you’re ready for the next step. If you have a thick cut (filet mignon) you can finish the steaks in the oven at 350 degrees. In our case, with our New York steaks they were good to go. In either case, once they reach your desired temperature, LET THEM REST! We let ours rest for about six minutes.

For the onion, mushroom, red wine sauce (the pan in the back): Pre-heat a non-stick pan. Melt some butter and begin cooking down the mushroom and onions. Once the onions and mushrooms begin to soften add about 1/4 cup of a good tasting red wine. Reduce the heat and let the red wine begin to dissolve. Once the red wine is reduced, salt and pepper to taste and pour all over your steak!

We also made the asparagus from our fried chicken post. We aren’t big vegetable people…can you tell?

The meal was a very real, delicious way to celebrate a fake monthiversary and acknowledge all the amazing things (new and old) that make our relationship good (like Oreo Blizzard, good).