Grandpa Gotta Cook—Broccoli Beef With Rice
It's been weeks since I participated in Food Fight Friday.
My last fff post was back on May 10. How time flies.
I guess I don't need to provide an excuse—life happens—but I feel like I probably should make an appearance at least, say hi to everyone, show a meal I made tonight (yes, tonight, and it's not even Saturday), and quickly catch you up on a few things.
First of all, I'm a Grandpa times three now. The newest member of the Albrethsen family was born late on Mother's Day after a couple of hours of inducing. Baby and mother have been doing well since. The kid's got a healthy set of lungs, knows how to use them, and does so often.
It probably shouldn't have, but his birth kind of messed up my routine. I've either not cooked on Saturday, or I've cooked something I've already posted about, so didn't figure I would duplicate.
This week, though, I've cooked every day so far except for Sunday and yesterday. My wife generally cooks on Sunday and we had leftovers last night.
While I've been making all these dinners (it's because my son is back to work and the daughter-in-law has her hands full), I apparently haven't had the presence of mind to document anything. I'm not sure if that's because they've all been crockpot dishes, or what, but up until tonight, I completely forgot to take any photos.
However, if you're interested, here's the list of dinners to date (these are all crockpot):
Hamburger/tater tot casserole (son really liked it).
Ground Turkey and Penne Pasta (pasta was too chewy)
Chicken and Dumplings (my personal favorite so far).
Leftovers
Tonight's dinner—Broccoli Beef with Rice
Basically, meat gets sliced into thin pieces. I decided to use the pieces of tender sirloin left over from the pack I made the Hibachi steak with, rather than the beef roast the recipe asked for. I think that was a good call. Before the beef goes in, there's a mixture of beef broth, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame seed oil, brown sugar, and garlic that goes in first, followed by the beef. After 90 minutes on low, cornstarch mixed with water gets added, along with the broccoli. Thirty minutes on high later, everything is supposed to be ready.
For the most part, I would say that's what happened. I like broccoli to be more tender than this turned out to be in the stalk parts, but otherwise, I think things went well. Not the best Broccoli Beef I've had, but certainly not the worst.
I'm on cooking duty tomorrow night again, and then I think I'm up again Monday through Thursday, when my son gets off from his school job for the summer.
I actually kind of like the crockpot cooking. I've never really done it before, so it's been a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to start times. I need to pay more attention to how long things are supposed to take and start the process early enough so dinner is ready in the five pm hour. A couple of nights it got to be past 6 pm, and that's just too late for us.
So, anyway, I'm glad to participate this week, and I hope life finds everyone well and happy with bellies full, or reasonable facsimiles thereof.
Your Food Fight Friday Contender has been entered into Round 46
May your contender make it out alive and not be placed in a permanent food coma!
Good Luck
Iwant make this, looks so good
Hey, @denissemata.
It was pretty good. I think I had too much beef broth and maybe not enough starch. Regardless, the meat was pretty tender. The broccoli probably needed another ten to fifteen minutes, so maybe put it in earlier? Here's a link to the recipe I followed in case you want to use it. :)
Yes, I think I want to make this recipe. I love broccoli. Thanks for the recipe
How did the broccoli turn out. (Hard, soft I like the way the meat was cut.
Happy newer grandpa. :) 👍
Hey, @wolfhart.
The broccoli turned out soft on top, but crunchier than I like in the stalk. I didn't leave that much, but there was enough you had to bite harder on it.
Yeah, the meat turned out pretty good. Something went wrong with the amount of flavor from the broth/sauce mixture. I think I needed more cornstarch so it was a little thicker.
Thank you. I less than two years we went from none to three. It doesn't sound like that will happen again, but there's probably another grandchild in the future for a total of four. Of course, minds change, so who knows. I'm just happy to see them healthy and loved. :)
That is good to hear about the broccoli. I understand it
Happy and loved, thats it
And they know you are there when they reach out.
The more the merrier. :)
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 25 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 5 SBD worth and should receive 136 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigCongratulations on the new addition to the family. :-)
Broccoli with beef looks good. But it seems like a long time cooking.
Hey, Vincent.
Meat in the broth/sauce mixture was 90 minutes on low, broccoli 30 minutes on high, for a total of two hours, plus prep time. Of the slow cooker recipes, it was actually half the time of most of the others so far. Four hours is still pretty decent, since some will take six to eight hours.
Cool thing is, you can go and do other things. I've taken two hour or more hours to cook something before but I was in the kitchen the whole time. I much prefer this, if I don't run out of different enough foods to make. :)
I look for recipes/menus that don't take more than half an hour to cook. But then, I am cooking mostly for myself and I eat to live, so that's fine. :-)
When it comes down to it, we all eat so we can live. I guess, though, some of us (like me) could go a little while without, or we could manage less, and still be a-ok. :)
I don't go for fancy. Sometimes they happen, but really, I'm looking for quick and easy. And with the crockpot doing most of the work, the prep is more or less the same, but I don't have to sit around watching it.
