Mission Possible: September

Our September Mission Possible dinner party just happened to coincide with a big Oregon Beavers game, so I felt it was only fitting to try and incorporate hearty "football" food into my menu. I'm a non-football fan from Nebraska, so what I perceive to be football food might be entirely incorrect; but I love the stick-to-your-ribs comfort food that I associate with the Midwest and the South, so I figured that was close enough.

Now, let me preface this September tale with a bit of hindsight: sometimes these dinner parties go exactly as planned. Sometimes I estimate cooking for two hours and the meal comes together in exactly that amount of time, and sometimes my creations come out looking like perfect pictures out of a cookbook. This was not one of those times. However, the lesson I took from those moments of near-tantrum is that you have to roll with it. If something isn't working, adapt it.

Now, no one knows comfort food better than the Pioneer Woman, so it seemed natural that my entire menu should come from her much-loved cookbook. I decided on homemade buttermilk biscuits, twice-baked potatoes, chicken fried steak, and rustic apple pie. As the pie looked like it took the most work, I began with that. It started off easy enough. I prepared the pie crust and apple mixture, and here my friends, is where it went awry. I ought to have refrigerated the pie crust for an hour so it would have had a chance to stiffen, making it more pliable. But because I had to use the oven all afternoon for the biscuits and potatoes, I ignored the fact that the dough was beginning to separate because of all of the shortening. Not the best decision.

This is what the finished pie is supposed to look like (image courtesy of: http://reddirtmummy.blogspot.com/)


This is how it went into the oven...before it imploded

When I took a peek at its progress and saw all of my hard work rapidly disintegrating before my eyes, I felt my calm begin to abandon me. More accurately, I threw a full-out fit, slamming things around and huffing with exasperation. KC wisely opted to stay out of the kitchen while I dumped the entire contents into a casserole dish, trying to decide if tossing it angrily into the garbage would bring me some sense of satisfaction. I knew it wouldn't in the long run, so I improvised and whipped up a quick caramel sauce, drizzling it on top. It actually looked...sort of intentional. So I decided to call it an apple pie casserole and move on.



Next up were the buttermilk biscuits, which, while messy, were comparatively easy. I rolled out the dough and used a jar lid to cut out the biscuits.




Golden brown goodness

A word on twice-baked potatoes: oh-so delicious, but take much longer than you anticipate. Baking, gutting, mashing, mixing, stuffing, and baking again. Lots of butter, sour cream, bacon, and cheese later, these artery-clogging puppies were finished, much to KC's delight.


Holy cheese, Batman!

Last up was the chicken fried steak, which, contrary to what its name suggests, is not chicken, but cube or round steak. It's a trashy, comfort food staple in the South. Basically, you dunk tenderized cube steak into a milk and egg wash, followed by a seasoned flour mixture. Then you fry the heck out of it until it resembles fried chicken (thus the name). The menfolk ended up loving it; me, not so much.






Our dinner guests: Michelle, Bethany, Shauna, and Terry

After over four hours of cooking, it was finally time to chow down, and with such heavy foods, it should come as no surprise that almost everyone had slumped into a carb coma before the game was even over. I slept really well that night ;)

Next up: October's dinner party (Indian food)!