Consciously Eating…

Tonight we had New York Strip steak, sweet potato oven fries and beets.  Yes, that’s right beets.  Part of this whole eating healthier thing was to try new vegetables.  I’ve never had beets before, so this one was an adventure.

First, the beets.  We roasted them in the oven, wrapped in foil, for a little over an hour.  The one thing I didn’t realize about beets is that they turn everything they touch purple.  Wow!  There was purple every where when I tried to handle them.  We topped them with toasted walnuts and bleu cheese.  I toasted the walnuts in a pan on the stove for about 5 minutes.

Here are the finished beets with the walnuts and cheese:

For the sweet potatoes, I just sliced them a little thin, tossed them in extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and put them in the oven for as long as it took.  I honestly don’t know how long they were in.

And for steak.  Brandon makes a mean steak.  For those of use who aren’t allowed to have a grill (damn that apartment living!), he’s got a great way of cooking a good steak.  You start with a steak that’s about 2 1/2 to 3 inches thick.  Put it in the oven at 275° for 25 minutes.  Then you sear it on the stove top in a skillet for a minute and a half on all sides (and I mean all sides…top, bottom, and the sides) and serve.  Yum!

So, here is the finished product on my plate:

Baby Girl thought it smelled tasty and mistakenly thought my plate was her’s.  Here she is ready to dive in (low light…not a great picture…a little fuzzy):

And the final verdict.  The steak was great.  This is actually the second time we’ve cooked steak this way.  Delicious.

The sweet potatoes tasted good, but I wish they were a little crispy.  I think next time I’m going to slice them a little thinner and skip the olive oil coating and see if they get crispy.  I never ate a lot of sweet potatoes before because I hate the way they are traditionally cooked for Thanksgiving.  All that brown sugar and marshmellows…yuck.  Just my opinion.  Recently we started cooking them in more savory ways and we discovered that we actually like them.  You’ll be seeing more sweet potatoes in the future.

The beets.  Well, I could really take them or leave them.  They were okay, but not great.  They were a huge pain in the butt to cook, so I don’t think I’ll be cooking them again anytime soon, but if someone else were to make them, I wouldn’t pass them up.