New Garage Door & Cooking for March 14th

Yesterday I worked from home so The Garage Door Guy (awesome contractor, btw) could install our new garage door. This is 1 of 2 remodeling jobs that we've done to the place so far. We had all the windows redone with double pane to block out road noise and now with the new garage door it's so much more quiet inside. Here's Ron hard at work along with pictures of the old and new door.

I also wanted to cook a special dinner in honor of March 14th. If you don't know what day that is, shame on you. Hehe... Justyn requested blue cheese topped steaks and potato latke (or pancakes). I decided to up the ante by including a salad in a bacon bowl. I was a little intimidated by the menu since I've never made any of these things. It turned out fairly easy though. I made the bacon bowls first by weaving the strips over a couple aluminum pot pie cups. Unfortunately the bacon was on the thick side so they didn't come out as nice as the ones I saw on seriouseats.com.

While the bacon bowls were in the oven I prepped my room tempurature steaks by seasoning them with salt and pepper. I also prepped the blue cheese topping by mixing together crumbled blue cheese, panko breadcrumbs and chopped parsley. Onto the potato latkes to which I grated a yellow onion and three regular baking potatoes. Salt, pepper, egg and flour were added so they would stick together.

After all that, I sweated my choped shallot, onion and thyme before adding a mixture of beef broth and wine for the steak sauce. I put that to the side and added my seasoned t-bones to sear before the were topped with the blue cheese mixture and broiled for a couple minutes.

I fried up the latkes and gave them a taste. Wow! I didn't expect them to be all that good for a first time recipe. Nice sweet onion flavor with carby potatoes. Yum!

I arranged the salad on the bacon bowl/plate (they didn't hold up well due to the thickness of the bacon), potato latkes got a dallop of sour cream and sprinkling of chives and the steak got a drizzle of the sauce I had made. I thought it was way too much food, but Justyn dove in without a second though. He loved it.