Crispy Orange Beef with Broccoli

3 cups white rice
1 1/4 pounds beef chuck steak
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup tapioca Starch or Arrowroot
3/4 cup orange marmalade
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 tablespoons pure apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon peeled and chopped ginger
2 tablespoons gluten free soy sauce or tamari
1/2 cup orange juice
1 head broccoli, cut into florets, stems sliced into 1/4-inch rounds

1. Cook the rice according to package directions.  Reserve 2 cups cooked rice for the Beef Fried Rice later in the week.
2. Thinly slice the steak, about 1/4-inch thick, across the grain.  cut the slices into 3-inch strips.
3. Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet over high heat.  Toss the beef in the starch and shake off excess.  Fry the beef in 2 batches in the hot oil, turnig once, until crispy and golden, about 2 minutes on each side.  Remove the beef from the pan and set aside on paper towel linedplate.  Carefully drain the oil from the wok or skillet.
4. In a medium bowl add the marmalade, garlic, vinegar, ginger, soy sauce and juice.  Whisk until well combined.  Add to the wok, over high heat and cook for 2 minutes.  Stir in broccoli, reserving about 1 cup for Beef Fried Rice later in the week.  Cook the broccoli unti slightly tender and the sauce is thick, about 3-5 minutes.  Stir in the beef.  Serve immediately with the whit rice.

Taking Stock - What's In Your Pantry?

When creating menus I tend to get on certain tracks and get lost on them. Things happen and sometimes a couple of meals a week get changed. All this often creates an overstock in my pantry. That's why occasionally I take stock of what is in the pantry and create meals directly from there.

Cleaning and organizing your pantry is important to do whether you do it monthly, quarterly or just annually. If you are buying in bulk it's even more important to do.

Where is your pantry?  Your pantry could be in your cupboards, your freezer, a seperate room on shelves or even in containers stacked in a corner or under your bed.  Your pantry(ies) is/are where ever you store your food in the living space you reside in. 

Great care should be taken to understand the proper ways to store your food and the conditions needed to preserve it so that it is not wasted. A person is prudent to understand what containers are best to use in the storage of your food.  If you are a person who has a great understanding of the nutritional content of your foods and choose to purchase the most nutrient dense foods possible this is even more important.  It's a shame to spend the extra money to purchase nutrient dense and/or organic foods and then store them in containers that will contaminate them in some other way, i.e. plastics.

As you place items on your pantry shelf be sure that you write the date that you placed them there.  This will help you to use the oldest items first.  This week when I go through the shelves, take things, down, wipe and shelves and put them back I'll also write down on a master list just what I have on those shelves, how much and the date the items went on the shelf.

Because it is 'cleaning and organizing' week for the pantries I'll take my master list and create my weekly menu from what is already available there.  I will continue to make my meal plans for the week from these master lists until I have used up any and all items that I've had on the shelf for more than three months.  Then I can start over!

I hope this idea has been a blessing to you!