I built a fort this week. I’m a grown woman, dating a grown man and we built a goddamn fort over our TV using bed sheets and duct tape. Let me preface by saying it has been a looooooonnnng week. Lots of big, stressful shows and by the time Sunday rolled around we just wanted to relax. That morning when we woke up, I had no idea we’d be making a fort. We started off the day by heading out to brunch.

After brunch we went grocery shopping, dropped the stuff off at home and then went to @bellwoodsbrewery (our neighbourhood watering hole) for some beers. (Can you believe this awesome sunday!?) We trotted home around 5 feeling slightly buzzed and excited for our dinner. I was going to make chimichurri steak, pan seared scallops, sautéed mushrooms and roasted asparagus and tomato. As I started to make dinner Matt, who is usually my sous chef, announced that he was going to build us a fort. Maybe it was the beer, but at the time this seemed like best idea he had ever come up with. Matt worked on the fort as I worked on dinner. Before we went out for beers I should mention that I marinated my steaks in a chimmichirri rub. I bought mine pre-made from bulk barn but if you want to make it yourself, here is a recipe from @epicurious :

I mixed about 2 tbsp of it with 2 tbsp olive oil and rubbed it on either side of my steak and let it marinate for about 3 hours. I let it come to room temperate before pan frying it in my cast iron for about 4 min on each side until med-rare.  As the steak rested under tented foil, I seared the scallops in the same pan for about a minute on each side. Don’t over cook them or they taste like rubber balls. Before I started on my protein I drizzled olive oil on some asparagus and halved cocktail tomatoes with a pinch of salt n’ peps and put them in a 375 oven for 20 minutes. I also sautéed some mushrooms in butter because mushrooms and steak are a match made in heaven.

Instead of just doing a squeeze of lemon, I whipped up a vinaigrette using fresh pressed garlic, lemon, olive oil, dijon and honey to drizzle over my veggies. YUM! This meal was PERFECT and totally fort worthy. The roasted tomato oozed over the steak and acted like a sauce with the chimichurri. I want to eat this again and again. Also, no starch or shitty carbs! Just veg and meat. Even if you marinated tofu in this stuff it would be good. So much flavour! We ate dinner at the table like adults and then retreated to our fort where we ate ice cream, drank wine and watched Trainwreck like giant, weirdo kids. It was honestly the most fun I’ve had in recent memory.