Beef Stir-Fry

Ok, so obviously macaroni & cheese didn't work out. It's hard to boil macaroni when you don't have any water though. So the next meal that I ended up making was stir-fry. D and I went to the farmer's market yesterday and got as much as we could there. I was really impressed with the market. I thought it was good last summer and they had even more stuff this summer. Now there are a couple vendors selling dairy products and one was even selling meats. Unfortunately we didn't really need any of that stuff, so we didn't get to try any. Actually, I take that back, D did get some smoked cheddar. We haven't tried it yet though. We spent $11 on the veggies, and I think if we had gone to the store it would have been more around $16. I was also super excited because they had red bell peppers for $1! D likes the red ones better but they are just so expensive in the stores! I just think that they add great color to dishes. And the stir-fry did look beautiful with all of the fresh veggies in it. Especially the red. I used way too much onion though! I meant to only use half of one, but I chopped the whole thing before I realized it. D just took most of the onions out anyways because he doesn't like the texture of them. I even had to take some out too. I mean, way too much. Also, I was planning on using the carrots we bought, but they were really soft. I have never felt carrots like that before. Is that normal? They still looked good, but we opted out of using them just in case. We had a steak left over from our peppercorn steaks. So I scraped as much of the peppercorns off as I could and used that. It could have used some more meat, but oh well. I used this spicy stir-fry sauce that D had, but usually I just throw in a mix of (a lot) of teryaki sauce, (few splashes) soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil. And then sriracha.

Beef Stir-Fry

1/2 onion, sliced
1 red bell pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1-2 carrots, sliced into moons
1 zucchini, sliced into moons
handful of snow peas
1 steak, sliced thin
2-3 Tbls stir-fry sauce
couple splashes soy sauce
1-2 Tbls oil (vegetable or something with a high smoke point)
sriracha to taste

Have everything chopped and ready to go before you start. Heat a wok (or big pan) to medium high heat with oil. Add the garlic, onion, bell pepper, and carrot and...stir fry? I'm not sure what the proper technique is called. Just don't let it stop moving for too long at a time. I add these all at once because they take longer to cook and I hate hard carrots. After a few minutes add the zucchini, snow peas, and stir fry sauce, etc. (all the flavorings). I use this time to get the flavor right before I add the meat because since it's already cooked I don't want it to cook any more. I just want it to heat up a little. I also hate overcooked meat. Once the flavors are right and everything is almost as cooked as I want it, then I throw the meat in. The meat will only take a minute to heat up.

Serve with rice or noodles, if you want. It was 10:00 pm and we weren't that hungry. So we just stuck to the stir-fry.