Quick Fix Lunch

In the rarest of times, I slept in this morning until my wife came home from work at lunch. In a near panic of what to fix her, I saw my virgin olive oil and tomatoes near the stove and got this great idea. Or at least for me it was a great idea.

In no time flat, I had the olive oil heating on the stove in the cast iron skillet and cut up some onions which went in. Then a yellow pepper was cut into strips and a lid was put over the veggies as I cut up the tomato. The diced tomato went into the pot and was recovered for a couple of minutes to soften the veggies up and then left over shredded roast beef was tossed in and stirred. Some basil, pepper and Penzy's Tuscan Sunset seasoning was tossed in and covered to heat up.

Served with some left over biscuits from the holiday, it was a quick, simple meal. The meal itself is not what makes me go "oh look what I did!" It was the fact that I came up with something that quickly and knew what I needed to do - such as which order the veggies needed to go in and cook to soften up. That the juices from the roast beef would make a light broth to simmer with veggies and along with the spices would give it flavor.

The only thing I forgot was to put salt into it. In my mind the roast beef would be salty and thus take care of itself, but I forgot that my wife doesn't usually use much if any salt in cooking as I tend to salt things heavier than she likes afterwards. Even so, I am still patting myself on the back for this one.

As a bonus, with my wife's advice (though I caught on and was able to translate the idea into flesh), the left overs provided a base for a Beef and Vegetable Stew tonight, by throwing the leftover lunch into the crock pot, along with a jar of Beef broth left over from when the roast was originally cooked! So two meals, same ingredients and using left overs. For me, this is momentous and kind of a green check mark on my internal grading system on how well I am picking up on this whole cooking thing.