Vacation: The Food

I don't even know where to begin in explaining just how wonderful our recent vacation was.  For starters, I need to give props to Matt's parents, who have created an escape that's a perfect balance between fun and relaxing.  While at the lake, one is never bored and never stressed.

Their house is so accommodating, too.  There are tons of beach towels, a well-stocked kitchen, and comfortable beds.  And last year they built a boat house that sports a 16-foot wide dock, a perfect place to relax, to play, and to drink Diet A&W root beer.  We've never had a bad time there.  Hell, we've never had a bad day there.

This year we invited Hugh and Cassie to join us for a few days, and they brought along their two furry children, Henry the Cat and Fletcher the Dog.

I might have to do a few posts about our glorious four days at Lake Gaston. 

Let's start with the food.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that by inviting Cassie and Hugh to join us, I'd be spoiled by their cooking during the entire trip.  And we were!  There was spaghetti carbonara, burgers, steak, more steak, and BBQ chicken pizza.

You'd have to hit up Cassie to find the recipes for the carbonara and the pizza, but let me tell you about the steak.

We'd been gushing about Fresh Market steaks to Matt's parents for years, and wanted them to share in the experience.  So on Wednesday, before heading out of town, I stopped by Fresh Market to pick up two filets for the 'rents, and four ribeyes for the rest of us.  When I got there, I saw that beef tenderloin was on sale for $10/pound.  Hmph?  The filets themselves were $18/pound and the ribeyes were $15/pound.  While I'd walked into the store prepared to drop some cash on steaks, I couldn't resist the idea of having six pounds of filet for about half the cost.  (The FM butcher assured me that it was the same meat.)

So we drove up to Lake Gaston with a cow in tow.

Seriously.

And then we put Hugh on butchering detail, figuring that his first year of med school would have honed his already impressive knife skills.

He researched everything there was to know about beef tenderloin, cut out some amazing filets for our dinner, set aside the head steak (this was a teachable moment, you see) for the next day's lunch (steak sandwiches!), and even reserved a delicious fatty piece for dog steak. (Our dogs are very, very spoiled.)

Now, when it came to actually cooking the steak, the boys employed our favorite steak-cooking method.  It was slightly different, though, because they cooked the steaks on skillets on the grill.  The skillets got so hot that they melted the little pot holders that go on the handles!

Dog steak.

Accompanying the steak were grilled asparagus, grilled onions, twice-baked potatoes, caesar salad, and then, for dessert, Thomas Jefferson's Famous Vanilla Ice Cream!

I couldn't get over how delicious this meal was.  And I couldn't get over the fact that for $60, we fed AMAZING filets to six adults, for two meals.  Oh, and two dogs.  Never forget about dog steak.

That's cheaper than Wendy's!!