Insanely Easy Stir Fry

Our weeknight dinners usually depend on what is on sale when we make our weekly Sunday morning grocery shopping trip.  I rarely map our meals out in advance (although I ought to) but I try to have a solid plan for Monday night.  We always look for proteins that are marked down because they have a quickly approaching "use by" date and are often able to score better quality cuts of beef, pork or chicken at a reasonable price for our Monday night dinner.  This week there was some great looking thinly sliced New York strip for just over six bucks.  It became the base of an easy stir fry with a surprisingly delicious sauce that was so fast and simple to make that I can't wait for it to be on sale again.

I removed most of the fat edge from the steak (which I saved for the dogs) and then cut the beef into small pieces with my trusty kitchen shears.  My friend Jim Greco used to cut everything with his kitchen shears, from garlic bread to pork chops and I have adopted his method of using them on anything and everything.  They are my ultimate kitchen tool.  I truly chop everything you can think of with these awesome scissors and I have several pairs.  My best ones are made by Gingher, but I use them sparingly because they are dastardly sharp and I want to keep them that way.

My kitchen shears live on my crazy colorful fridge.

The steak pieces went into a deep frying pan (since the only wok I ever had is lost somewhere in Alabama - I really need to find myself a new one) with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, some salt, pepper and a little garlic powder.  After it browned evenly I added 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 cubes of frozen crushed ginger (these amazing little flavor cubes are a great secret weapon and time saver) and 4 tablespoons of low sodium soy sauce plus a generous coat of garlic powder over the top of the beef.  I had some of my mom's chili  rice left over from dinner a few days back, and tossed it in with the steak after the sauce was combined and had cooked down a bit.  I added a bag of Birdseye steamable stir fry vegetables which were cooking in the microwave while I was letting the sauce marry the steak.  It took less than twenty minutes from start to finish, and even if I had to make the rice for this stir fry it wouldn't have added too much extra time.  Minute rice cooked with chicken stock would be a fast fix if you were in a rush to get dinner to the table.

For dessert I had brownies I made this weekend.  They were just your standard box mix until I threw in a handful of chocolate chips to make them extra chocolatey.  I love throwing nuts, chocolate chips, Ande's mint candies, flake coconut or caramel sauce into a plain brownie mix to make it more exciting.  A quick chocolate buttercream frosting with a few tablespoons of Bailey's or Captain Morgan's can make a box mix extra special.  I was hoping to bake some mini cheesecakes this week and I will probably be topping them with some sort of spiked ganache so you can look forward to that recipe soon!

Hope your Monday dinner was amazing.  Are you getting ready for Thanksgiving?