A Few of My Favorite Things Right Now

I'm reading:

Fiction: And They Called It Camelot by Stephanie Thornton

Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve a place for herself among the men of history and weave a fairy tale for the American people, embodying a senator’s wife, a devoted mother, a First Lady—a queen in her own right.


Audible: Sisters of Shadow and Light by Sara B. Larson

Zuhra and Inara have grown up in the Citadel of the Paladins, an abandoned fortress where legendary, magical warriors once lived before disappearing from the world--including their Paladin father the night Inara was born.

On that same night, a massive, magical hedge grew and imprisoned them within the citadel. Inara inherited their father's Paladin power; her eyes glow blue and she is able to make plants grow at unbelievable rates. 

For fifteen years they have lived, trapped in the citadel, with little contact from the outside world...until the day a stranger passes through the hedge, and everything changes.


Nonfiction: Children of the Dustbowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp by Jerry Stanley

his true story took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Ostracized as "dumb Okies," the children of Dust Bowl migrant laborers went without school--until Superintendent Leo Hart and 50 Okie kids built their own school in a nearby field.

I'm watching:  Sanditon

About Charlotte Heywood, a spirited and impulsive woman who moves from her rural home to Sanditon, a fishing village attempting to reinvent itself as a seaside resort. Jane Austin's last books.

I'm writing/editing: Love in Greece

A romance set in Greece. I'm pantsing the last half so I can edit next month (if I can ever finish editing Old-Fashioned Wishes).

FOOD: Olives

I found a snack-size pouch of Kalamata Olives at Walmart! I love these olives!


What about you? 
What are you reading? 
What are you watching? 
What are you working on?

Holiday recipe ~ Prime Rib

We LOVE prime rib for our Christmas Eve dinner, now that we know how simple it is to make and way cheaper than a restaurant. Tammy Merryweather introduced me to the easy version.

The link to the actual recipe is HERE.

 

Delicious, right??

would assume you could order a USDA Choice piece of meat from the super­mar­ket if you talked to the meat counter man­ager, and I have always been able to find USDA Choice meats at Costco. It runs about $9–11 per pound, where a select cut from the super­mar­ket will be about $6–8. It’s worth the extra price for USDA Choice if you’re going to go to the trou­ble to cook a Prime Rib, which really isn’t all that much trouble.…you just don’t want to adver­tise Prime Rib on your menu and then serve your guests semi-yukky beef!

This is a sec­tion of USDA Choice prime rib. See the beau­ti­ful mar­bling? That equals YUM! Most prime rib roasts run about 13–15 pounds. This one was 15 pounds and wouldn’t fit into my roaster, so I cut it to fit. A 15 pound prime rib will feed about 25 peo­ple with a 1/2 inch cut each. Big­ger “prime-size” cuts will serve about 12.

 I sea­son my prime rib with a rub made from chopped, fresh rose­mary, thyme, gar­lic, and olive oil. There’s also kosher salt and ground black pep­per. It’s about 1/4 cup chopped up rose­mary and thyme com­bined, 10 cloves of gar­lic, 2–3 table­spoons kosher salt, 1 table­spoon black pep­per, and enough olive oil to make a paste when com­bined. Pulse the herbs, gar­lic, and salt and pep­per in a food proces­sor, and then add the oil.

 Instead of using my roast­ing rack, I lay down a bed of aro­mat­ics: car­rots, cel­ery, onions, and the stems left from the rose­mary and thyme. This lifts the roast up off the bot­tom of the roaster, and adds great fla­vor to the drip­pings. You don’t need to peel the carrots.

 Cover the prime rib with the rub, start­ing on the under­side, then plac­ing it on the bed of aro­mat­ics, and then con­tin­u­ing cov­er­ing the remain­ing surface.

If you are strapped for time, you can cook the prime rib for 25 min­utes at 400 degrees F., and then turn­ing down to 225–250 degrees F. for the remain­ing time. If you have the time though, just roast it at 225 degrees F. the entire time. The lower and slower you roast, the juicer and more ten­der the prime rib will end up. It’s worth the extra time.

Tent the prime rib with foil for the first hour and 30 min­utes, uncov­er­ing for the remain­der of the time.

Start check­ing the tem­per­a­ture after 2–2 1/2 hours. You’re look­ing for about 130 degrees in the cen­ter of the roast. You will need a reli­able meat ther­mome­ter to check the temp. I cal­i­brate mine reg­u­larly to make sure it’s behav­ing. The prime rib will rise a few degrees after you remove it from the oven, and 130–135 is a medium-rare tem­per­a­ture. This is the tem­per­a­ture that suits the cut of meat the best. Still very juicy, and red­dish in the cen­ter. An over-cooked prime rib defeats the pur­pose of the extra spe­cial cut of meat.

The ends of the roast will be cooked a lit­tle fur­ther along than the cen­ter, for those guests who insist on a more well-cooked slice.

Let the prime rib rest for 15–20 min­utes to allow the juices to dis­trib­ute through the roast.

Slice and serve with horse­rad­ish sauce and aus jus.

 Here is my prime rib rest­ing. See the beau­ti­ful crust that forms from the rub? Drool-worthy!! This roast will serve about 12–16 peo­ple depend­ing on how thick it’s cut. I like a nice 1″ slice myself!

 Prime Rib is fab­u­lous with a sour cream/horseradish sauce. I usu­ally use 1 part horse­rad­ish to 3 parts sour cream. Some of you might like it stronger, some creamier. Use your own judgement.

The aus jus is made using the drip­pings from the prime rib mixed with a lit­tle water and thick­ened slightly  (not like a gravy, just a lit­tler thicker than broth) with a cornstarch/cold water slurry. You will need to adjust the taste of your aus jus depend­ing on how strong your drip­pings end up being. You might add more water than me, you might need to add a lit­tle beef base to bump up the fla­vor, just be care­ful to watch the salt content.

**As a response to some com­ments from below, I want to add that you may pre­pare your prime rib with the bed of aro­mat­ics and the rub ahead of time to save time. Just be sure to pull the prime rib out of the refrig­er­a­tor at least a half-hour before plac­ing it into the oven to roast. Let­ting it sit at room tem­per­a­ture that long or even a lit­tle bit longer (as much as 1–2 hours) won’t be a food safety hazard. **