Trying something a bit different

I'm still fairly new to this blog thing, so my readership is mostly friends and family whom I have remembered to tell about my blog. Having a fairly extensive list of food blogs that I read myself, however, has given me a desire to have a broader readership. I may never get the hits that some of my fellow blogers do, but I can try.

To move closer to that accomplishment, I invited a bunch of online friends to view and review my blog. I wasn't disappointed in their comments, though no one chose to comment here specifically. Oh well. I especially liked the comment about my food preparation being the reason my husband had to take up marathon running.

So for the guys reading, my prediction about what I planned to make for dinner did come true. Mostly. Just a small variation.

I don't know where exactly I saw it. Somewhere on the FoodNetwork most likely. A grilled caesar salad. It looked interesting. Something a bit different from the ordinary. That's probably why it appealed to me.

I need to be braver though. Since I didn't actually look up temperature and time for grilling the halved romaine hearts, I had to guesstimate. I think I needed to have that side of the grill hotter, and to have left them on longer. I got some grill marks, but not as many as I would have liked. I was nervous about leaving the greens on the grill too long, and since I had some steaks grilling on the other side, the inside temperature of the bbq was hot.

In the end the salad came out reasonable. I topped it with a home made caesar dressing that I had prepared a few days ago using a base mixture from Epicure Selections. The dressing was nice and garlicky (though I'm not sure I want to try this salad mix again - when I bought a salad mix, I did not expect to have to add in the same ingredients I would have to add in if I had made it from scratch. It is supposed to be simpler, not about the same!)

And because I am still having fun playing with my new microplane grater, I topped off the salad with a generous shaving of parmesan cheese.

Accompanying the salad was a grilled hip steak, well seasoned using the Epicure Selections Beef and Steak Rub. Again, not sure if I was happy with this, but I'll obviously try it again as I have a full shaker of it to use. My steak was grilled to medium rare and for my liking, was perfectly grilled. I'm still learning how to properly gauge how I have cooked a steak and tend to err on the underdone side (which doesn't bother me, that's how I like my steak!)

Simply steamed green beans accompanied our meal.

I did not have the opportunity to make a dessert with this, so we happily finished off the lemon bundt cake I'd made earlier this week.

I didn't hear any complaints about dinner, but look forward to hearing the responses from my hopefully new found readership.