Sriracha Whiskey BBQ Ketchup and . . . Home

I didn’t talk about it last week because Tony didn’t want to get his parents or his son and his daughter in law worried.  Remember the lab work we had done last week that was going to go to Mayo?  Well, they took one look at it, and basically told us to get straight to our local ER.  Damn – we went 12 days without a hospital visit!

Here’s the deal.  Imagine a pendulum swinging – when we first got admitted to St. Mary’s back on July 29 – the pendulum was as high as it could go on the right hand side.  Fast forward he comes home, he’s still on diuretics to make sure he doesn’t retain anymore fluid but the medicine is basically doing too good of a job and Tony got severely dehydrated – so imagine the pendulum is now swung all the way to the left hand side.  They need to balance of medications so the pendulum can be in the middle.  So we spent from Thursday until yesterday afternoon at the hospital.

So I have to admit – my eats weren’t the best the later part of the week, I didn’t get all my Insanity in, but I am not freaking out about it.  Life happens.  Shit happens.  I am not going to throw in the towel and say “fuck it” and start eating deep dish pizza every day.  Nope.  I am back on track.  My gym clothes are packed, my food plan is set and I’ll just keep on keeping on so I can reach my goal.   I am still happy to report a loss though – I guess my hard work in the beginning of the week paid off.

I did finally find the grapefruit Chobani – holy balls is this one good!  If you love pink grapefruit, you’ll love this yogurt.  And as luck would have it, it was on sale 10/$10!  I only initially bought two because I thought if they tasted like ass I didn’t want to be stuck with a dozen of them.  Um, no – I went back and bought more!  I ate it with about 2 tablespoons of my granola, and it was the perfect balance of sweet/tart/crunchy.  Still no luck on the watermelon one, but hey Chobani – if you want to send me some watermelon yogurt, I won’t say no!

It did sting a bit when I saw my Timehop from yesterday though.

Look at that upper right hand corner pick – August 25 of last year I was 159 and had lost 8.5 inches all over my body.  Fast forward a year and I am back to almost where I was in that top left hand picture.  But such is life, you can’t go back, only move forward.  And that’s what I plan to do.

So I stayed at the hospital Thursday afternoon and night and Friday night and all day Saturday.  By 7:00 p.m. Saturday I was itching to go home – don’t get my wrong, I love being with Tony when he’s in the hospital, but he sleeps a lot when I am there (hello sleep whisperer!) but I am the kind of person who is always on the move.  So by Saturday night I was dying to get back to my kitchen and make a decent meal for myself.  Of course, with all the time on my hands, I spent hours on Pinterest.  I am a Pinterest whore – I can’t help it!

What’s weird is that I can stumble upon a food blogger who is well established, has tons of followers and I wonder how I never found it before these last couple weeks!  Minimalist Baker is becoming one of my new favorite blogs.  John and Dana are a married couple – she recipe develops/cooks/photographs and he does the technical behind the scenes stuff and web design.  Remember when I made my copycat Starbuck’s muesli bread a couple weeks ago?   I just tweaked their recipe.   So when I saw Dana had made baked fries with a whiskey ketchup – I was sold.  I had a steak in the fridge that needed to be used or frozen, so steak on pomme frites quickly became my Saturday night dinner for one.   Follow her recipe here for the fries.  So good – tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper and baked until crispy, then tossed in garlic and fresh chopped rosemary.

I did adapt her ketchup recipe – one:  because I didn’t have brown sugar (how the fuck does that happen?!) and two: you know I like spicy shit, so I added sriracha to mine!  And I added a lot more black pepper.  Oh, and I left out the icky onion powder.

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I made the potatoes first and while they baked I put made the ketchup.  During the last 8-10 minutes of the ketchup/fries being done, I grilled my petite sirloin over medium high heat on my cast iron grill pan.

Look for this cut of meat – this beef petite boneless sirloin steak – it’s super economical – I mean look I almost got a half pound steak for under $3!   Tips with steak.  Always cook your steak at room temperature.  Always season well with salt and pepper while it comes to room temperature.  For perfect medium rare steak – use the 2x2x2x2 method.  Two minutes one side in one direction, two minutes on the other side in the same direction, then flip directions and cook 2 more minutes each side and let rest for 5-10 minutes to let the juices redistribute.  It was dark by the time I ate, so you have my really wonderful fluorescent kitchen lighting in this picture!

I ended up spooning a tablespoon of my hatch chile chimichurri sauce (and yes Nicole, I think that sauce would be awesome on tacos!)  on the bottom of my plate, added my sliced steak and had my pomme frites with the spicy ketchup for dipping.   Wow was this good.  From the herby chimichurri sauce, the cut like butter steak, the garlic rosemary fries and the spicy ketchup!  An explosion of flavor with every bite.  That meal above?  Tony wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole, so I got to enjoy a “Biz” dinner.

We got home in plenty of time for me to grocery shop, although not kidding – there were CHRISTMAS decorations out already!  Not that I don’t like looking at snowmen, but let’s still enjoy our summer people!

So here’s to a new week.  I have a question to ask though – what would be a meal you would eat that your spouse or significant other wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole?  Curious to see what your answers will be!  And my friend Skippy I was worried about because she hadn’t posted on her blog since July 30 and hadn’t been on Facebook for a couple weeks – happy to report she was just having some tests done, and forgot to ask her husband to update her blog or Facebook – whew!  I can stop worrying now.

And I hope all my Northern California blog friends didn’t get too much damage from the earthquake – so scary!

Hugs – make it a great day!