Korean Beef BBQ Ribs

The best part about making lots of naan is that they can morph into other meals – like a breakfast naan panini.  So good.  The naan is still a bit chewy on the inside but the outside is a bit crunchy.  I scrambled my usual egg, ham, spinach and cheese.  I only used 3/4 of an ounce of cheese but check out this cheezy goodness!  Believe it or not, with the fruit, this plate is about 430 calories and super filling.

Wednesday is my new rest day.  After doing two days of strength, my body needs a break, so I hit up Goodwill on my lunch break.  I’ve been inspired lately by Andrea and her “fashion over 40” series on her blog.   She loves necklaces and scarves, but what I really like is how she puts an outfit together – a skill I typically don’t have.  In fact, since Hannah’s moved back in, there have been more than a dozen instances where just as I was leaving for work she’s said “you’re not fucking wearing that outside are you?!”  I really don’t know where she learned to swear like that.  So I hit up the jewelry section of Goodwill (um, pretty sure Andrea doesn’t buy her jewelry there!) but I am cheap and all necklaces are $1.99!

1.  Um, can you tell I love silver?  2.  The multi-colored necklace on the bottom right is really long, so I could wear it long or wrap it around.  Thoughts? Do you like any of them?  Do you think I should give them back to Goodwill? Or just throw them out?!  For the record, Hannah only like the one on the bottom right.

So I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern around the house lately.  If I am not home, Hannah and Jacob will almost always get take out.  Like 99% of the time.  My twin sister and I were talking about it yesterday because it seems to be a generational thing that kids eat out so much these days.  Growing up eating out, or even ordering or picking up a pizza was a big deal!  We didn’t typically even go out on birthdays, just get our favorite dinner.  For me and my sister – always taco fiesta.  And I believe my brother always wanted lasagna. (Go ahead and pause for a moment to jump over to my brother Charlie’s blog titled Moving is Moving).  I’ll wait!

I had some boneless beef short ribs in the freezer and thought I could cook them in the slow cooker on Saturday when I was meeting my friend Alison and her family out for dinner.  I showed Hannah a picture on Pinterest of what I thought it would end up looking like and asked “would you eat that?”  And she said yes!  First thing for her – no bones.  Second thing for her – not a lot of fat (I trimmed a lot of it off).

When I got home from being out, Hannah said “guess what Mom?!  I ate a whole log of meat!”  By whole log of meat she meant one whole short rib.  While they stay intact in the crock pot, as soon as you take them out of the crock pot they are fork tender and start to fall apart.  The kids ended up just spooning some of the juice from the crock pot over the pork and white rice I made for them.  I would have taken the sauce and skimmed off the fat, and then put that in a pot and bring it to a boil and mix 1 tablespoon corn starch with 1 tablespoon of water and made a thick sauce to pour over the top.

For my lunch, I just brought and heated the rice separately.  When I cut up the beef I added fresh chopped broccoli and heated the beef and broccoli up for 2 minutes, then served it over the white rice.  I did add a bit of sriracha just to balance out the sweetness of the brown sugar, but seriously this is just as good as take out.  Make a big pot of this in the crock pot over the weekend and you have lunch for a couple days during the week.

While I had Blue Apron this week, it’s been mostly for my lunches.  Last night I made the last dinner which was a lentil bolognese for my lunch.  When I was meal planning for the rest of the weekend, I realized we haven’t had shrimp in like a really long time.  I love shrimp!  Um, note to self – remember Jacob doesn’t like shrimp!  Oops.  But Hannah does, as long as the shrimp are small.  I showed her this recipe and said “would you eat that?!”  And she said yes!

Luckily when I got home from work Hannah had already peeled and deveined the shrimp for me – best sous chef evah! So this meal literally cooked in less than 15 minutes.  While the original recipe called for serving it with pasta, I had a tube of polenta in my pantry that needed to be used up, and pan fried rounds of polenta for the base.  My dinner picture doesn’t actually show all the sauce, but it was super delicious.

My only changes were that I used 1 cup of half and half.  Hannah and I both thought it needed more salt and pepper and I added parsley and Italian seasoning to the pan.

Also, sitting on top of the polenta is just a quick stirfry of shredded zucchini.  Holy yum, this was delicious!  Creamy, the shrimp were perfectly cooked.  Love having a dinner that all of us can eat without any modifications!  As we were eating it I told Jacob the only thing that would make this better was having steak on the side and he said “and not having shrimp. I don’t really like shrimp.”  I love that he eats anything that I make though! 

After dinner the kids got their cleaning pants on.  They mopped the kitchen floor, vacuumed the back room and the stairs going to outside, mopped the tile by the back door and deep cleaned the bathroom. So nice!  So I told them I would reward them with this soup:

Yes, you heard it right here people – I will be making them French onion soup!  Which means slicing and caramelizing lots and lots of onions.  If that isn’t thanks and love enough, I am not sure what else is!

Alright, time to get this show on the road.  I wish I had a stove at my desk!  Make it a great day!