I will NOT be defeated!!!

One of Dave's favorite meals is country fried steak with mashed potatoes and white, country gravy.  He orders it at restaurants that have it (like Cracker Barrel and Ihop) and I found some in the frozen food section at the grocery store that you just throw on a cookie sheet and bake.  Easy.  And Dave likes them.  :o)

Someone at work was eating a homemade country fried steak the other day and I thought, "If his girlfriend can do it, why can't I?!?"  I was researching some recipes online and then it just so happened that the Publix ad last week had a recipe for country fried steak.  No way!  Even better, half of the ingredients were on sale at Publix last week.  Perfect!  I could tell this homemade country fried steak thing was so way meant to be!

So, I decided to make it on Sunday.  This past Sunday.  With recipe in hand and ingredients within reach, I set out to make my husband the meal of his dreams!

Things were going so well, even considering all my efforts to coat the steaks in all three coating mixtures were unsuccessful and required getting my fingers pretty messy.  Eewww!  The things I do for the man I love.  ;o)

I put the first two steaks in the pan and they cooked away while I coated the remaining two steaks.  I must've had the pan too hot because I turned around to turn the steaks in the pan over and they were BURNT.  Like, no saving them burnt.  Everything smelled burnt.  The pan had to be washed before I could cook anything else in it.  Darn it!!!  So, two steaks down.  Two more left.

I looked at the recipe again and decided that when they said to cook the steaks over medium heat, they did not mean medium-but-nearly-high heat....  Oops...  My bad.

I tried again.  This time over MEDIUM heat.  It worked wonderfully!!!  I'm pretty paranoid about meat getting all the way cooked but it was hard to check these steaks.  So, I cooked them for slightly longer than the recipe said without burning them and figured there's always the microwave if necessary.  lol

As the steaks were in their last few minutes of cooking, I started some mashed potatoes.  We use the Idahoan brand of potato flakes.  Yummy!  I went to dump the pouch of potatoes into the microwave-safe bowl and somehow all the flakes ended up on my kitchen floor.  Argh!!!  After all the mess with the steaks and the burnt steaks, etc, dumping the potatoes was the last straw and I was near tears...  Thankfully we had more potatoes, so all was not lost.  It was just frustrating.

I don't normally have issues like that while cooking!!!  Oh well....  I guess it was to keep me humble.  I must say, though, I am so way trying this homemade meal again (maybe even making homemade mashed potatoes, too!).  And I will not burn the steaks!  And I will not dump potatoes on the floor!  And it will be the most perfectly yummy country fried steak meal my handsome husband has ever eaten in his entire life!