All About That Beef

Day 34 (March 9, 2019)

Hi Lord!

            So, obviously you are well aware of the fact that I hate to cook—love to bake yummy desserts, just hate to cook regular meals. I mean, the whole pressure of having to have a million things (an exaggeration I know!) ready all at the same time, just ain’t my kind of fun. Honestly, if it weren’t for Dane, I would probably starve or live entirely off microwavable meals. (But, hey, some of those mac and cheese microwavable meals are insanely delicious.) Thank goodness Dane loves to cook a variety of meals. I think what he really loves about cooking is that you can veer away from a recipe and completely doctor up different sauces to make a meal more your own.

            Me, on the other hand, I love following a recipe to the letter, and dessert measurements typically stay set which makes me very happy. (Is that totally OCD??) In my defense, I do make a mean pumpkin crunch pie where I totally put in my own amounts of pumpkin pie spice, pumpkin pie filling, and chocolate chips—whatever my taste buds are feeling like. (Such a rebel, I know!) Ha, I think the fact that Dane loves to cook meals and I love to bake desserts makes Team Wylie well-balanced. Now, there is one thing we both LOVE to do together. (Wait, did your mind go to the gutter, or just mine? Can I even ask you that, Lord, haha?) Anyways, the thing I am talking about is making different kinds of snacks together.

            For a while now, we have absolutely loved making homemade pickles and hot carrots together. Oh, my goodness Lord, the Southern California kids in us have been missing great Mexican food. It is just not the same up here in the Frozen North. Down in San Diego, you can get all your burritos and rolled tacos with a huge side order of hot carrots. (Just typing about them makes my mouth salivate.) Well, we missed them so much we started making them ourselves and, man oh man, they are pretty darn good if I do say so myself. I think the hot carrots are Dane’s favorite snack to make. Well, at least, until he asked me if he could purchase a dehydrator to make beef jerky! (He doesn’t really have to get my permission for purchases, but since it was not the cheapest purchase ever, he thought it right to get my opinion on the matter.) Lord, I was all for it! You know I love me some homemade beef jerky!

            Well, today was our first time attempting to make beef jerky ourselves, and it was an interesting process. The night before, Dane cut the steak, he bought at the store, into skinny strips and marinated the strips in a sauce recipe he found online. (Doctoring it up of course!) Dane’s pal told him that when a recipe says two teaspoons of liquid smoke it really means TWO TEASPOONS OF LIQUID SMOKE. (He was right, Lord! That stuff is crazay!) After marinating overnight, the meat was completely soaked through with the heavenly sauce and ready to cook in the dehydrator. Dane did feel like the strips were a bit thick so, before placing them on the dehydrator racks, he covered the counter in sticky wrap, placed the strips on top of that, and then covered the strips up with more sticky wrap so they could be pounded a bit thinner. Well, here was the issue, Lord. We do not own a meat mallet. So, we improvised.

            What you are looking at, in the picture above Lord, is me using all my upper body weight to flatten the strips of meat with a metal ice cream scooper! (Now don’t laugh at me! A girls got to do what a girls got to do.) After I squished the strips some, Dane and I both took turns whacking the meat with the ice cream scooper. (Ha, for the love of all that is holy, that sounds so kinky.) But, honestly, the ice cream scooper seemed to do a decent job thinning the steak strips and, once we felt like they were thin enough, Dane unstacked the rounded blue trays—which each had holes in them so the air could pass up through each stacked layer and out the lid—and started placing about six to eight strips on each one. After each tray was filled, Dane restacked them, one on top of the other, above the dehydrator fan. He then set the correct temperature and turned the dehydrator fan on. (The recipe said to let it go for four hours.)

            Oh, my goodness Lord, after a few hours the entire place smelled to high heaven of liquid smoke! (Smelt like camping!) The only thing was, after checking the meat strips at the end of the fourth hour, we realized they were nowhere near ready. So, Dane handed me one tray at a time, and we worked together to flip the strips. Then we put the top trays down at the bottom of the dehydrator and the bottom trays at the top. We did this kind of routine at the top of every hour for the next three hours and, finally, at the seventh hour the strips actually bent and cracked the way a strip of beef jerky should. Lord, they looked PERFECT, but can I be honest!? We didn’t try them until the next morning because we had both already brushed and flossed our teeth. (Ha, who am I kidding!? I’m the only one who flossed their teeth, and I really did not want to do that part of bedtime prep again!) So, we both waited.

            And, without further ado, I can tell you THEY TASTED WONDERFUL!! Their flavor totally reminded me of the spices Dane uses to marinate our favorite cut of meat—flank steak! Plenty of soy sauce flavor, definitely the perfect amount of garlic, and a hint of Italian dressing! Next time Dane wants to try to make a batch of spicy jerky. That batch would probably be just for him (I am a wimp when it comes to spice), and I definitely would like to try to make a batch of teriyaki jerky, which I know he would love too. So, we shall see, Lord. As for now, I am going to enjoy the fruits of our current labor and store into my soul a happy new memory. Making snacks with my husband brings me so much joy, Lord. (Honestly, doing anything with my husband brings me joy.) Even though my anxiety never fully goes away, joyful moments with Dane sure help drive the darkness away for a time. Joy is such a powerful source of light, Lord, and I plan on keeping that light turned on for as long as I possibly can! (Time to make more snacks with my husband then—pickles perhaps??)

Always,

Your Daughter Kaitlan

P.S. Lord, you supply such wonderful joys. Please help others, who deal with anxiety, to find that joy you so willingly provide—be it cooking, painting, exercising, playing an instrument, or anything else positively wonderful—because joy is so powerful. Allow that joy to illuminate their darkness, and then allow that light to spill over into another person’s darkness. That way people start to feel less alone in the struggle. Thank you, Lord!

Thank you for reading! If you are new, this is a chronological blog series. It is best read in order. CLICK HERE for the intro.