Best. Dinner. Ever.

I highly recommend you make this dinner.  Every single part of it.  Start to finish.  The flavors of each individual dish were perfectly matched with each other.  This was our New Year's Eve dinner.  What a way to end 2012.  So, on our menu was filet mignon, creamy onion blue cheese steak sauce, mashed potatoes, Caesar salad, and homemade bread.

Let's start with the steaks.  This was a Barefoot Contessa recipe using a cast iron skillet.  There were 17 reviews for this recipe.  I read them all.  So many of these reviewers said they'll never grill a steak again.   Searing it in the skillet to form a crust, then putting in the oven for just a few minutes was amazing.  Make a filet like this sometime.  I beg you!  Here's the recipe:

Barefoot Contessa's Steakhouse Steaks

Now the sauce.  I watched the Pioneer Woman make this steak sauce once on her show and I haven't truly forgotten it since.  I'm not even a huge blue cheese fan, but you HAVE to make this sauce sometime.  It was so delicious and a perfect addition to the steak or the potatoes.  Here's the recipe:

Pioneer Woman's Onion Blue Cheese Sauce

Mashed potatoes.  A favorite of mine.  These weren't just any potatoes.  This was also curtesy of the Pioneer Woman.  Only she can add butter and cream cheese in her mashed potatoes.  They were amazing.  I actually only used one stick of butter instead of 1 1/2 to 2, as the recipe suggests.  Believe me, these were decadent.  Here's the recipe:

Pioneer Woman's Creamy Mashed Potatoes

The bread has quickly become a favorite recipe of mine since the development of Pinterest.  I have probably made this bread 10 times so far.  It is SOOOOOO easy.  I can't stress that enough.  And...I bet you probably have the ingredients already in your pantry.  The only catch is that you have to have a Le Crueset cast iron dutch oven.  Well, I suppose it doesn't have to be Le Crueset.  It does have to be cast iron though.  When you take the cover off your pot 30 minutes into the process, you will not believe your eyes.  Can bread be beautiful?  I think so!  Here's the recipe:

Crusty Bread

And finally the Caesar Salad.  This was my brother's recipe.  I always call it "Bryan's Caesar Salad recipe.  You know, the one with the hard boiled egg in it?"  Turns out, he says, it's really Fannie Farmer's recipe.  I can't find the recipe anywhere online.  So here it is:

1 hard boiled egg
2-3 cloves of garlic
1/4 c. olive oil
juice from a lemon
couple squirts of Worcestershire sauce
salt/pepper

Put all ingredients in a blender and viola!  Just add romaine, croutons, and shaved parmesan.


Okay.  This post was dedicated to all the other foodies out there.  If you're not one, I apologize.  You probably didn't read past the first sentence.   No hard feelings.