I'm a retail supervisor, and I was on the closing shift tonight. I go in at 2, and have to take my meal break no later than 4:30, so I can be back before the day shift management leaves at 5. So by the time I get home around 10, I'm hungry again. I usually have whatever my wife cooked for her and the kids, but on Saturdays, the kids are at grandma's house, so she just eats leftovers for dinner. I got home tonight and needed something to eat, and I felt like cooking something. The only non-frozen meat in the house is a couple of pounds of stew meat (I'm gonna make beef stew tomorrow). I requisitioned a good handful of the meat, tossed it with some tenderizer and let it sit for a few minutes. Then, I tossed it with some fresh ground black pepper, granulated garlic, onion powder, and smoked paprika and let it sit for another couple of minutes.
I heated up the little cast iron skillet, then added some leftover bacon grease from this morning's breakfast. I tossed the seasoned beef chunks in some flour, then fried them in the bacon grease.
Once they were GBD (golden, brown and delicious - thanks, Alton Brown), I transferred them to a paper towel lined cooling rack to drain, then sauted half a yellow onion in the remaining grease. Meanwhile, I turned on the griddle to toast a couple of hamburger buns.
Took the onions out to drain, and added some flour to the grease in the skillet to make a nice roux. Hit that with about 2/3 of a can of beef broth and some granulated garlic, fresh ground black pepper and onion powder (the broth has plenty of salt).
I like the steam and gravy bubbles in that shot.
As the gravy was cooking, I buttered the buns and toasted them on the griddle.
Assembled a couple of sandwiches like so: bottom bun, beef nuggets (good a name as any), sauted onions, gravy, top bun. Pretty tasty. (And that's saying something, considering the cold I have - I can barely taste anything.)
Try to ignore the fingers in this shot. There were no surfaces in the kitchen to set the plate and take a picture, so I held it at arm's length. Only problem was that the bottom of the plate was too hot to rest on my arm, so I was stuck holding it rather awkwardly with the fingers and the base of my palm.
