January 30th: Ginger-lemon beef and broccoli

I have, for almost seven years, planned all my meals from one week to one month in advance. I usually have a rough sketch of the month done up, with vacancies that get filled in as we go along. Of course, recipes get shifted and occasionally dropped as we move through the month. My fancy planning tool is my milk calendar, of which I get two every year: one with the paper, and one with Chatelaine. On occasion, I try one of the recipes in the milk calendar, almost without fail resulting in disappointment. I don't know what it is, but those recipes tend to suck. Tonight, I got sucked in again; I thought the February 2011 recipe, Ginger-lemon beef and broccoli, looked tasty, so I made it. The result was less disappointing than some in the past, but not good enough to try again.


I made some mushroom fried rice to accompany. I know some of my readers aren't into mushrooms, but they are something we love love love and love (for all you BODYFLOW-ers). For the mushroom fried rice, I made some of my Knorr chicken broth-enhanced rice to begin with (half white rice, half brown--my concession to eating brown anything is to go halfsies). Then I fried up sliced mushrooms and diced onion in safflower oil and stirred in the hot, cooked, rice for a couple of minutes. On the side, I beat an egg, tempered it with some hot mushroom-rice mixture, then stirred it into the rice. Finally, I topped off the whole ensemble with a splash of sesame oil. The result was pretty tasty.