Saturday at Last

And eighteen hours later, my ridiculous week of hours at my part-time is over. Finally. And I get to officially kick back and enjoy it at a Valentine's Day Dance tonight. Of course, I made the mistake of running four miles today, plus Darrell has to work for part of the dance, so there might not actually be very much dancing, but it'll still be fun to relax.

But did you catch that?!? Four miles!! Granted, I walked a little bit in there, but I still put in 45 minutes on the treadmill. Which is something I honestly thought I'd never be able to do. My feet were burning by the end of it, and my legs are already starting to feel a little tight, but probably nothing I can't loosen up with a little dancing tonight :-D

I have a little bit of time before we leave though, so I wanted to quickly post the recipe for Cube Steak and Rice from the other day. There's actually a little bit of a funny story behind this one--it's a family recipe from Darrell, and shortly after we started dating we got into a little tif so I decided to call his mom and get the recipe from her to cook for Darrell. Let's just say I had never seen or cooked with cube steak before (I had no idea what it even looked like! Thank goodness for Darrell's mom being very descriptive when giving me the recipe), nor had I ever made sticky rice or any kind of a gravy.... But I must have done something right with the recipe because he stuck with me!

Cube Steak and Rice
1 lb beef cube steak
1/2 cup rice (not minute)
3 cups water (for the rice)
1/4 cup milk
3 tbsp butter
Flour
Vegetable Oil

Steak
Dip the steak in flour and fry it in oil. To make the gravy, add flour to the pan after the steak is done then slowly add water while constantly mixing to obtain desired consistency.

Rice
Bring the three cups of water to a boil with 1 tbsp butter. Add rice and simmer until most of the liquid is gone. Add milk and the remaining butter; cook until most of the liquid is gone. (This whole process takes about 45 minutes, so start the rice before the meat.)

Like I said, it's a fairly "bland" recipe in terms of spices and additions, but when served with a nice colorful vegetable and a glass of red wine it's a classic!