Beef and Bean Culinary Throwdown

Miss Sara N. Dippity smiled on me for this Culinary Throwdown event. The topic was Beef and Bean ... which had me thinking chili, but then a lucky event occurred.

It seems that my postactualbirthdaybirthday dinner was to be steak, green beans, and a salad!

... AND I DIDN'T HAVE TO COOK IT!!


Here's the steak, hot off a real charcoal fire and topped with fresh mushrooms that were browned in real butter and deglazed with some cheap wine.

And now for the bean portion of our challenge ... totally not fancy, totally traditionally (southern) bacon flavored green beans ... just the way I like 'em.

You will have to excuse the fancy china. This was a very casual assembly and the football heads were psyched to watch the Senior Bowl ... not clean dishes.

... And I sure as heck wasn't cleaning any ... or watching football for that matter.

Still milking the bean category ...

Desert was a mud pie ... a sheet mud pie, not the cavernous deep bowl kind that the Chart House restaurants used to make.

(Does that chain still exist? If so, do they still serve giant portions of mud pie best shared with a cutie?)

Mud pie consists of a crust of ground real chocolate wafer cookies (that's cacao bean!) followed by coffee ice cream (coffee beans!),a layer of fudge sauce, some roasted almonds, and whipped cream.

Oh my dog!

The really cool (heehee ... cool ... ice cream ... get it?) is that Junior doesn't like coffee anything so there is a ton of leftover mudpie in the freezer for me to slowly devour over the next week or so.

Last, but not least ... a maybe.

My wonderful sisterinlaw, Annette, sent us not one, but two peach pies this weekend and I'm assuming, that there may just be some vanilla bean extract in that pie.

Whether there is or is not, the pies are wonderful and much appreciated.

There you have it, beef and two, maybe three bean dishes!