Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

With the holidays rushing up on us I didn't quite have a chance to do a blog post last sunday, so instead I have several recipes I'll share today as one large holiday post! This Christmas we decided to stay here rather than go home for the holidays, it's one of the less fun things about being a military family and having to choose between these things, but we do hope to make the rounds sometime next year. I worked a lot the week before so I hadn't had a chance to do any meals besides crock pot ones, and we did get to try out all of those crock pot meals from that post long ago. The verdict is that all but the teriyaki chicken were great, good flavor, veggies, and for our family made one and a half dinners per bag, but after a week of that I was itching to cook something myself. One thing my husband had been wanting since he got home was venison, and my boss's husband is a hunter and was nice enough to give us a good amount of venison meat to cook up some fun meals with. We got ground, sausage, stew meat and cubed steak. I decided to do one of my favorite dishes using one of my husbands favorites meats: Chicken fried venison steak with sawmill gravy. It turned out great, I had tried making this sort of gravy once before, but I had rushed it too much and it ended up being kinda off, this time it was amazing. To go along with it, my husband had been asking for some sort of a peach crumble, so I decided to do a peach dump cake. It is the easiest dessert I've ever made and it tasted pretty awesome, I might have to keep the ingredients around the house for emergency visitor desserts. So, without further adieu, the recipes.



Chicken Fried "Steak" and Sawmill Gravy

• 1½ pounds top-round steak (or cubed steak, if you used the cubed skip to the step where you season it with salt and pepper)
• 1½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 3 eggs
• ½ cup buttermilk
• Vegetable oil, for frying
• ¼ pound breakfast sausage
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1½ cups whole milk
• Salt and black pepper, to taste

Cut the top-round steak into four pieces. Working with one piece at a time, place on a sturdy cutting board or clean counter-top, cover with a large piece of plastic wrap, and pound the beef with a meat tenderizer until flattened and almost doubled in size (you want the meat to be about ¼-inch thick). Repeat with the remaining pieces. Sprinkle pieces of beef with salt and black pepper. In a large, shallow bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper. In another large, shallow bowl, whisk together the eggs and the buttermilk. Take a piece of the tenderized meat and dip it in the egg mixture. Next, place the meat in the bowl of seasoned flour. Turn to coat it thoroughly. Place the meat back into the egg mixture, turning to coat. Finally, return it back to the flour mixture, ensuring that it is evenly coated on both sides. Place on a clean baking sheet and repeat with the remaining pieces of meat. In a large, 12-inch skillet, heat ½ inch of vegetable oil over medium-high heat until a small fleck of flour dropped in the pan sizzles. Carefully place one or two pieces of the meat (whatever fits comfortably without overcrowding) into the skillet. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the blood starts bubbling out of the top of the steak. Using a pair of tongs, gently turn over the steaks and cook for 5 more minutes. Remove the steaks to a cooling rack to drain while you finish frying the remaining steaks. You can place the cooked steaks in a 200-degree oven to keep warm. Finally, make the sawmill gravy. (You can start this in another pan while the last piece of steak is cooking, or do like I did, make it ahead of time and right before the last steak is done cooking, heat it up and add a bit of milk to bring the moisture back to it) In a skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage until browned, crumbling it as it cooks. With a slotted spoon, remove the sausage from the skillet and place on a plate. Drain the oil from the pan, reserving 2 tablespoons in the skillet (if your sausage didn't yield enough drippings, you can use vegetable oil to get to the 2 tablespoons). Sprinkle the flour over the drippings, and whisk together, cooking for about 2 minutes. Add the milk slowly to the skillet, whisking continuously. Reduce the heat to medium-low and continue whisking until the mixture is thickened, about 5 more minutes (Keep going until it's a consistency you like). Remove from the heat, stir in the reserved sausage, and season to taste with salt and black pepper. (If the gravy is too thick, you can thin it by whisking in more milk, a tablespoon at a time.) Serve the steaks with the sawmill gravy poured over top. Next time I will double the gravy recipe because gravy is freaking amazing, and if you like it too I suggest you do the same!

Note: For the buttermilk I used my pre frozen cubes as I never use a full thing of buttermilk. If you have leftovers and want to save it, measure 2 tablespoons in each spot in an ice cube tray and freeze it. Once frozen, put in a zip lock bag and label with whats in it and how much in each cube and put back in the freezer. 4 TB in 1/4 cup and 8 in 1/2, so I used 4 cubes with this.


Peach Dump Cake

(I didn't get a picture of this, it disappeared too quickly!)

• 24.5 oz jar of sliced peaches in light syrup (or use fresh)
• 1 package yellow cake mix
• 1 stick butter (1/2 cup), cut into 16 pieces
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Layer ingredients in a 13 X 9 dish, in order starting with the peaches. Bake for about 40 minutes. Serve warm or cold… with or without ice cream. See? Easy!