Mr. Tess wanted some beef! I had a nice big sirloin in the freezer, and an amazing Japanese recipe. I encourage you to try this recipe. If you plan ahead to marinate the steaks, and plan to have leftover cold rice, this meal goes together very quickly. The stir-fried rice which accompanies the steak sounds very plain, but don’t be deceived by its simplicity. A bit of butter, some onion and garlic, minced shiso, and a shake of pepper and tamari are magically flavorful. The salad was dressed with “that delicious Japanese dressing.” This is a most excellent meal.
.
There was too much marinade
left over to just throw out.
(It can be reused 2 or 3 times,
as long as it’s not too juicy.
Some sources indicate
it can then be used in soup,
though I have not tried that.)
.
.
Alas,
there was only
that one steak in my freezer.
And I didn’t want to eat so much steak, two days in a row.
.
I found some nice pork loin that I’d planned to use for tonkatsu, but it’s been too hot to think of deep-frying.
Actually, there are several packages in the freezer because apparently I really plan to make the tonkatsu.
Ok, there is a lot of stuff in the freezer, and that’s why I didn’t buy more steak.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Tess made some luscious bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwiches; he put 1/2 pound of bacon into the freezer because we don’t need to eat that much bacon. Last Sunday, he wanted to make B-L-Ts again. I emptied the contents of the freezer to find the bacon. Found none! He went off to buy more bacon, and again froze the extra. A few days later, I was searching the freezer for the container of dashi I’d seen in there, and what did I find
but the missing bacon, on the door-shelf,
so it would be easy to find.
So, on a mission to use what’s in the freezer, I thawed a package of pork loin while I searched my books and the internet for a recipe for miso marinated pork. Apparently this is not common. I saw some menu listings from restaurants in far-flong places, a few pictures, and, finally a couple of recipes. I marinated the pork, pan-fried it, and served it with soba with dipping sauce and green beans in black sesame dressing.
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Tess's Japanese Kitchen 
You’re so good about using up stuff in your freezer! It is inspirational. :P I have gotten better about periodically going through what’s in my freezer, but have not taken to labeling items and dates yet, which would be helpful for the occasional mysterious items!
My husband likes his steak with yakiniku (korean bbq) sauce, we have a huge bottle from Japan. You should try and find some if you haven’t already.
ah, I wrote that with my husbands computer, it was me tess – Kumiko (^ _ ^;)
Marie,
Ha, ha. Labeling! Last week I had a couple of mystery lunches at work. When I put something in the freezer I always think that it was so good that certainly I’ll remember it!
One lunch had a recent date marked on it, but once food is frozen it’s really hard to make out what it is—after a shift in the microwave, it turned out to be a veal stew with white wine and carrots and tomatoes, very yummy. But why did I put a date on it w/o a description?
I thought the other one was some kind of soup, but it had no date and no description. A brief trip in the microwave made it clear that it was a spicy curry without rice. That’s back in the freezer, with a label.
Kumiko,
The message from your husband’s computer got trapped in the WordPress spam filter, but I rescued it!
The Korean grocery near my house has an amazing array of Korean sauces and stuff that I’m a bit afraid to try. Some of their kim-chee is really fire! They carry only a limited amount of Japanese food. A new “Japanese” restaurant opened here recently, but it is owned and run by Koreans. My husband brought me some take-away teriyaki from them, but he’d ordered off the Korean section of the menu. I used to love really spicy food (Thai, Indian, Tex-Mex), but I’ve become accustomed to Japanese seasonings so it was far too spicy!! I’ll keep my eye out for a Japanese version of yakiniku sauce at other places.