Gingery Beef Strips
Credit: Mable Hoffman's Crockery Cookery
Serves 4-5

Ingredients:
1 (1- to 1 1/2 lb.) beef flank steak
1 (10 1/2 ounce) can beef broth
1/4 cup soy sauce (I recommend using the low-sodium variety)
1 teaspoon grated ginger root or 1 tsp ground ginger
1 bunch green onions, sliced diagonally into 1-inch pieces
1 clove garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
3 ounces Chinese peapods (snow peas)
1 1/2 cups fresh bean sprouts
2 cups cooked rice

Thinly slice flank steak diagonally across the grain.
In a slow cooker, combine steak, broth, soy sauce, ginger, onions and garlic.
Cover and cook on LOW 5 to 6 hours or until steak is tender.
Turn control to HIGH.
Dissolve cornstarch in water in a small bowl and stir into sauce in cooker.
Cover and cook on HIGH 10 to 15 minutes or until thickened.
During the last 5 minutes, drop in pea pods and bean sprouts.
Serve over cooked rice.

I used peapods and bean sprouts the last time I made this, but this time I threw in some broccoli crowns instead when I poured in the cornstarch and it turned out great!

Ah, I lead a scintillating existence, don't I?!

Following the creation of supper, I gave Rennie a bath and then spent some time catching up on my blog reading before heading out for a run. Betsy is helping her children prepare for mother's day, Monty has a new job and a new beau, NML is no doubt out dancing somewhere in London, and Julie is turning her young son into glue. And Joe and Julia are still in Scotland... I miss them. Even though I don't get to see them very often, we do exchange email fairly regularly, and it's just kinda weird to think that they're on a completely different continent! (And just as a quick aside, does anyone else think it's just a teeny bit too coincidental that Adam chose to break things off with me the day AFTER Julia - his boss, remember - left on vacation?? The rat basta... Ahem. Never mind.)

So as I said, it's pouring outside. According to the roommates (who have been conspicuously absent all day) what we're experiencing is a spring Nor'easter. That could certainly be so. It rained and winded (that's the past tense of 'windy' ...keep up, people!) throughout my entire run, and I even ran past a poor little toppled-over tree that had been completely broken off at the base by the wind.

My run went ok. It was my "long" run for the week and I managed to get in about 3.5 miles! I ran slowly - about 12 minute miles - and it wasn't until about 30 minutes in that my left IT Band started to ache. As a result, I walked a bit more than I'd planned to, but I managed to keep it under control. Joe has me slated to run 60 minutes next weekend, but I may back off on that and do 40 minutes again just to give myself a bit more time to adjust. We'll see. Still, even with the rain and wind and my slightly aching knee, it felt good to be out there running.

And it feels even better to be in here now, post-shower, eating my gingery beef strips, drinking a glass of Rioja and fiddling with my blog. My next planned activity involves learning some more HTML (I now know just enough to be dangerous!) and maybe watching "Sideways."

Scintillating.

Really.

(See, I TOLD you!)