Understood. :-)
Welcome back and congratulations on the new grandchild, @glenalbrethsen. I just love #fff, I get so many cooking ideas. I haven't had beef and broccoli in a long time. gotta put it on the list.
Hey, @paletotwist.
It's good to be back, at least for a Friday. :) I failed to take pictures of tonight's dinner, but I have two or three more tries before Friday, I think. Which reminds me, i need to get more recipes. :)
And it's true. Beef and Broccoli is a good one to throw into the mix.
Thank you. Three in two years is pretty good I think. I don't think there's another round of three coming in the next two years, though. We might get one more, so the older boy can catch up to the younger, but that's probably it. :) Or so we're told now.
Congratulation Grandpa, #3, how exciting. We just found out this past weekend that #7 is on the way for us. Phew! lots of mouths to feed. Keep up the good work, Grandpa, you are the best !!
Hey, @farm-mom.
Number 7! I'm afraid that's going to be stretching it for us. I believe there will be a Number 4 within the next two years, but after that, it's too early to say right now. The littlest guy has found his lungs and apparently enjoys using them, and while there is some rhyme or reason to it, I think some of it is just 'cuz. :)
New born babies can be a challenge for sure, thank God they are so cute.
New born babies can
Be a challenge for sure, thank
God they are so cute.
- farm-mom
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
Hello @haikubot...thanks for the quote
Grandpa times three, you must be very proud. Beef and broccoli an all time favorite. the nice thing about crockpot cooking, is that after the stuff is in the pot, you can usually step away for a few hours.
Hey, @thebigsweed.
I've actually been enjoying that part (the step away for a few hours). I don't know if I'm spending the same amount of time I would if I were cooking, but it feels like I'm not. I know I'm not there for the time it would take for stuff to cook, so it's just the prep and serve part, and lately, even that's been down because of the way a couple of the recipes have been. The food has all been very good, too, with no true misses, so I don't know. I think I might be converted to this crockpot cooking deal. :)
Howdy sir Gramps! lol. you passed me, I was at 2 grandkids. This stuff looks great and the crock pot is so nice to get meat real tender.
Hey, one time I saw someone mention that there was a page they could go to which listed every post they ever made, have you heard of that or know what that site is?
I'm hoping for at least one more. Three more would be good, too. As you know, what you want and what you might get are two different things. :)
If it's a page listing just posts, I'm not sure if I do. The system can treat posts and comments as posts, so I'm not entirely sure about that. Plus, I don't think I've ever seen all of them on one page.
I just checked. Steemworld still only goes back over the most recent 100 posts, and so does Steemdb.com. Actually, I just looked at steemdb.com under author rewards, and that actually does go back to the beginning, but even if you filter for only posts, it still gives you comments, too. And you've got to go in by date and check what's what.
wow thanks for looking that up sir Glen! I should have written it down when someone did a post on it last year, the site listed just the posts ever done, he gave a screeenshot of it. I heard tattoodjay was busy with family this week, did you do alot of commenting?
No. I might make a hundred comments, or close to it. I was on dinner duty most of the week, in between trying to line up a job (which I'm not sure if I have yet), so between my normal chores, the added stuff, a couple of other things that popped up yesterday, including my mom's health declining, I just couldn't get on track.
I'm up over the previous week, though, so I'm slowly working back into a decent amount of commenting. Truth to tell, I'm kind of getting tired of it again. :)
what? A job? like a real world job? what kind?
Yeah. A guy from church works as general manager for a company that places coin/cash/credit card operated machines in all kinds of different locations. They're the non-vending kind. So, you have your games like pinball and the like, large screened video arcade games, the crane games where you try to catch a prize, redemption games where you get tickets you can redeem for a prize, juke box machines, etc., and then you have ATM machines. The job I would do would be to go around collecting money and restocking the toys or money, in the case of ATMs. Probably around 30-40 hours a week, give or take
He had someone else he was interviewing, and also took out on a ride along, and apparently the owner, while not so hands on, wants to be a part of the hiring process, so the guy I know was going to talk to the owner and get back to me by the end of the week. That didn't happen, so either he didn't get a chance yet to talk to the owner, something else is holding things up, or I wasn't hired. I doubt he forgot to let me know I had the job, though. :)
oh, very interesting. So this guy approached you at church?
Hey, @janton.
Actually, no. So there are meetings the leadership of the local church holds before the Sunday services, so he had mentioned there that he had an opening and asked if anyone knew of someone. I had told another leader I was looking and he mentioned me to this other guy. So, then I texted him Monday to see how to apply and I ended up at his house that evening for an "interview." It was a laid back kind of thing and he did most of the talking. :)
Hello!
This post has been manually curated, resteemed
and gifted with some virtually delicious cake
from the @helpiecake curation team!
Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!
Manually curated by @vibesforlife.
Hey, @helpiecake.
Thanks for this. Very much appreciated.