Category Archives: DIY

The Best Steak You’ve Never Had. For cheap!

I’m all about great steak. Steak has been one of my top 3 favorite foods since I can remember.  Lasagna came and went, pizza holds a spot frequently and hamburgers will often find themselves on my top 3 foods list. But steak. Steak has never left my top 3. There is just something about a great steak that I can’t get enough of.

Steak isn’t cheap though. At a nice restaurant a great steak can run anywhere from $35 to $60. That’s okay if you only want to eat steak once a year. Even if you buy it yourself to grill you can end up paying close to $10/pound unless you can find a sale somewhere. That’s alright for special occasions but what if you want to eat a nice steak on an average Tuesday for no other reason than you’re hungry and love steak? And what if you’re a family of 7?

I’m a big fan of DIY, and that extends to my steaks too. Thankfully, a few years ago I discovered a well kept secret.

Pork Steak

Pork Steak. Yeah, I know, it’s pork and steak is beef. I thought it was weird too. Then I ate it. I don’t care what it is. It’s amazing and it’s $2.29 a pound. $2.29 a pound! That’s cheaper than chicken! That’s 30 ounces of steak for under 4 and a half bucks! Dirt cheap.

It recently came to my attention by my brother in law that areas of the country such as St. Louis know all about pork steak but here in Florida, no one has heard of it. It’s hard to find in the stores. Publix is the one grocery store where I have regularly seen it and even then they only have one or two out on display. I usually have to ask them to cut more, which they are happy to do.

The next secret is the preparation. I like to start out with a season all salt. I use one with a little Cajun flare to add a little extra spice. Then comes the next secret (given to me by my buddy Mark). Brown Sugar. I either make a little brown sugar and olive oil paste to spread over the steaks or if I have enough time I’ll just sprinkle brown sugar over and let it dissolve in.

pork steak brown sugar

After letting the sugar dissolve the steaks look like this:

Pork Steak

As you can see, there will be some “juice” that runs off and I’ll use this to baste the steaks with while I’m grilling. To grill then, I like to crank the grill up to as hot as it will go and give them a great sear and a little char on the outside. Then I transfer to a lower heat and slowly cook them until they are done. Since they are pork I cook them until they are done, I don’t have to worry about medium-rare or anything like that.

grilling great steaks

Because you’re using sugar, you have to make sure that the sugar doesn’t burn but if you let it dissolve well beforehand that is less of an issue. After I take them off the grill I let them rest for a few minutes and then we chow down.

It’ll be the best $2.29 you’ve ever spent. You’re welcome!

Transform Your Coat Closet into a Mud Room

My wife decided she no longer liked our hallway coat closet and I needed to turn it into a mud room. It was looking pretty ugly, I’ll give her that, but we were storing a lot of stuff in there. I wasn’t ready to give up all that storage space for some shoe cubbies, a bench and a couple hooks. So we scoured Pinterest for days and finally came up with a solution that worked for both of us. Continue reading Transform Your Coat Closet into a Mud Room

Chalk It Up As A Win

I have mentioned several times that I am a big fan of the chalk board and the dry erase board around the house. I need a calendar to keep myself organized. Yes, I have one on my phone but it doesn’t quite replace an old fashioned wall calendar. I have been through quite a few packs of dry erase markers and I’m always disappointed with how they write after a couple months. The perfect answer to my problem was a product I didn’t even know existed: Liquid Chalk Markers by Chalkola. Continue reading Chalk It Up As A Win

DIY: Tiered Planter. Vegetable & Herb Garden

For Mother’s Day my wife gave me a short list of things she would like. One of those things was a raised vegetable and herb garden. She even let me see four thousand examples on Pinterest. Thanks for that Pinterest. Using some of the ideas I saw on Pinterest and what I knew of our backyard, I put together a plan and headed to Lowe’s. I bought 13 boards that were 8 feet long by 4 inch wide by 1 inch deep.

I mentally mapped out my plan and I started making my measurements:

After I had made all my cuts this is what I had. (Please note, the 4 blue boards were from scrap I had left over from another project. The rest were cut from 1 of my 13 boards):

After I made my cuts I started drilling my jig holes with my Kreg Jig so I could screw the boards together.  

Here I was starting to assemble the base garden box.  

What’s a DIY project without a few “helpers”  

Once I got my boxes assembled I screwed them onto my fence. My backyard has a bit of a slope to it, as you can see by my crazy fence. I decided to mount my garden boxes on the fence parallel to the ground, even though that wasn’t true level.  

 

Next I decided I wanted to stain the boxes to give them a nice finished look. 

Here are the planter boxes after they have been stained (as you can see at the bottom, I didn’t bother to stain the parts that would be covered by dirt)

Now came the really fun part. A trip back to Lowe’s to get some herbs and vegetables! (This is where Greyson had his infamous “I want a pizza plant” quote) 

Once we got back home, we had plenty of helpers to get those plants into the garden boxes.  

Everyone got involved (except our youngest) and we had a great time planting our garden!  

We have so many fresh herbs now, I can’t wait until we cook up something delicious!  

The herbs were mainly up top and the vegetables were mainly down below.  

Here is what our finished garden looks like. We are super excited and can’t wait until we can eat some of the vegetables later this season!    So what do you guys think? Honestly, it was fairly simple to make and we were able to put a surprising amount of plants into our garden. Only time will tell how well it does and how much we are able to harvest. Hopefully our hard work will pay off!

I hope everyone has a great week! I’m so incredibly thankful for all of your support by clicking on the top daddy blog icon. Because of all your votes I’ve been doing very well in the rankings and it’s starting to open some doors for me. So from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!

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DIY: Handprint Bouquet

Every year for Mother’s Day I stress out about what to get my wife. I prefer to give sentimental  gifts that can have value beyond Mother’s Day. So things like jewelry or framed photos instead of flowers or a spa day. I understand women love flowers and spa days and those things might be part of a gift but in 2 years the flowers will be dead and the toe nail polish will have long since worn off.  Something like a necklace can be worn for years and will serve as a constant reminder of the Mother’s Day.

This year I decided I would make a personalized art project that could be displayed in our home for years to come. Continue reading DIY: Handprint Bouquet