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Friday, June 10, 2011

Level 1 - Day 100

Burning Down The House

In honor of our 100th day in Level 1, one might think I was celebrating with the sounds of our smoke alarm going off while preparing dinner.  On the contrary, the alarms were quite un-nerving as they went off unexpectantly, not once, but three times!  But, luckily for me, my hubby was home and was able to take care of disarming the alarm while I tended to my feisty dinner.

While I quickly worked to keep our expensive dinner from burning, my hubby was running around the house opening windows and bringing in fans to suck the smoke out of the air.  To look at us you would have seen that we were quite the team as we both kept our cool during all the chaos.  And, in the end, we were relieved and delighted when we finally sat down to a delicious dinner.  Although, it wasn't as relaxing as I'd hoped.

The moral of the story:  When a recipe instructs you to cook something on high heat, you need to take into account that all burners are not the same.  Temperatures can differ as well as their features.  Which I later found out.  The burner I was using on my stove has a feature that makes it heat faster and hotter than all the rest.  Yikes!

The second moral of the story, according to my husband:  Always read the directions.

Below are our meals for the day:

Breakfast - Leftover quinoa with non-fat milk and agave nectar.

AM Snack - 3 servings of grapes which I soaked in apple cider vinegar and water for 30 minutes to remove the toxins.

Lunch - Leftover Shrimp Stir Fry for 4 (SS web site) from earlier in the week.  The recipe calls for brown rice which makes it a Level 1 meal.  This is a quick and light meal and was surprisingly more delicious as a leftover.

PM Snack - Natural beef jerkey (1 oz.)

Dinner - Pan-Roasted Ribeye Steak with Slow-Roasted Sweet Onion and Sauteed Spinach.  Other than roasting the onion with bacon wrapped around it for one hour, this is a fairly quick meal to make if you leave out all of our chaos.

My intention was to make a romantic meal for my hubby because he was having a particularly challenging week at work.  Instead our meal reflected the chaos he was experiencing at work.  NOT what I had intended!

The recipe requires heating an oven-proof pan on high then adding EVOO.  Next, you sear the ribeye steak for 2-1/2 minutes on each side.  But, my pan was screaming hot and immediately erupted with smoke and intense sizzling sounds when I tried to sear the steak.  Within a minute the smoke alarm went off.  Then, a minute later, it went off again.

And, if that wasn't enough drama, the recipes directs you to pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees where, once the steak has been seared, you finish cooking it for another 2 minutes.

Well, my pan was smoking and sizzling and spitting EVOO all over.  So, when I opened the oven door to slide the pan inside it soon triggered the smoke alarm to go off the third time.  So much drama for one little steak!  In addition to the smoke alarm noise, I had the oven exhaust fan going on high and my hubby had a large floor fan running on high, too.  We could barley hear ourselves think, let alone carry on any kind of conversation with each other.

But, later, when all the noise stopped, we were able to laugh about it.  But it sure put a damper on my intended romantic and quiet meal.  So, while I will tell you that this was a very delicious meal, I would bet that it was probably much better than I remembered because my emotions weren't in the right place.  You can bet that the next time I make this meal it will be prepared on a lower temperature setting.

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