Recipe Sharing

My bestie Kristen and I have been recipe swapping for awhile now to help each other avoid making the same dishes over and over again. Its easy to get into a rut with what we make for dinner. Its just easier to make what you know, but it gets BORING! This recipe sharing also happened to coincide with stumbling upon Pinterest (a time sucking website!). I have "pinned" probably over 100 recipes now of stuff that just looks A-mazing. I started the habit of recipe planning for a weeks worth of meals and each week I try to include one recipe I've never made. A lot of those are coming off the Pinterest board. And I even make up a little "menu" for the week and post it in the kitchen. Brad LOVES this. Tonight was one of our favorites that I tried from Pinterest and it was so good that I wanted to share with more than just one friend, I wanted to share with all my friends and family! I can not tell you how many compliments Brad threw my way for this meal. He was in food heaven. It will most definitely enter our dinner rotation and was super easy as well, which gets a big thumbs up in my book! So probably once a week I'll post a new recipe that we find yummy. Maybe it will help you get out of your food rut. And maybe it will inspire you to either post recipes in my comments, post on your blog or email me, that way there will be even more new ideas flowing!

This week's recipe... PHILLY CHEESESTEAK SLOPPY JOES. I swear to you, these things taste exactly like a "real" cheesesteak you'd order at a restaurant.


*adapted from a Rachel Ray recipe
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound ground beef
1 softball-sized onion, chopped*
1 greed pepper, chopped
2 tablespoons steak sauce (A1)
1 cup beef stock
salt and pepper to taste
Kaiser Rolls or other sturdy roll
1 tablespoon butter*
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup milk
1 cup provolone, shredded*

In large skillet over medium-high heat add the oil and brown the ground beef, about 5-6 minutes. Add the onion and green pepper and cook another 3-4 minutes until the vegetables start to get tender. Stir in the steak sauce and beef stock, season with salt and pepper, bring up to a bubble and cook about 2 minutes.

Split open rolls and toast and set aside.

While the meat is cooking, melt the better in a medium size pot over medium high heat. Stir in the flour and cook about 1 minute. Whisk in milk, bring up to a bubble and let thicken, about 2 minutes. Turn off heat and stir in cheese.

To serve, place a scoopful of the meat mixture onto bottom of roll, top with cheese sauce, replace bun top, and voila!

*I made a few slight changes. It called for a softball sized onion and I chopped it all up and as I was putting into the pot it looked like entirely too much onion so I probably only ended up using half. I would recommend using one entire small size onion and a small size bell pepper, but use your personal preference.
Also, I toasted the buns face down on the oven rack at 350 degrees for 2-3 minutes and put a little butter on them when they came out because I'm crazy like that. And lastly, in the cheese sauce I may have used closer to 1 1/2 cups shredded cheese because, again, I'm crazy. I am also lazy, so I used a package of pre-shredded Italian style cheese instead of grating my own provolone. But still turned out scrumptious.

ENJOY!