CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
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Non-trad ropa vieja last night. Looking for recipes to use up about 2 pounds of leftover ribeye steak but all those listicles promising “13 Ways To Totally Transform Your Leftover Steak!” mostly amounted to “slice it and add said slices to [this wrap, that sandwich, this here rice-veg bowl, tacos, fajitas, etc.]”.
Even I’m not crazy enough to try a long braise on low-connective tissue meat like ribeye, so I rendered/browned the fat while par freezing the clean meat chunks. Did all the veg according to recipe using the beef fat and baked in the oven, meanwhile grating the half-frozen meat (mostly) on the medium hole side of the box grater.
Yes, this is tedious and “(mostly)” above means I got tired and moved to the larger holes about 3/4 of the way through, but it worked, and while the dish as a whole didn’t exactly have the same “rope” mouthfeel, it was surprisingly close and everyone liked it.
Served with saffroned rice and garlicky-oniony black beans, but failed to snap a photo with the latter plated.
I’ve worked with people that have tried learning French as adults and they’ve found it difficult. English speaking Canadians learn French in school but the ability to keep it up depends on where you live. I’m an anglophone but I grew up in Montreal so it was pretty easy finding people to speak French with. Then I moved to Ottawa to pursue a career with the public service and anyone in a client facing position is expected to be bilingual. There is a sizeable French Canadian population in Ottawa and the city of Gatineau, Quebec is across the river so I still have a community of francophones to spesk French with. Central and Western Canada is mostly anglophone so finding someone to speak French with in that part of the country would be a little harder.
I think it’s almost impossible to learn or hold onto a language unless one is surrounded by native speakers. I lost most of my HS French & Spanish — not to mention conversational Latin , although I still remember more Spanish than French. My understanding of written / spoken French & Spanish still way surpasses my speaking ability & vocab.
I agree with this 100%. I took some Spanish classes in university but that was almost 40 years ago so I don’t remember much. When I went to Montreal a year and a half ago I went for breakfast one morning then went back to my hotel room to brush my teeth before heading out sightseeing. The cleaning lady was about to clean my room and asked if I could wait a few minutes before entering but she could only speak Spanish. My Spanish is sketchy at best so between using the 10 words I remembered and using sign language I managed to figure out what she was telling me.
A light dinner tonight.
Some Saint Andre triple cream cheese, Parm/Regg, fennel pepperetts, deliciously fresh corn and olive batard and some raisin/rosemary “rainforest” crackers.
well you fooled me 
, although I still remember more Spanish than French. My understanding of written / spoken French & Spanish still way surpasses my speaking ability & vocab.
