beef stroganoff

One of my husband's favorite meals is Beef Stroganoff. The recipe comes from my mother-in-law and it's a little long and looks complicated, but it's actually not too difficult. You'll probably want to read through the recipe once or twice before attempting though because timing is key for this recipe.

Beef Stroganoff
cook time: 70 minutes
servings: ~4

1½ pound round steak
3 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon paprika
4 tablespoons butter/margarine/oil
½ cup chopped onion (optional)
10.5 oz beef bouillon (about 1½ cubes prepared as directed)
2 teaspoons dry mustard
2 teaspoons Worcestershire
¼ teaspoon marjoram
½ pint (8 oz) sour cream (full-fat sour cream is better for this recipe!)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Trim fat from steak, cut into julienne strips, dredge in flour and paprika. Heat oil in saute pan and brown meat. Move browned meat to dutch oven or ~1 qt. covered casserole dish. Set aside.

3. Saute onion, place over meat. Add bouillon, mustard, marjoram, and Worcestershire in pan. Simmer for a couple of minutes. Pour over meat (reserve 3 tablespoons for rice).

4. Cover and bake for 55 minutes.

5. Add sour cream with 5 minutes remaining.


1½ cups uncooked rice
3 cups boiling water
3 tablespoons bouillon

6. Boil water, meanwhile putting the uncooked rice in a separate dutch oven or ~2.5 qt. covered casserole dish. It's good to add a little oil and stir it into the uncooked rice (enough oil to coat the rice - about 3 tablespoons) or else it will stick to the dish when it's done baking.

7. Add bouillon and boiling water to rice. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Stir and bake 10 minutes more.


Timeline:
- Meat in at 55 minutes
- Rice in at 40 minutes
- Stir rice at 10 minutes
- Stir meat and add sour cream at 5 minutes

Enjoy!

baby shower

This is a bit delayed (ok, almost a month delayed), but I realized I never wrote about my friend's (her name is April) baby shower last month! She's due in just under 4 weeks (May 18th) with a boy. For her shower, another friend (and her name is Kristen) and I made a diaper cake and we thought it turned out really well!


Those are real newborn diapers rolled up. Unrolled they are tiny - about the size of my hand (when folded in half). It's so hard to believe that there will be a baby small enough to fit in them! I can't wait for baby to be here! I foresee a lot of lunch dates at April's house this summer so that Kristen and I can play with the little boy.

24

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

I turned 24 yesterday! For some reason it's sounds so much older than 22 and 23 (at least to me!). I mean, my mom had me when she was 24! Crazy!

Birthday was good - my husband came home from work early and made us Chicken Fettucine Alfredo for dinner, then we just watched some of our TV shows together. My gift was my dressers that came 2 weeks ago :) We celebrated with my parents and sister on Easter and we are having dinner with my in-laws on Sunday!

Better Business Bureau complaint...FAIL

As I've mentioned, we've had a bit of a bat problem in our house - we had a bat in August, paid $525 to have the house bat-proofed by Company A, then 6 months later, in February, had another bat. Called Company A and set up a time for someone to come take a look at the house (they never showed up), we got the bat out ourselves and we never tried to contact Company A again because we figured it was a fluke. 3 weeks later, in mid-March, there was yet another bat (or the same one, but still). Multiple calls and messages to Company A go unanswered so we called Company B, they came and took care of it (for another $850). We called Company A one more time after Company B left with their $850 and this time someone answered - my husband explained what happened and that because of their lack of response, we want our $525 back (they have a 3-year guarantee on their work "no questions asked" according to their contract we have). Man on phone told Tim "keep dreaming" so Tim quoted the warranty and man said "screw you buddy" and hung up on him.

So, we turned around and filed a written complaint with the BBB (knowing that they have no real authority to get anything resolved). Well it's now been 32 calendar days since we filed our complaint with the BBB about the exterminators who we originally hired to take care of our bat problem. The business has 30 days to respond and it hasn't (which I expected) and since the BBB has no real authority to get anything resolved, they suggested we contact the state Attorney General since they have more pull.

Sooo, it's off to email the AG and see what they can do for us!

some updates around the house

I finally got around to taking pictures and updating our house website with pictures of our couches (which we got in December), family room window treatments, bedroom furniture (just got it Friday!), and the bedding we got from my grandparents for our wedding.






AND - we finally ordered our windows! Home Depot happened to be running a 10% off all Andersen window orders so that pushed us to get that done this weekend. All 24 of our windows should be delivered in 4-6 weeks. And we saved a little over $600 thanks to the sale!