March Madness is my favorite sporting event of the year. Each year, my husband, kids, and I complete a bracket and have our own pool. Not a fan of losing, my son always chooses the favorites, save for an occasional emotional decision to pick Missouri. Unfortunately, it didn’t serve him well this year.
As a family, we spend the next three weekends watching the games together. Suffice it to say, there is not a lot of cooking that goes on during this time period. Given the sheer length of the event, I cannot in good conscience stop cooking entirely, so I have developed a supply of quick meals.
The best “home-cooked” meal during this three-week stint is stir fry beef and vegetables over noodles. To keep this meal to about 15 minutes, I buy breakfast steak (which cooks extremely quickly) and cut it into thin strips. Then I hit the salad bar, stocking up on carrots, green onions, broccoli, pineapple, whatever we like in our stir fry.
Once home, this is how I make my 15-minute stir fry: Boil water in a pot and while it’s boiling, cook the beef in sesame oil in a stir fry pan. Remove the cooked beef and make the sauce in the same pan—about 1/2 cup of Soyaki, 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar, juice from 1/2 lime, 1/4 cup of peanut butter, and two cubes of frozen cilantro (available at Trader Joe’s.) Add about a half box of linguini noodles to the now boiling water, and then stir fry the vegetables in the sauce. Add the beef back to the pan with the vegetables, drain the noodles, add and stir.
It may not be my “One Shining Moment” in dinner accomplishments, but when the ball is tipped, there I am.
