London Broil salad

One of the items I usually cook on Sunday for meals for the week is a London Broil. Actually, I often cook 2 of them since my Big Guy eats them for lunch during the week.
This week some thinly sliced London Broil made its way in to a salad comprised of romaine lettuce, radish, grape tomatoes and a drizzle of Magic Sauce. Fantastic! As if Magic Sauce isn't magical enough, the weather has been so warm here that I was still able to make it with rosemary, oregano & thyme from my garden.

Roasted chicken salad

I usually roast a chicken on Sunday while I am cooking for the week. Once it's cooked off, I pick all the flesh off and store that in the fridge for use during the week.
This salad was roasted chicken, romaine, carrots, radish & red pepper with a touch of home made japanese style mayo and a squeeze of lemon juice.

"Thai" style chicken

Testing phone blogging

Here's a batch of sauerkraut made with red cabbage & red onion. 2 days in and its getting sour & fizzy. Onion taste is mellowing somewhat. Beautiful, tasty & full of probiotic goodness!

Rutgers AG-Field Day

Last Saturday was Rutgers AG-Field day. It's sort of a celebration of all things relating to Rutgers University fantastic Agriculture department, their lovely Farmers Market and all of their nature/earth sciences departments. They have a huge plant sale, with most of the plants being grown in their own greenhouses. I scored a couple of beauties for a very low price - Motherwort, Comfrey,(which the lady was kind enough to remind me "don't eat this, it's dangerous" Never mind that that's the magic plant that enabled me to get out of the hospital in record time after my surgery...)  Borage, this beautiful Red Veined Sorrel and a different type of oregano than we have now. Also scored was 2 bunches of the first NJ asparagus of the year. I cooked one batch with poor girl's panchetta (read: BACON!) and had that with dinner. Leftovers, not that there was a lot left over.... were eaten for breakfast with sunny side up eggs and bearnaise sauce. Yummy!

Easter weekend.

Nice 3-day weekend for me. We got permission to start construction in our yard, so I spend Friday ripping out our old patio so that I could level it off and re-install it before we begin the rest of the construction. I didn't hit the gym at all because my work outs consisted of lugging around 75 lb bags of sand and gravel, running relays with them on my shoulder from the car and though the house to the yard. Nice, functional strength!

I was planning on drying a bunch of crispy almonds and a batch of jerky in my new L'Equip dehydrator....I soaked the nuts, I marinated 8 lbs of thinly sliced beef....I loaded the dehydrator with nuts, plugged it in and.....a few hours later the fan stopped working and part of the machine melted! whoa! Not fun. Still deciding what I should do. Return and refund or return and get a new one.....

Sunday's dinner was great. We went to a local Italian place where I usually just get a steak and veggies. Their calamari salad caught my eye so I got that as an appetizer. Yum - it's the best dish I've ever eaten in this restaurant! My main course was a green bean salad with sliced steak. This was the 2nd best thing I've ever had here. Winner! Enough left over to have again for tomorrow. Calamari for breakfast! I'm going to try to recreate this dish as I think it would be fantastic to have during the hotter months. Stand by for recipes....

L'Equip Dehydrator = epic FAIL.

I was planning on drying a bunch of crispy almonds and a batch of jerky
in my new L'Equip dehydrator....I soaked the nuts, I marinated 8 lbs of
thinly sliced beef....I loaded the dehydrator with nuts, plugged it in
and.....a few hours later the fan stopped working and part of the
machine melted! whoa!

Not cool. The scary thing is I usually run my dehydrators overnight. What if this thing had melted down while I was sleeping? Do I need to stand there watching it the whole time it's working? If I get a replacement, do I have to unplug the darn thing every time I leave the room to use the bathroom? I did a lot of research and this unit gets great reviews, I thought I was getting a good machine.

Now I've got a pile of soggy nuts and a bunch of marinated beef that needs to be dried pronto. I'll have to dig out my old dinosaur dehydrator and fire up my oven on low to get all of this done before it all spoils. I am pissed.

I hope the replacement that I ordered from Amazon works correctly but to be honest, I'm thinking of returning the replacement and getting something else because this experience left a really bad melted plastic taste in my mouth.