Beef Yakitori

Who knew Japanese could be so easy-peasy?!?!  Inspired by AllRecipes.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• 1 garlic clove, minced (I can't mince well, so I thinly sliced and chopped mine)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 pound cubed steak

Method

Stir all of the ingredients together (except for the cubed steak) into a nice marinade.

Let the beef cubes sit in the marinade for four hours.  I stirred mine about every half hour to make sure each cube was well covered.  It was a torturous wait as the marinade smells that good!

I ended up doing the marinade overnight this time around because some other dinner plans came up.  I do not recommend doing this, unless you like your beef yakitori to come out a bit more like beef jerky-- which isn't terrible but I would have liked my meat to have come out more succulent.

Skewer the cubes and set the marinade aside.

Grill the skewered beef for 10-15 minutes.  I did mine in the oven, on broil, turning them every few minutes until I was satisfied with how the beef cooked.

Serve with vegetables stir fried with the remaining marinade sauce and a nice side of rice.

Hubby recommends doing this one as a steak (and that would likely call for overnight marinade).

Crock Pot Lasagna

And here, I thought lasagna was hard to do!  What was really surprising about this dish was that I was afraid it would turn out too runny what with cooking slowly covered in a crock pot.  But not only did it come out perfect, it even had a little crunchy cheese here and there.  NOM!  My husband lifted the cover 30 minutes after I had spooned the ingredients into the crock pot and was ready to renew his wedding vows right then and there.

Serves 8.  Prep time approx. 1 hour.  Cooks for 4-5 hours.

Ingredients

• 1lb minced beef
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 smashed garlic cloves
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 1 can tomato paste
• 1-1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning mix
• 12oz cottage cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 16oz shredded mozzarella cheese
• 12oz lasagna noodles

Method

1. Brown beef, onion and garlic in a frying pan
2. Add chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, and seasoning and mix
3. Cook long enough for this meat sauce to get warm
4. Spoon a layer of meat sauce into the bottom of the slow cooker
5. Top the meat sauce layer with two layers of lasagna noodles.  Break up the noodles to fit them around the inside
6. Top this noodle layer with the cheese.  I found that spreading 2-3 tablespoons of cottage cheese first helps 'anchor' down the noodles.  Then spread the mozzarella followed by Parmesan.
7. Repeat adding a layer of meat sauce, followed by a layer of noodles, followed by a layer of cheeses again and again until all of your ingredients are used up.  I was able to get 3 layers in.
8. Cover and cook on low heat for 4-5 hours.