I prepared for the challenge by listing out my meals for the week and the ingredients I need to get at the grocery. I must say, it was kind of hard to think of the meals I wanted to prepare. My goal was to buy most of the ingredients in bulk and be able to use them throughout the week. Since I didn’t want to drop by the grocery almost everyday, I bought all the things I needed on Sunday night.
For day 1, I was supposed to prepare Orange Ginger Salad*. Full disclosure: the original recipe called for ginger root, honey and dried cranberries, but I didn’t get these ingredients because a) there was no ginger root at the shop that day, b) I don’t really like honey and c) there also wasn’t any dried cranberries. So this one is obviously modified. I will be renaming this as Orange and Beef Salad.
The cast of characters: beautiful beef strips, mushrooms, garlic, one each of onions, minced, orange, cut into cubes, a carrot, sliced into strips, and a few broccoli florets. I’m not going to use ALL of these ingredients for the salad.
Some seasonings for the dressing: 1 tsp. soy sauce, 2 tsp. EVOO, 1 tsp. sesame seeds, 1 tsp.rice vinegar, a dash of salt and pepper, plus I replaced the honey with about 1 tsp. of sugar.
First, I sauteed the beef in some oil, garlic and onions. the beef will cook quickly, because it’s thinly sliced.
I set aside half of the cooked beef. The rest of the beef stays in the pan, and I mix in the carrots and broccoli, adding in some soy sauce, salt and pepper. Just let this cook for a bit, and…well, that’s my Sunday night dinner.
So on to the salad. I roast the mushrooms in EVOO for a few minutes
and after that, i mixed it with the beef, the orange slices and poured the dressing over. the last step is to place it into a bed of sliced lettuce.
Here’s my beef, cooked two ways:
and here’s my first boxed lunch for the challenge. For snacks, I packed some pretzels and black and blue berries.
