What's For Dinner? Tues, Dec 15th, 2015

[Steve Kroll]

Early dinner tonight. I picked up some nice Barramundi fillets at the store, so I breaded and baked those, and made a side of pan fried cauliflower. The sauce on the fish is lemon basil butter.

[Zhizara]

Tacos!

[Whiskadoodle]

Lookin' good Steve. I bought bacon today, something I don't usually buy/ no reason.

I made a BLT w avocado slices and a handful of frozen green beans with hot bacon mustard dressing. Yummers.

[Aunt Bea]

I made a small hot dish or maybe it was a casserole of roast chicken chunks, mushrooms, green beans, sour cream, grated cheese, etc...

[Cheryl J]

That looks mighty good, Steve!
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I had a bean and rice burrito topped with pico de gallo and a little sour cream. Sliced avocado on the side.

[Andy M.]

I could have sworn I had some burgers in the freezer but it turns out I didn't.

I defrosted some BS chicken breasts and cooked them on the Griddler. We sliced them and made chicken sandwiches.

[taxlady]

I made a tossed salad. Stirling cooked some spaghetti and stirred in some Kirkland marinara sauce with the rest of the ground beef that I fried with chopped onions on Sunday. It was very tasty.

[Addie]

A small serving of Angel Hair Pasta with butter.

[GotGarlic]

My master gardener group had our annual Christmas party tonight - heavy hors d'oeuvres and cash bar at a locally owned restaurant; the chef buys fruits and vegetables from the same farm that sells at our farmers market. It was fun and delicious 🎄

[Greg Who Cooks]

I had a 7 oz. filet mignon steak I rescued as half a par in my Safeway manager's specials a few weeks (froze then thawed) which cost $3+ for a beautiful 7 oz. piece. I love these "last day" manager's specials because too many people don't realize the FDA reguations are absurd. My Canadian friend and sometimes cooking mentor takes last day beef steaks and ages them in his fridge for 1-2 weeks, and THEN cooks them. I thought he was crazy but I know he is a fellow intellect so I trusted him and discovered myself that he was right. Eating a 2 week old steak won't kill you (as long as it's refrigerated) and it's just a myth that you can't age steaks in your fridge. Try it yourself if you don't believe me.

I served my steak with home made wasabi (from powder) and blue cheese butter (the recipes say 1 T. blue cheese to 4 T. butter but I half the ratio), and my Potatoes Franconio recipe. If you Google that do not confuse it with the franconia recipe, MY recipe comes from my old friend's family restaurant Franconio's (I've never been there, long gone by now probably, and my friend long gone now probably too. But it is FRANCONIO not ending with an "A" as Google will tempt you.

Anyway it was good! The filet mignon attempted to "mooooo" until I stabbed it a few times, and cut off pieces until there wasn't any piece large enough to "mooooo."

Maybe I have a good immune system, maybe I have a good digestive system, maybe I hark to primitive man and maybe it's just beef sashimi. Whatever, it was good.

[LPBeier]

Kay was over and made us perogies. She had all the toppings, bacon, butter, cheese, sour cream and onions. I had my palm oil margarine and green onions with a small sprinkle of "lite" cheese. But it was still tasty!

I only have one meal left so I may be making perogies before Christmas. Something I didn't want to do. Oh Well.

[Cooking Goddess]

Steve, that is one beige looking dinner! We had one of those earlier this week. Amazingly, meals like that seem to have the most "colorful" flavors.


We took a break from our test-drive of Himself's back today, stopping into our favorite Irish pub to avoid idiot rush hour drivers. We split their "Famous Irish Potato Pizza" and each had a pint of beer. Later this evening, I made us each a good-size salad to make sure we had fresh veggies. Now I'm cold...

[Steve Kroll]

Beige dinner.... ha ha, I like that!

[Kayelle]

Originally Posted by Greg Who Cooks

I had a 7 oz. filet mignon steak I rescued as half a par in my Safeway manager's specials a few weeks (froze then thawed) which cost $3+ for a beautiful 7 oz. piece. I love these "last day" manager's specials because too many people don't realize the FDA reguations are absurd. My Canadian friend and sometimes cooking mentor takes last day beef steaks and ages them in his fridge for 1-2 weeks, and THEN cooks them. I thought he was crazy but I know he is a fellow intellect so I trusted him and discovered myself that he was right. Eating a 2 week old steak won't kill you (as long as it's refrigerated) and it's just a myth that you can't age steaks in your fridge. Try it yourself if you don't believe me.

I served my steak with home made wasabi (from powder) and blue cheese butter (the recipes say 1 T. blue cheese to 4 T. butter but I half the ratio), and my Potatoes Franconio recipe. If you Google that do not confuse it with the franconia recipe, MY recipe comes from my old friend's family restaurant Franconio's (I've never been there, long gone by now probably, and my friend long gone now probably too. But it is FRANCONIO not ending with an "A" as Google will tempt you.

Anyway it was good! The filet mignon attempted to "mooooo" until I stabbed it a few times, and cut off pieces until there wasn't any piece large enough to "mooooo."

Maybe I have a good immune system, maybe I have a good digestive system, maybe I hark to primitive man and maybe it's just beef sashimi. Whatever, it was good.

That's funny Greg. I'm sure not a "fellow intellect" but I could have taught you that about dark steak..it's the best. I grew up in a little Mom and Pop meat market/grocery store, and what Daddy couldn't sell, we ate. I've joked for years that until I left home, I didn't know steak was red, or grapes came on stems.

[Greg Who Cooks]

I learned the thing about aging beef from my online friend who owned a satellite TV hacking forum in the late '90s. He was a major barbecuist! (I'm a published author. I'm allowed to coin words because of my literary license. ) He and I discussed cooking often, online, email, even on the phone.

He explained to me that last day steak was on sale as a manager's special only because the FDA has set such ridiculously stringent standards for beef shelf life that the markets are forced to sell it on the last day or throw it away. He said he would buy "last day" steaks and then let them sit in his refrigerator another week or even two!

That sounded just crazy to me. Of course beef is aged, even for fairly long times, hanging in a refrigerated commercial refrigerator -- to age the beef, but I didn't think that applied to sitting in a supermarket shrink wrapped package in my refrigerator. (It's probably better to remove the steak from its package and re-wrap it to remove some of the possible sources of bacteria.)

Well I tried it, let a nice steak sit in my fridge for a week, then opened it. To be blunt it did have a mild unpleasant odor but it wasn't rank or anything. I cooked and ate it and I was amazed in the improvement in taste and tenderness! (The odor disappeared as soon as it hit the heat.)

These days I always visit the manager's specials and paw through what's there to see if there are any items I like. I know beef can go a week and don't even give it a thought -- if necessary I know it can go over a week. I'm not as sure about pork but I am having a stuffed pork chop for dinner tonight that I bought a few days ago. The stuffing is probably problematic and I wouldn't push it with steak. I won't buy chicken or fish unless it's to eat the same day.

I'm sure it's a good thing the FDA is over-protective than under-protective, and there are aesthetic considerations too. As I said a week after sell-by date beef could have a mild odor, and appearance can suffer too, turning somewhat grey.

That grey color is a farce anyway. The meat is treated with carbon monoxide to keep it from oxidizing which is what turns it grey. Untreated meat would probably turn grey within a couple days of being put on the shelves. I've never noticed the exact dating but my best guess is the butcher dates the meat to be sold with a sell-by date about a week after cutting and packaging.

My opinion is that beef is perfectly safe to eat at least 3 weeks after the butcher has packaged it, provided the butcher had sanitary equipment and the meat was kept at the proper temperature for the entire 3 weeks.