You know you’ve got a great new recipe when your husband says, “You said this was cube steak, didn’t you?”  “That’s the best cube steak I’ve ever eaten.” 

I love to cook and bake.  When I am baking I ALWAYS use a recipe, not so much when I am cooking though.  I tend to cook along the lines of what combinations I think will work well together.  So tonight I had the cube steak  and I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so here’s what I came up with.

I took the beef and pounded it with my meat tenderizer.  Then I quickly ran it under water and shook it off, dipped it in flour and then an egg wash and placed it in a frying pan with a little bit of oil.  I cooked it for 4 minutes on each side, transferred the beef to a baking dish and wiped out the frying pan.  I place the frying pan on the stove and added about a cup to a cup and a half of beef stock and about 1/4 cup of red wine (I happened to have a Merlot on hand so that is what I used.) I brought this up to a boil and added about 1/2 cup of chopped mushrooms and 1/4 cup of chopped onions and let it simmer for 5 minutes.  While it was simmering I took a little olive oil and a little bit of flour and mixed it together in a cup, and took about 3 to 4 small spoonfuls from the beef/wine mixture and added them to the cup and mixed it up, then added the flour/beef stock/wine concoction back into the pan and stirred it well.  I poured the whole thing over the beef in the baking dish, covered it with foil and baked it in a 350 degree pre-heated over for half an hour. 

I served the cube beef with fried potatoes and sautéed asparagus.  After dinner was over my husband said, “Now I wish I was taking lunch tomorrow.”  Usually I make enough dinner for us to have small lunches the next day which saves us money by not buying lunch.  If you try this, please let me know what you think.

Posted this on my Facebook page courtesy of a friend and got quite a bit of debate going on:

To everyone who is calling for stricter gun laws in light of the tragedy in Tucson, may I offer this little tidbit: If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars drive drunk, and spoons make people fat! Remember: Hold the person accountable for their actions, not the means they chose to utilize!!!

If you want to see all the comments check it out.

Arizona is one of only three states that do not require a license to carry a concealed weapon, I think the state has some responsibility in this tragedy.  CT (where I live) requires I take a gun safety course, have my finger prints taken and sent to the State Police to make sure I am not a felon (felons don’t get guns LEGALLY in CT) then I get the permit.  It takes between 4 to 6 weeks, which would certainly be a cooling off period if someone was pissed off enough and had no impulse control.

The young man who committed the horrific crime in Arizona was mentally unbalanced.  The police had a 51 page report about this young man and he was kicked out of his college because he had some mental health issues.  His parents knew he had problems but their hands were tied.  How does a parent deal with that?  I remember a very long time ago a young man who I knew from my grandmother’s neighborhood had some mental health issues.  His parents knew it because he lived with them and they had locks on their bedroom door to keep him out, but they couldn’t do anything!  One night he lost it and broke down their door and confronted them with a knife. He slit his father’s throat and his mother’s hands (defensive wounds), she somehow managed to call the police and as the police came in the door, he slit his own throat as he walked down the stairs, the police shot him dead.  What we need are better ways of helping people with mental health issues, if the parents of these two mentioned young men had recourse into getting help for their sons, then these two tragedies could have been prevented. 

I bet there’s a bunch more tragedies you can think of that could have been prevented if we could get people the mental health help that they need.

I’ve already heard some of the comments about banning citizens from owning fire-arms.  Naturally when a tragedy such as what took place in Arizona happens people get their panties all bunched up and start demanding that we change the 2nd amendment, which gives us the right to bear arms.  Here’s what they don’t realize.  If a person wants to shoot someone they will find a way, if they cannot get a gun legally they will get one illegally, they don’t care.  Obviously the people who commit these heinous type of acts are unstable and wouldn’t care how they got the required weapons to implement their plans. 

I plan on doing some research about this topic to find out about how many people actually have permits to carry guns and how many of those people actually commit these horrible crimes.  I think we would be better served to try to find a way to stop the trafficking of illegal fire arms that cannot be traced, then from limiting law-abiding citizens who take the classes and are responsible gun owners from owning fire arms.