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

Pat steak tips dry with paper towels. Rub all over with pepper and season with salt. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Cook steak tips until browned all over and cooked to desired doneness, 6 to 10 minutes.

Transfer to platter and tent with foil.

Add 1 tablespoon butter and shallot to empty skillet and cook until softened, about 1 minute.

Add wine, broth, and thyme to skillet. Simmer, scraping up any browned bits, until slightly thickened, 5 to 7 minutes.

Off heat, whisk in any accumulated steak juices and remaining butter and season with salt.

Spoon sauce over steaks. Serve.

Crispy Oven Fries
Serves 4

4 russet potatoes (6 to 8 ounces each), peeled and cut into 1/2-inch-thick fries
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt

MICROWAVE POTATOES Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 450 degrees. Place potatoes in bowl, wrap tightly with plastic, and microwave until translucent around edges, 3 to 5 minutes, shaking bowl to redistribute potatoes halfway through cooking. Transfer potatoes to cooling rack and thoroughly blot fry with paper towels.

HEAT OIL Coat rimmed baking sheet with 5 tablespoons oil. Transfer to oven and heat until just smoking, 5 to 7 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk remaining oil, cornstarch, and salt in large bowl.

Add potatoes to bowl and toss to coat.

BAKE POTATOES Arrange in a single layer on hot baking sheet and bake until deep golden brown and crisp, 25 to 35 minutes, flipping potatoes half-way through cooking time.

Transfer to paper towel-lined plate and blot with additional paper towels. Serve.

Until last week, when I finally made it for the May meeting! I showed my Dr. Seuss quilt and got more inspiration from fabulous crafty folks.

I’m so glad I went, you guys! There were more great projects, but they were small quilts and I got terrible photos of them. This is a really nice group, and it was nice to be back. Looking forward to June!

However, the giant size and quiltiness of it are, I still maintain, perfect for family beach time. So, I’m using some of these prints from Dear Stella’s All Hands on Deck collection to make a new one this year.

I picked up most of the prints during our spring break road trip through New England and then ordered more to make sure I had enough. My plan is that this quilt will be 72″ square. It will be all strips, divided into 4 columns. I cut up about 21 fat quarters worth of fabric to make 144 strips that were 18.5″ x 2.5″. So when the top is finished that will come out as 4 columns each made up of 36 strips that are 18″ x 2″ when sewn.

Some of the fabric was actual yardage cut up, but that gives you a rough idea of how much you need. Every fat quarter yielded about 7 strips, so after I went through the fat quarter yardage I’d bought I started in on the half yards I had (which yielded about 14 strips each).

I divided the strips into “light” and “dark/bright” piles, then I spent time pinning lights and darks to each other.

Then I chain pieced the 72 pairs together.

They have all been ironed with seams facing the same direction, and I have pinned those 72 pairs together again to make 36 sets of 4 strips. And I’ll go on and on that way until my columns are ready and can be joined.

It’s coming together pretty quickly.

And here are some 14 month old shenanigans from another angle.

(This one above is my favorite).

I mean, I just can’t. Miss Baby.

She’s perfect!

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.

Last year we took Hannah to this festival, and she slept the entire time.

This year’s festival was the last weekend in April, and she was pretty different.

And she stayed awake the whole time!

She still wasn’t very interested in the sheep, though. Or the giant pig. One of these years.

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

Process flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in food processor until combined. Scatter butter and shortening over flour mixture and pulse until mixture resembles wet sand. Transfer to bowl. Stir in buttermilk until dough forms. Turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead briefly until dough is cohesive. Press dough into 8- by 4-inch rectangle. Cut in half, wrap each half tightly in plastic, and refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Combine sugar and cinnamon in small bowl. In second bowl, combine butter, raisins (or diced apples!), and 3 tablespoons cinnamon sugar mixture.

Peel apples and halve through equator.

Remove core and pack butter mixture into each apple half.

On lightly floured surface, roll each dough half into 12-inch square. Cut each 12-inch square into four 6-inch squares. Working one at a time, lightly brush edges of dough square with egg white and place apple, cut-side up, in center of each square. Gather dough one corner at a time on top of apple, crimping edges to seal. Using paring knife, cut vent hole in top of each dumpling.

Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Arrange dumplings on prepared baking sheet, brush tops with egg white, and sprinkle with remaining cinnamon sugar.

Bake until dough is golden brown and juices are bubbling, 20 to 25 minutes.

Cool on baking sheet 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the Cider Sauce. Bring cider, water, sugar, and cinnamon to simmer in saucepan and cook over medium-high heat until thickened and reduced to 1½ cups, about 15 minutes.

Off heat, whisk in butter and lemon juice. Drizzle over dumplings to serve.

I finally finished this quilt! It’s a horribly belated first birthday present, but I love this quilt to pieces. I hope Hannah loves it, too.

I am so in love with this. I bought this from Life Geekery a while back, and I’ve had it for about a month now. They’re made to order, so you do have to be patient for a few weeks until it ships. But they have some other amazing character interpretations (Dr. Who, Star Wars), not just Harry Potter. And you can order for a Kindle, iPad, Mini, etc. You do have to get used to carrying Harry upside down, the opening is at the bottom. Small price to pay for greatness.

This is probably my favorite purchase for myself so far this year.