Okay, so I made grilled cheese for National Grilled Cheese month.  Which is this month.

Have you had grilled cheese this month?  You should get on it.  You only have a day left.  Even if you have to scrounge out some fake, mysteriously raincoat-esque cheese slices from the office fridge and heat it in the toaster oven that no one uses, and NOT have it with tomato soup (which would be the real crime here).

But see, today I found out it’s salad month too.  (Who makes this stuff up?)

Luckily, I made this steak salad with horseradish dressing, inspired by a recipe from Bon Appetit magazine, that I was going to share with you anyway.  I have a bit of a thing for salads topped with warm ingredients, be they beef, chicken, toasted sesame seeds or pistacios, or caramelized onions.  It’s the hot/cold thing.  Kind of like how, when I have whipped cream on my hot chocolate, I want to keep adding more whipped cream to it as I drink so that I get a taste of warm chocolate with cool cream in every sip.

You know?  You do that too, right?

Also, you should know that the photographing of this salad fell into the category of “decidedly quirky ways to get a blog post published.”  Similar to my adventures in photographing post daylight-savings time.  Because it’s been getting light so early in the mornings and because the little one has actually been “sleeping in” a bit, I’ve identified the early hours as a time that I can get some good photographs in warm, natural light.

I had planned to shoot this salad one morning and woke up to a dreary, dark, cloudy day.  My kitchen floor, where a lot of my pictures get taken, was flooded with grey (sad!) light.  So, I put my winter boots on, being careful to tuck my flannel pj bottoms into them, and stepped outside on to my slush-covered deck to take a picture in the unadulterated, outdoor light.

Here’s what you need:

Lettuce

Goat cheese

Onion

Red peppers

(any other delicious salad topping you can think of)

Steak:  seasoned as you wish and cooked as desired.  Let it rest for a few minutes after cooking before you go slicing it thinly for application to your delish salad

More to the point:  the tangy, zesty, cuts-through-the-richness-of-the-meat dressing –

1/2 cup sour cream

3 tbsp. horseradish

1 tsp. honey

1 tsp. red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

Here’s what you do:

Assemble your salad.  Place all the dressing ingredients in a mason jar or similar lidded container, shake the crap outta them, and pour over your salad.

Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2013/03/steak-salad-with-horseradish-dressing