Beef Strips with Orange and Ginger

Day 18-I’m lacking confidence and I’m not feeling excited about my cooking either. Going into the kitchen these last few days I’ve felt the dread return. I have no idea why I’ve regressed. It might possibly be because I still wish I was on vacation. It’s what I’m going to call kitchen depression. You feel super every where else, but the minute you start thinking about cooking or walk into the kitchen you feel as blue as Eeyore. It certainly doesn’t help that I just found out that Anthony has not been completely honest with me on how my food has turned out. There have been times when he said it was a good meal, but really was thinking that the shrimp were overcooked (or something to that effect). Not cool. I need to know if something I am serving isn’t good, so that I don’t make the same mistake again!!

Anyway, feeling like Eeyore I walked into the kitchen Friday night to make a stir-fry. I’ve never made a stir-fry from scratch, I buy the frozen ones! This was from scratch and involved beef. Scary. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to make, but my kitchen depression was bad. So I put on my fun apron and slowly got started. I chopped up some carrots from the garden, an onion, and ginger. Then I thinly sliced the meat (sirloin). That part wasn’t my favorite. There were hard little bits of fat in it towards the end, so I cut those out. Yuck. The rest of the meal was pretty simple, it was ONLY a stir-fry. You marinate the steak strips in the juice of one orange and the orange zest. You reserve the liquid once you are through marinating the beef. Then you make a mixture of soy sauce, ginger, and cornstarch and mix that into the meat. Then you heat up sunflower oil, add the beef and cook until there is a little color. Then you add the carrots and cook until the meat is done. The last step is stirring in the scallions and reserved liquid. I think I over did the sesame oil at the end and the meat was a little over done, I really don’t cook meat so I knew it wouldn’t be perfect.

Final Product:

Thoughts? It was okay. Another one that I’m not rushing to make again. I really just didn’t enjoy my time in the kitchen tonight. Someone needs to slap this lack of confidence and desire out of me. I wasn’t motivated and I really just didn’t care.

Totals: 20 minutes marinate, 10-15 minutes prep, 10 minutes cooking time 1 wok or big skillet, 1 bowl.

I avoided the kitchen at dinner time for the rest of the weekend. I did make an apple cake, which basically was a mix, though I did have to chop 6 apples. Other then that moment, there was no dinner made by me this weekend. It was a kitchen protest. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m really hoping my kitchen issue ends tonight, because my budget can’t afford for me to stop cooking.

On to some fun: I finally got around to poaching eggs. I don’t eat eggs, because they do not agree with my system. After watching Masterchef and seeing people poaching eggs I really wanted to try it out. So as a reminder on how to do it, I watched two videos on youtube.com of people poaching eggs. It seemed pretty straightforward, the only part that I knew would be trouble for me, was getting the temperature of the water right. Unlike one of the chefs in the video, I do no carry a pocket thermometer around with me.

First things first you crack an egg into a little bowl, making sure not to break the yoke. Then you fill a pot of water 2/3 of the way full and bring it to a boil. Once the water boils, you turn the temperature down to where the water is just starting to have bubbles, but they are not breaking the surface. Then you add some salt (1 tsp) and some vinegar (1 oz) to the water. The vinegar will help the egg white to stay together. The next step was the most fun for me, you put a spoon in the water and create a whirlpool effect. Then you carefully drop the egg in the middle of the whirlpool. After the egg is in for a few seconds run the spoon underneath the egg to make sure it isn’t sticking.

Then you wait for the egg to start rising which is supposed to mean it’s done. I don’t really agree. I tried 3 different eggs. With the first egg the yoke was a bit too runny. The 2^nd eggs yoke was really too runny. And the third was the best. The yoke was just about to start firming up, but had a less runniness to it. I would say the egg could be done anywhere between 90 seconds to 3 minutes. You just really have to watch it. I’m pretty positive my water was not at the correct temperature, which might be why it took 3 minutes for my egg to finally look correctly poached. Overall I had a good time doing it and I’m going to have to make poached eggs for people when they come to visit. Assuming they can eat eggs.

1^st try

2^nd try

3^rd try