BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Cravings

You know it's strange.  Lately I've acquired a bit more of a taste for beef and sweets.  My mom was super into beef and desserts.  She was all about a nice steak.  And she was all about having dessert.  On my birthday I brought her down some Cheesecake Factory and I sat with her and we both ate (In this case it was just a sandwich that she specifically had a craving for and not a steak...).  She ate her food and I ate mine.  Then we ate cheesecake and she just kept saying how good the cheesecake was.  Mmmmm mmmmm this is SO good!  Ken this is SOOOO good!

She couldn't really see at that point so I had to help her eat.  But she was just... loving it.  She loved desserts.

Well anyways... Two things I've been doing more of lately are related to beef and desserts.

{BEEF and BROCCOLI}

Beef and broccoli... Or green beens are good too!  Okay, here's my latest dinner creation (I'm all about dinner creations lately too).  Obviously a good steak can't be beat.  But this is more of a "quick on the go I don't have much time to cook" type of meal idea.  I like to buy stew beef.  It's much more affordable and it's already chopped up into little squares.  Then I just crock pot it.  Let it simmer and cook.  Or, the stove works too.  I'm still a little pinched in my budget but after next month I'll have a few extra hundred bucks a month to spend more on things like a legit steak to cook at home.  Or maybe in honor of my mom I'll go out to Outback once a month and get what she usually ordered...  We'll see...

The first time I made the stew beef though I didn't understand why the beef was so chewy.  Turns out you have to use that tenderizer thing and give it a few whack-a-mole type of hits.  Works like a charm.  I know, everyone knows you have to do that.  Apparently I was out of the loop on that one.

SO once you have the beef squares all cooked you can freeze them.  I break them up in little containers.  Now that you have a bunch of frozen stew beef cubes the options are endless!

Just thaw out a couple of already cooked ones and throw them in whatever you want to make after work that night.  The prep time is minimal and you can have a meal super quick.

Look at that... I'm gonna be the next Rachel Ray with 30 minute meals.  Apparently.  Probably not.  30 minute meals are fun though.

I've cooked a few up with some scrambled eggs for an egg and beef burrito.  Just sauté some onions and bell peppers.  Throw in the beef and scrambled eggs.  I cut the cubes into smaller bits though so they were more like little tiny pieces between the eggs.

I've made a quesadilla.  Again, just slice up the cubes into smaller thinner slices after thawing a few out.

Oh and make sure to freeze the stew cubes spaced apart, if you throw them all together in one container they freeze together and then you just have a frozen chunk of beef.  The key is to put them in smaller separate containers... Just let them sit with a half inch or at least some sort of space between.  What I might do is put them on like some foil and just let them freeze first, then put them all in a container after they are frozen.  I feel like that might work better.  I'll have to continue to experiment.

Other options are to take frozen veggies, just the bagged kind and throw those in with some of the cubes (you don't have to cut them up into little pieces for this like for the burrito and quesadilla) and just add a few spices and a sauce of some sort and make a quick stir fry.  Last night I did that with frozen broccoli and green beans.  I just let them simmer all together with the stove set on 2 of 10 with a lid on... and I had some teriyaki sauce.  Then I cooked up some whole wheat pasta and just mixed it all up.  It was really delicious.  And much more healthy I imagine than those pre-bagged stir fry options you can buy in the store.

I try to avoid those because I like to at least try to make all my own stuff from scratch as best I can.  I feel like those all in one stir fry things are just kind of... I don't know you can't control what's in them.  Like I want whole wheat pasta.  I want less sodium.  I want... Specific veggies.  I can have more control over the individual ingredients.

I've done rice as well.  Sometimes I pre cook rice and keep it also frozen in little containers and I can pull out a small serving and throw that in or just microwave it and then put the stirfry over top of it.

Now, I also use chicken... but lately I've been more into using beef.

{DESSERT}

So with the sweets side of things, I do have regular dessert from time to time.  I'll buy gelato or something like that.  Or a little pint of ice cream here and there to have after dinner.  I'd like to get more into baking stuff.  I think that would be fun.  One of the things I've done a lot lately though, is I keep buying those bite size mini chocolates.  You can just buy a bunch and have a little candy jar in the kitchen.  Then when I have a "craving", that's what my mom used to call it, any rules were out the window with food when she had a craving.  Be it dieting or something or anything related to her medical stuff... Like you can't have grapefruit juice on immunosuppressant drugs.  Every now and then my mom would buy a small thing and just take a few sips.  It was a "craving".  It interferes with the absorption of the immunosuppressant drug.  Or, she'd just be like... I have a craving for this dessert or that.  Or she'd just text me and say she had a craving for a steak from Outback.  And she would want a potato with all the fixings.  Potatoes were limited for her because of the potassium level.  But she would be like... It's ok... My level is low right now... also I have a craving... So it's okay because I have a craving.

Well every now and then I have a craving for chocolate.  So I keep my little jar of mini chocolates and I just unwrap and eat a small one to satisfy the craving.

It's okay.  I have a craving.  So... The rules don't apply to cravings.

So the next time you're breaking a strict plan of some sort and you just want a little something that you're not supposed to have... Just say... "It's okay, I have a craving.  So it's okay for me to have this/do this."  My mom would have approved.