I haven’t been getting enough sleep. In fact, I can’t remember the last time in my life where I did get the recommended amount of sleep, which tends to be around six hours. I’m thinking it was probably sometime in middle school, before the piles of AP homework kept me up or long nights on the phone or a job or the ever-present worry, disregarding the four kids I had in there. And while this post here isn’t about sleep and worry, it is about radishes and how adding them to your steak sandwich... more

Fajitas are usually something I order at restaurants. I love to get a sizzling skillet full of peppers, onions, seasoned beef and a stack of warm tortillas. The dish is always a feast for all the senses. When it comes to Mexican food at our house, we usually stick to tacos, nachos or burritos. Recently though, I felt the need to leave leave the usual and venture into the chicken and beef fajita territory. Why should the restaurants have all the fun (and my extra dollars)? These particular fajitas... more

Frequent readers of this blog should be well aware that during certain times of the year our local grocer marks down the beef tenderloin to a price more representative of sirloin. When this happens, we stock up. We have shared a few ways we prepare this: on the grill as bacon-wrapped fillets or in a pan with a rich cognac cream sauce and plenty of pepper – au poivre – or herb-crusted and grilled. Occasionally however, I don’t feel like doing either one so a few weeks ago when I found myself... more

Maple and blue cheese meet in a perfect pair, on a bed of greens and a sweet, maple-glazed steak. This happens to be my favorite “meal” salad, and it needs nothing else. It’s sugaring season, when the sap in the maple trees is running, and while we do notice our maples in the backyard running, we don’t actually tap our own. However, down on the reservation where Ole works, they most definitely are participating in the sugaring off: taping and boiling, which inevitably leads... more

Sometimes you need a showstopper.  Maybe you are trying to impress a date with your cooking skills, maybe you need to show up some food snobs at your next dinner party, or maybe you’re just having an old friend over.  Recently for us, it was the latter.  Our good friend Joel hadn’t been over in a while so we thought we’d wow him with my new favorite way to have a steak (that doesn’t require a grill).  The only condition for him was that to earn his meal, he needed to be... more

We try to maintain active social lives, and even though the O6 are a busy family, we usually are able to cram all of our family commitments in and still have time for the occasional show at First Ave. , movie with the gang, or random gathering at a local dining establishment.  This was not the case last week.  We were invited to a happy hour at The Lyndale Tap House, a bar in Uptown Minneapolis which specializes in a classic Baltimore cuisine (yeah, I know, that sounds like an oxymoron) – pit... more

Summer is gone. The 42 degree motorcycle ride to work this morning made it official for me. It is October, over a month past Labor Day. This year was an especially good Labor Day. We hosted our first (annual according to the neighbors) Ribfest and it was a great success. The idea has been brewing for a while now. Every time we make real BBQ people want to know how it’s done, and I happily tell them. Unfortunately, that can take over an hour because I really like to talk about BBQ (real... more