Lunch: Stuffed Mushroom and Swiss Burgers

There not a specific recipe for this post other than it was just delicious, so I figured I would put it up here.  It also goes along with one of the gift ideas I threw out for Father’s Day in this post here.  The stuffed burger press is a fun gadget to have around in the kitchen.  I don’t use it very often, but sometimes…on a special occasion, I want a monster burger.  This time around it happened to be Father’s Day and I wanted a monster burger dang it!

On the way home from church on Sunday the wife and I drove by Fresh Market to grab the ingredients for my burger.  I had a craving for a mushroom and swiss burger so I knew I would need some beef, mushrooms, and swiss cheese (duh).  Of course, if you know me, I had to grab some bacon to go on top of this thing.  I saw some peppered bacon in the case and figured it would go great with the burger I had planned out.  While we were there we also picked up some pre made loaded baked potato salad, baked beans, and some chips.  After a couple other random things (like some damn delicious heath bar cookies) we were on our way home.

Father’s Day Gift Guide – Beer!

Okay folks…I’m running of ideas.  I did fashion and gadgets, but now I’ve gone and put an end to your Father’s Day gift searching.  Below is a list of beer-centric gifts for the beer lover in your life.  From the guy who just started to enjoy the sudsy beverage, to the seasoned beer veteran…I hope to have something here for everyone.

So hit the jump and check out the gifts!

Father’s Day Gift Guide – Gadgets

So…if the first post about gifts for Father’s Day wasn’t your thing (check it out here), maybe this one will have something that floats your boat.  This guide goes over some of the gadgets I can’t live without and some I want to own myself.  Whether it’s electronics or cooking, every man loves a gadget.  IT makes the normal things you do all the time a bit more fun.

So here we go again…click the link to check out the list!

Father’s Day Gift Guide – Fashion

I find it humorous to do a “fashion” blog post as everything I know about fashion I learned from my wife.  Seriously, when we met I was trying to be some sort of quasi-punk rocker with blue hair.  Now I’m decked out from head to toe in J.Crew while figuring out what boat shoes work best with the outfit.  Without her I would be lost in a see of JNCO’s and thrift store tees.

All that said, Father’s Day is coming up and I’m taking my new found knowledge and throwing out some of my favorite things I’ve bought or been gifted that would be great for the father in your life.  This is hopefully the first of a couple posts, but I figured this one would focus more on clothes and accessories.  So let’s get going:

Father’s Day Dinner – STEAK!

While I will never pass up a steak when going out to eat, I can honestly say that the wife and I have never cooked a steak at home.  There’s really no reason behind this…we just never did it.  I feel that as part of being a man, this is something I have been missing out of.  As Father’s Day rolled around and we tried to figure out what to eat, and still be on our diets, my mind drifted to steak.  What’s the best meal out I can have?  A steak.  What’s something we can do at home and still be healthy?  You know, actually still a steak.  So we went out on a limb and decided to grab a couple of filet’s for dinner, and well folks, the rest is history.

The wife did a bit of research ahead of time to find a simple rub for the steak.  We didn’t want to go all out and miss the mark on our first try.  We kept it simple.  A rub with only five ingredients.  Now we can handle that.  Throw the ingredients into a coffee grinder and instant steak rub.  We changed things up a bit and used a grill pan instead of the grill outside.  This was just to keep things in check as we cooked up our first steaks at home.

Per the recipe below we cooked the steaks for about four minutes on each side.  That turned out to be the perfect amount of time.  The steaks came out a great medium rare.  Obviously you can cook them longer, but these are steaks and why would you do that?  For our first try at steaks, I have to say it was great.  For our tastes we would cut the amount of pepper below for next time…oh…and there will be a next time.

To keep things still healthy, we had a baked potato (light sour cream and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray).  We also threw some corn and zucchini in a pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper.  It’s part of a different recipe, but we didn’t have all of the ingredients to make it up so it ended up being a quick veggie sauté.  The best part is that the zucchini was straight from the wife’s garden out back.  Now this meal definitely lived up to my manly expectations and hit the spot.  This guy was happy with his Father’s Day dinner.  Kept on the diet, used veggies from the garden, and wolfed down a tasty 8oz. filet mignon.

Happy Father’s Day all!

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons black peppercorns
• 1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  4 (4-ounce) beef tenderloin steaks, trimmed (1 inch thick)
  Cooking spray

Preparation

1. Prepare grill.
2. Place peppercorns and rosemary in a spice or coffee grinder; pulse until the pepper is coarsely ground. Combine pepper mixture, dry mustard, salt, and garlic powder; rub evenly over both sides of steaks. Place steaks on a grill rack coated with cooking spray, and grill 3 minutes on each side or until desired degree of doneness.