One great wedding present we received was a dehydrator.  After playing around with various fruits and even making very tart yet yummy fruit rolls ups, we experimented with beef jerky.  Yum!I have made several batches in the past month and sometimes its jerky and a salad for dinner.  Recipie is as follows:

•  Meat (Less fat the better, flank works  but whatever is on sale works great too)
• Soy sauce – 1/2 cup
• Honey  - 1/4 cup
• Ginger – heaping tablespoon grated or minced
• Garlic –   six cloves  minced
• Red Pepper flakes –  as much or a little as you can handle 

Mix all ingredients. Slice up meat very thin.  A good trick is to pop the meat in the freezer for a few minutes, makes it much easier to slice thin.  Mix all ingredients.  Marinate overnight in fridge, check once or twice to mix meat around the marinade.Place meat strips on dehydrator, walk away for at least 12 hours, depends on your dehydrator.      

During the fabulous Savage Beatdown this weekend:

• I got to play with Douglas, he is a lovely lovely cat
• Confirmed that Korean food is not to my liking. Not at all.

John doesn’t like thai, but he likes my thai food. Smart man.

In a medium saucepan combine aprox 2 tsp Thai Red Curry Paste with one can of full fat coconut milk. Stir well and let simmer for 5 minutes.

Add 1/3 cup cup very finely chopped basil (Trader Joe’s Basil has a great full flavor, perfect for this), 3 Tbsp premium fish sauce, 1/3 cup chicken stock (not broth, Trader Joes has some great chicken stock in their soup section) very thinly sliced carrots, and quartered small mushrooms (white or crimini are good for this). Veggies should total about 1 1/2 cups. Then add aprox one large chicken breast cut into small cubes. Simmer for 25-30 minutes. Take one kaffir lime leave, bend it to release the flavor.
Serve with Jasmine rice (also available at TJ’s, jasmine rice has a distinctive flavor for Thai cooking) and enjoy!

I admit, I add a lot more basil leaves then this sometimes, Its just yummy.