Ropa Vieja en el Garden de Kew

Hello friends!

Confession: I watched Julie & Julia last night and found new inspiration in blogging. We'll see how long it lasts, but let's embrace it while we can. With this new inspiration, I've decided to call it quits on finishing my way through Everyday Italian, not because I'm sick of Italian food or Giada (because let's be real, that will NEVER happen), but mainly because I need to start broadening my cuisine horizons.

This started a couple weeks back when I applied to be on an amateur episode of Chopped (odds of me actually getting on: very low). Part of the application asked what some of my specialties are, and when I listed marinara sauce, verdure al forno, chicken marsala, and chocolate chip cookies...I felt pretty lame. Don't get me wrong, all of these things are awesome. Super awesome, and also very comforting for me to make, but it made me realize that my culinary skills are stuck in Italia.

So being the closet housewife that I am, I busted open my binders of recipes and cookbooks yesterday and planned out a week of meals (with plenty of leftovers for lunch. SCORE). I then went to Trader Joe's - my new favorite place, though it's no Wegman's - and put on my patience pants as I avoided colliding with the crazed New York shopping cart drivers. I managed to get out of there in one piece....with three giant bags of groceries that were only going to be carried by two arms. Thank god for public transportation (and that's the only time you'll hear me say that).

For tonight's meal, allow me to take you to Cuba...

What you see above is a bad iPhone photo of the Ropa Vieja I had tonight. "Ropa Vieja" means "old clothes," which doesn't literally translate to "delicious," but I assure you this was amazing....and the easiest thing in the world to make. Crock pots are the greatest creation of all time.

What I made was Food Network's Slow Cooker Ropa Vieja, and I got it started this morning before I went to work. I heated up the crock pot, then added a can of diced tomatoes (chile style), a bit of ketchup, apple cider vinegar, two cloves of garlic, cumin, and some adobo sauce. The recipe called for jalapenos, but I couldn't find just one of those in Trader Joe's, I would've had to buy a whole bag, and I rarely cook with jalapenos.

Adobo sauce can be really intense, so I was pretty cautious in adding it, and I thought maybe I went a little overboard. Thankfully, that was not the case.

Next I diced up two bell peppers and thinly sliced and onion, adding them both to the crock pot bath, then added in a strip steak and some salt. I was supposed to use either a skirt steak or flank steak, but you have to use what you have, right?

I made sure the beef was completely covered with all this awesome-ness before heading out to work, then let time work its magic.

When I got home, I had a four mile run scheduled as part of my half marathon training, and I also had some rice that needed to cook (and didn't want to wait an hour for it once I got home). After asking my mother the stupid question of whether or not I could lave rice simmering on the stove while I ran (hey, it's Monday, my brain isn't really in the right place), she recommended bringing it to a boil before I left, covering it with a lid, and turning off the stove while the rice absorbed the water. This is exactly what I did.

I got back from my run where I raced a guy through the park (and beat him, HA!) to find some soupy rice. Turns out brown JASMINE rice cooks a little differently than regular brown rice. Basically, it just requires less water...about half a cup less than I used. I tried simmering it a bit to get rid of the excess water, but ended up just straining it, no big deal.

The rice went down on the plate first, topped with the ropa vieja and the most tender beef I've ever made. Seriously, if you ate like a heathen and didn't chew anything, it wouldn't have mattered because this stuff seriously melts in your mouth. The spice was not overwhelming at all (thank god, because I had sour cream on hand just in case), and works with the tomatoes and vinegar for this mouth-watering tang. It wasn't greasy at all, and the onions had absorbed every flavor in the pot, and also fell apart. These are the type of meals I love coming home to.

The best part? I have two days of leftovers ready for lunch. You have no idea how much I love leftovers for lunch, mainly because even though I know how to control the A/C directly behind my desk now, I'm always freezing at work and love a hot lunch. I'm difficult like that.

In other news, I ran the best eight miles of my life this past Saturday, keeping an ungodly 8.5 min. pace. I blame it on the Olympics, and the crazy hills I've been running. NYC has this awesome thing on Saturdays in August called Summer Streets where they close Lafayette to Park Ave from the Brooklyn Bridge to 72nd St to cars so people can run, bike, walk, cartwheel through the streets and enjoy the fun and entertainment along the way at various pit stops. I treated it like a race.

It was awesome because I got to run through a tunnel in Grand Central Station AND I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to get there, where I saw the Statue of Liberty, Governor's Island, the Bayonne Bridge, and other lovely views.

Later that night I saw Sondheim in Central Park where they performed Into The Woods with Oscar-nominated actress Amy Adams as the Baker's Wife. It was a musical I've been wanting to see and I wasn't disappointed at all...except that there wasn't much leg room and it's not the greatest idea to cramp up your legs the same day that you ran eight miles. And the girl next to me's long hair was touching me, which totally skeeves me out.

Tomorrow night I'm supposed to cook fish tacos, but I couldn't find tortillas at Trader Joe's so I guess we'll just have the improvise! See you in a couple days :)