Short ribs + herbs

Over the holiday, I made short ribs from a recipe out of The Art of Braising. The marinade starts with a bottle of red wine, celery, carrots, onions, and a little spice sack. It marinates in the fridge for up to 24 hours, then the meat is dried and seared before sauteing the base of onion, carrot, canned tomatoes, white wine, and the marinade. (At least, that's what I remember since this is from memory.) Then you put parchment paper on it, stick the dutch oven in the oven for like three hours and let it go. When you pull it out, it's super fork tender. The recipe says that the ribs are even better two days after melding the fridge, so we do that and eat the ribs with whipped mashed potatoes (yum) after a long day at work on Thursday.

The ribs were pretty damn good and with the mashed potatoes, it's definitely a comforting type of meal that only takes about 1/2 hr to heat up.

Fresh herbs and I have a love/hate relationship. I love fresh herbs, but I dislike buying them pre-cut because they often go bad in the fridge. Every year, I spend a nice chunk of change buying planted herbs and every year, they begin to die as soon as I bring them home. This year, I bought some long rectangular plastic potting thing and some herbs to try again. It seems like every year, the dirt all blows out of the plants, so this year, I've put rocks that we had sitting in the garage on top of the soil to help hold down the soil. I'm not really sure if it's going to work, but as usual, I'm hopeful. Hopefully, I will also remember to water them a couple days a week. I think this is normally part of the problem. I've nestled the containers against my newly painted deck rail actually away from the house because normally half the dirt ends up on the siding.

You'll see that I bought two cilantro, two flat parsley, one basil, and one rosemary. When I cook with cilantro or parsley, I really use a lot so I figured I would get two. Fingers are crossed!