I made this yummy, surprisingly straightforward dinner a while back (and added some asparagus to the mix). I love Steak au Poivre, or really anything peppery. The tips were nice for a weeknight when you don’t necessarily want an entire steak. I bought one nice sirloin steak, and it was more than enough to feed us both.

The steak was the easy part; the oven fries were more labor intensive. I started those waaaay before the steak. In the end, mine probably could have come out of the oven a little sooner. But, the fries weren’t fried, and overall this was pretty great. Both recipes are from Cook’s Country. These are the original recipes below, which serve 4.

Steak Tips au Poivre
Serves 4

“The browned bits left in the pan after cooking the steak tips are essential for this recipe and give complex flavor to the pan sauce. To release them, deglaze the pan with a combination of wine and broth”

1 1/2 pounds steak tips, cut into 2-inch chunks **Tips are from sirloin, so if you’re butcher doesn’t have them just buy a sirloin steak and cut it into chunks
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
Salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 shallot, minced
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 cup low-sodium beef broth
1/2 teaspoon minced fresh thyme

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Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas out there!

I really enjoyed my first Mother’s Day last year, but this year was even better. Maybe it’s just that with all the other insanity going on in my life these days I appreciate the complete awesome that is my family much, much more. Team Reeve is pretty great, and I love our life together more and more each day. Man, that was such a greeting card sentiment, but it’s actually true. I couldn’t stop smiling all day, I was just loving the celebration of this whole motherhood business so much.

I got my Spongebob Squarepants Mother’s Day card and gift certificates for Barnes & Noble and the Fat Quarter Shop first thing this morning. Best gifts, simple and no fuss! The Spanish F1 Grand Prix was this morning, so clearly that is becoming a bit of a Mother’s Day tradition. We got up to watch it live at 7:30am, and Hannah and I hung out on the couch while Adam made waffles. Perfection.

After a very chill morning we stopped in at my brother’s new house for a quick visit with my mom, sister-in-law, and nephew CJ. They just moved in YESTERDAY, and now they’re 20 minutes away instead of an hour. So the babies played with their Nana while we got the tour of their beautiful new house. Then, we headed to the Upper West Side in Manhattan for some fun times.

I can’t really deal with the whole holiday restaurant experience. Valentine’s Day dinners, Mother’s Day brunches, I just…nothing feels less celebratory to me than being herded through a packed restaurant on a prix fixe menu. So my idea of a perfect Mother’s Day lunch was…the Recession Special at Gray’s Papaya.

Adam hates when I put photos of him on here, but he was a huge part of why today was killer. So I’m breaking the rule today. This October will mark a decade since he moved here from the UK, and somehow in nearly 10 years I had never gotten him to a Gray’s Papaya. We don’t even know how that happened, but today I was inspired to fix that. Inspiration was rewarded with a happily napping baby and an empty counter. And hot dogs.

We walked over to Central Park with the rest of the city to take in the gorgeous weather. It was packed, and allergy season was so heightened we felt like we were snorting pollen. But, still gorgeous.

Dancers, stairs. The crowds on the stairs reminded me of the Spanish Steps in Rome.

It was actually Japan Day in the park. There was a very cool concert of traditional drummers and modern dancers and music. Hannah LOVED this, even though this was as close to the stage as we could get. There were origami stations, a HUGE line to have kabuki makeup applied, all kinds of cool stuff.

And then…we stopped to get ice cream. And Hannah had her first taste of summer.

She loved it.

A lot.

Adam drove home, and the baby and I passed out in the living room until bedtime. Hannah woke up, had dinner and a bath, and went straight back to sleep. Lots of fresh air and happy excitement today. I’m still smiling.

Oh, man. I’ve been on a Cook’s Country bender lately, making delicious recipe after delicious recipe. That includes this take on an old-school throwback that Adam had as a kid all the time and which I’d never heard of. His mom made whole baked apples stuffed with dates (and no pastry), and this recipe mentions a sort of 1950s dessert that every good housewife could make–again, with whole apples. These dumplings were amazing, but I made far too many of them. The original recipe makes 8 half-apple dumplings, and I halved it for dessert one night (the other half of the dough is in the freezer for another time). But I guess I didn’t really understand how HUGE each of these dumplings were, even with half an apple, so 2 each was just out of hand. They were so delicious that we kept trying to make a dent in our 2nd helping, but it was no use. We were defeated by their amazingness. Next time I will just make 2…or invite more people over.

The original recipe below uses raisins in the filling, but I’m not such a fan. I just diced up another quarter apple and replaced the raisins with that. Why not?

Baked Apple Dumplings with Cider Sauce
Serves 8 (I halved everything but the dough and made 4–the remaining dough I put in the freezer)

Dough

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
5 tablespoons vegetable shortening, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
3/4 cups cold buttermilk

Apple Dumplings

6 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3 tablespoons golden raisins, chopped
4 Golden Delicious apples (I actually used Granny Smiths, and the recipe also suggests Braeburns or Galas)
2 egg whites, lightly beaten

Cider Sauce

1 cup apple cider
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice

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The last stop on our week-long, whirlwind spring break road trip through New England was Vermont. We were only there for 1 night, and we stopped in Montpelier before heading up to Stowe to see how the other half lives.

We basically stopped in Montpelier for maple syrup and fabric. I’d read about Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks in our guidebook, and I really wanted to get my hands on some syrup to bring home. Sugaring season kicks off in March, so we were just in time. Morse Farm is one of the oldest there is, going back 200 years.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the sugaring experience, but Morse Farm was basically a very muddy parking lot with a few small buildings and a store. Seriously, do not wear your good shoes if ever you find yourself there. You could stand at the edge of the farm and see all the trees tapped together, leading down from the forest and into the processing building. But there were no tours or real explanations of what was going on. It was almost a little voyeuristic; the family just going about their farm lives while tourists stared at them and shopped in the (surprisingly awesome) store.

But maybe since we were there on a Thursday we didn’t get the full tour experience. There was an ancient TV and VCR set up in a corner of the store with a couple of folding chairs, and you could help yourself to watching a video of the long-deceased patriarch in his heyday. That was kind of worth the trip just for the anecdotes because that man, who passed away in 1999, was not PC. Much discussion of Arabs and the Japanese, but he was so darn homespun and delightful that you almost didn’t know where to look or whether to laugh. We definitely felt like city folk.

However strange the farm itself was, I’m in love with the store. We left with syrup. Oh, boy, we left with syrup.

This was the first time Adam and I got to sample different grades of maple syrup, and it was definitely interesting to see what we each preferred. How could you not love a store with friendly honor system signs like this?

We also bought some of that maple cream on the left, btw. Heaven in a jar.

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I’m taking forever to get these road trip photos up, but life keeps getting in the way.

After we left Boston and Plymouth, we headed to Portland, ME. I loved Portland. Really we spent most of our time in Maine eating, and that’s a pretty perfect vacation as far as we’re concerned. We’d heard about the food scene up there for ages but finally got to experience some of it.

Our first night in Portland, Monday night, we made a pilgrimage to Duckfat, a place we’d heard of any time the Portland food scene was mentioned. It was behind our hotel, so as pilgrimages go it was pretty lightweight, but I could have eaten every single meal here. The duckfat fries are everything you’d think they would be, with amazing dipping sauces to choose. And there’s just something about a perfect bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich on a chilly night that nothing else on earth can rival. They do it right here. Ugh, it’s pouring here in NJ today…now I want that meal again.

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