Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

It should not be 88 degrees in my living room, I'm calling the FBI.

Carne Guisada

Yield: 5 servings
Category: Entree
Cuisine: Mexican
Rating: 5/5 stars
Source: Ama

Ingredients

2 pounds beef chuck roast
1/2 whole bell pepper
1/2 whole white onion
6 3/4 ounces diced tomatoes
2 1/3 tbsp salt
4 tsp pepper
2 1/4 tsp garlic powder
2 1/4 tsp onion powder
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 cup flour
Water (as needed)
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Instructions

1 - Cut the beef chuck roast into cubes of roughly 1/2 inch square. (You can substitute pre-cut stew meat here if you'd like).
2 - Dice the bell pepper and onion.
3 - Using a colander, drain the tomatoes.
4 - In a mixing bowl, coat the meat with the flour by hand mixing the pieces
5 - Add the oil to the large pan and heat it on medium high until the oil becomes runny.
6 - Add the meat to a large pan at medium high heat and stir fry it until the meat is greyish-pink.
7 - Add in the bell pepper, white onion and tomatoes, and continue stir-frying until the meat is lightly browned.
8 - Add in hot water so that the meat is nearly covered.
9 - Add the spices and stir to combine well.
10 - Set stove to high, and bring to a boil.
11 - Drop the heat to medium high. Allow to stew and reduce the gravy to half of the original amount of water, stirring occasionally, about 30 to 45 minutes.
12 - Once reduced, take off heat. The gravy will thicken as it cools.

Notes

Makes 5 servings at ~533 calories.
Calories 514
Total Fat 30g
Total Carbohydrate 9g
Protein 36g

Mexican Rice

Yield: 7 servings
Category: Side
Cuisine: Mexican
Source: Mom

Ingredients

2 cups long grain white rice
3 cups water
1 whole bell pepper
1 whole white onion
2 tbsp tomato paste
4 tbsp vegetable oil
2 1/3 tbsp salt
4 tsp pepper
2 1/4 tsp onion powder
1 1/2 tsp cumin
2 1/4 tsp garlic powder
411 g tomatoes (canned) (diced)

Instructions

1 - Add the cooking oil, rice and Mexican Spice Mix into a large pot.
2 - Set heat to high, and stir constantly as to not burn the rice.
3 - Just as some of the rice begins to turn the tiniest bit brown, add the water and immediately cover
4 - Once the water comes to boiling, set the heat to medium.
5 - Add in the bell pepper, onion, tomato and tomato paste, mixing well until the rice becomes a uniform pinkish red color.
6 - Recover and Wait five minutes.
7 - Set the heat to low. Wait five minutes.
8 - Remove the pot from the heat, and wait five more minutes.
9 - Uncover the rice, and fluff the rice using a rice paddle or spoon.

Notes

Makes 7 servings at ~50g carbs per serving.
Calories 286
Total Fat 6g
Total Carbohydrate 49g
Protein 5g

This Weeks' Meals: Mexican Bento Box!

We got ourselves some tasty Carne Guisada, a nice helping of Mexican Rice (it's got tomoato paste, sorry, Mom), and Mom's low-cost fave an unnamed tomato and spinach concoction a friend dubbed "Mexi-saag."

I wish I'd made tortillas. :)

Recipes in the coments, since it's two recipes (The Mexi Saag? A can of tomatoes, a can of spinach, salt, pepper, and warm it up).

#cooking #thisweeksmeals

Laptop appears to be back up and running, but there was something seriously wrong there.

After 30 minutes or so, the system would freeze up. Sometimes black screen, sometimes just a system freeze up. I tried booting into Windows, and thats where things got wierd. I got a "Your system needs repair." IT asked to run diagnostics...and the diagnostics froze. The BIOS Diagnostics said there were problems, but "it fixed them" (COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU FIXED?!). Still couldn't get into window, and now I wasn't able to get into Linux.

No prob. Let's reinstall the system. I pop in a Linux Live USB and...it wont load. Kernel panic. O_O Pop in a Windows USB..."a file is corrupted."

Huh. I went into the bios and did a hard drive wipe, which worked. And then loaded up Windows, and got the corrupt error again. And then tried linux again, and it would load but with errors. At one point, it managed to load into Window, so I spefiically rewiped the drive in GPArted, rebooted and everything worked after that.

I think either there's a hardware error lurking (thanks Dell BIOS for giving me no info), or a BIOS update didn't take and one of the reboots knocked it back into shape.

But I'm keeping an eye on it, moving forward. And it's now my first all-Linux system. No Windows. Granted, it's mostly used as a portal to get to the file server or my working PC in the office, so you don't need much there....

Making the Executive Decision to make the laptop a full on Linux system! No more Windows partition!

Apparently, the universe decided I was making too much progress on my weekly routines and crashed out my laptop.

LOOKS LIKE WE'RE REINSTALLING A SYSTEM BOYS!

::sigh::

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S80ivPamBoM

Do I know anyone who could make a batch of one die-cast model? Let me know!

Such a great quick microcosm of pop design from 1979 to 1989: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kLSyYtlIIs

The 1.25 hour commute isn't too too bad when this is your view from the break room...

This Week's Meals: Indian Chicken Curry

This is a quick and wasy way to make a tasty dinner without a lot of time. I did this entire meal under an hour, which is great, because I'm under the gun right now, and had enough leftover time to write this.

It's not going to be a gourmet Indian curry, but it will be a tasty quick dish that hits the spot. Serve it over rice if you're not diabetic like me, and you have a good quick meal that's actually kinda fancy tasting.

Taken directly from the file "For Warren - Recipies you absolutely can't fuck up" because I don't have time to make it pretty:

Ingredients:
½ cup finely chopped onion
½ cup finely chopped celery
3 Tbs butter
3 Tbs flour
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup tomato juice
½ tsp Worcestershire sauce
salt & pepper, to taste
1 tsp curry powder
4 cups diced chicken
4 cups hot cooked rice

Instructions
Lightly brown onion & celery in hot fat.
Add flour and blend.
Add stock, cook until thick, stirring constantly.
Add tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, seasonings and chicken.
Heat thoroughly. Serve over rice.

#thisweeksmeals #cooking

I wish I got a picture on this, but the best thing I saw on my roadtrip yesterday was an All You Can Eat Buffet named "Sumo" with a Sumo Wrestler as the logo.

Had a very nice roadtrip today hugging the coast of the bay while visiting a few little towns in the area (Bayview, Edison). I needed to connect to some water, and get a few miles under my wheels.

I used to do this a lot, but with the long unemployment, tight money, no time and a somewhat sickly car, I hadn't done a drive in forever. And oh, boy does it show.

I feel amazing. Refreshed. Ready to take on tomorrow.

I need to do this way more often now that I have cash.

Quote of the Day: "This movie could have been an EMail."

Where I am now:

Stomach: Ooh, a Chipotle. Let's do there for lunch.
Brain: It's a chain. Shouldn't we find something local?
Stomach: I like Chipotle, and there isn't one near us. This one is a left turn. IT'S LOCAL.
Brain: You're wierd you know that. ::turns left::

I have money, and for the first time in a long time, time.

Let's go on a road trip. :)

There are four movies I associate with Sunday Mornings. Cause they were always on on the 80s:

Caddyshack
My Bodyguard
Meatballs
Scavenger Hunt

And of course, it's Sunday morning, and what's on TV? Caddyshack.

I wonder whatever happened to Chris Makepeace.