Steak Diane

I just got home from my family doctor and got away with a just a small lecture about the need to eat healthy and exercise and so on. So I will resolve to do that because I adore my doctor and I feel very much that she cares about my health a great deal! Thank God I swore off my annual Mother's Day Family Feast two years ago. I always ate KFC just once a year on Mother's Day, but the whole experience had been going south on me for quite a number of years before that.
There was the one year that I was all alone and all of my family was out of town. So I drove down to the drive through window in the pouring rain, and just as the KFC employee handed out my lonely person feast for one, it got dropped between the window and my car. Damn. So I had to pull out of the line and off to the side to wait for another meal. I got home and ate it all up and just as I was flattening down all the packaging and containers to hide from myself for the guilt I felt from my gluttinous feast, an infommercial came on the television selling ab rollers to flatten the stomach. I ordered one up with my credit card immediately! In the interim, waiting for the delivery, I threw caution to the wind and ate everything in sight. When I finally got the little delivery notice in my mailbox six weeks later, I couldn't wait to go straight to the post office to pick it up. Six pack abs, here I come! Unfortunately, there had been a freak accident that very day where a truck unloading at the beer store across the road lost its brakes and rolled across the street and into the post office, smashing it to smithereens and all things that lay within. Goodbye ab roller and hello next size up jeans. By the time the replacement arrived, I had lost my motivation for the six pack abs. Story of my life.
The final nail in the coffin came two years ago when I drove down to that same dreaded KFC to get my annual lonely girl feast and when I came up to the voicebox to order my meal. I was greeted with the voice of a surly, ignorant savage of a teenaged boy who greets me with this "Waddya want". Excuse me? "I said waddya want". I meekly ordered my usual dinner and I got "Ya well, we got no chicken cooked, so it'll be half an hour". I asked if I should wait in the line or pull out to the side and he said "I don't care where ya go. If ya want chicken, ya gotta wait somewhere." I don't abide rudeness under any circumstances and my blood was boiling so I just said "Why don't you take your chicken and shove it up your ass you goddamn punk." and I drove away vowing never to ingest that crap KFC again as long as I live. I literally shook with rage and fear and anxiety for days afterward. So now on Mother's Day every year, I make my own lovely dinner, named for me alone! And I buy the very best bottle of burgundy I can afford to sip on since I no longer have to get in the car on Mother's Day.
You'll need:
1  6 oz filet mignon for each person sharing the meal
salt and pepper
3 tablespoons of butter
3 shallots
1 lemon
fresh chives chopped
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
1 teaspoons worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoons of brandy
finely chopped parsley
a small splash of cream
mince your shallots, juice your lemon, chop your chives and your parsley
Season your steaks with salt and freshly ground pepper (a mixed peppercorn blend is awesome here!)
Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a heavy skillet on Med heat. Add the steaks and cook for 3 minutes per side for Medium Rare. Remove them from the pan.
Whisk into the pan drippings the other 2 tablespoons of the butter and the dijon, add the shallots and saute for just a minute or two, add a tablespoon of the lemon juice and the chives and the worcesteshire sauce. Keep whisking and add the brandy and the splash of cream. Pour this mixture over the steaks and garnish with the parsley. I like to serve this with asparagus and baby carrots. Happy Mother's Day all you beautiful ladies! Enjoy!