Today I (Max) decided to make dinner for Alex because she had to go to school and I had the day off (since I had finals last week). I also did it because she made dinner for me last week when I was studying.  Anyway, I made one of her favorite meals: skirt steak with a Texas spice rub and mashed potatoes.  I also made one of my favorite salads: butter lettuce, goat cheese, cranberries and walnuts.  For dessert we had homemade snickerdoodles (that I made over the weekend)

Skirt Steak

The key to this recipe is letting the steak marinate in the spice rub for a couple hours before you cook it.  For the spice rub I used onion powder, garlic powder, paprika and salt and pepper.  I noticed that the steaks were a little thick so I pounded them thinner (which also tenderizes them) before I rubbed in the spice rub.

Sides

About 30 minutes before I was ready to cook the steaks,  I peeled the potatoes for the mashed potatoes, put them in cold water and heat until the water was boiling.  Then I let them cook until soft.  I also prepped the salad ingredients and make the salad (except for the dressing):

Then I cooked the steaks on high heat, let rest for about 5 minutes and cut against the grain.  Delicious!

Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodles are perfect when you want to make cookies but you don’t have chocolate chips (so you can’t make chocolate chip cookies) or you don’t have raisins (so you can’t make oatmeal raisin cookies).  They just require stuff you almost always have in your kitchen: butter, sugar, flour, eggs, salt, baking soda, cream of tartar and cinnamon.  You let the butter soften and then cream in sugar. Then you add the rest of the ingredients (except the cinnamon) and let chill for 30 minutes.  Next step: mix more sugar with cinnamon and roll the dough into 1 inch balls and then roll the dough in the cinnamon-sugar mix.  Finally you flatten the dough balls on a cooking sheet and cook for about 10 minutes.  PS: I am sure you are wondering what cream of tartar is and why you add it (most cookies just have baking powder or baking soda but this has cream of tartar and baking soda…why? Well cream of tartar is actually a powdered acid used as a leavener so when it is added to baking soda it creates carbon dioxide gas … which makes the cookies rise.  Also because it’s an acid, it makes the snickerdoodles taste a little tangy.  Without cream of tartar in there, you would just have a regular sugar cookie with cinnamon on top. And that’s my science lesson for the day. 

After yo