cooking

Some time in December, we picked up a beef tenderloin on sale and cut it into filets mignons for Xmas and New Year's eves. There were about a pound of scraps that didn't form a nice filet shape, so I put them in a Zip-loc bag in the freezer. So yesterday, as we were wondering what to do for dinner, I saw the bag and thought "Scraps of meat suggest stew, but tenderloin suggests a quick, high-heat cooking method. Stir-fry!" I've stir-fried beef with broccoli and carrots (and garlic and scallions and oyster sauce and...) any number of times in my life, but never before with tenderloin. It worked quite nicely, and the meat was tenderer than I've ever had in a stir-fry (although there was a piece or two that still had fibrous white connective tissue attached -- better trimming indicated).

And from the sublime to the ridiculous, shalmestere had seen something on her FB feeds about "bacon cinnamon rolls" and wanted to try them. So I bought a roll of Pillsbury pre-rolled cinnamon rolls (supposed to make five large rolls), unrolled them on a cookie sheet, zapped five strips of bacon in the microwave for about four minutes (to the point that it was still flexible, but some people would have been willing to eat it), laid a strip lengthwise in each roll, rolled them back up, and baked them for half an hour. It works. Not OMG-I-havent-lived-until-now, but it works. shalmestere thinks it needs more bacon: 1.5-2 strips per roll rather than 1.