The Meat of the Matter

We ate at Moxie's for lunch today with my grandma and made another Moxie's inspired dinner. Shannon has some definite favorites from that chain. I'm not very familiar it outside of their basil mayonnaise, so I pretty much have to make it up as I go. The Madras Curry Penne turned out fairly well, so I figured I'd give it another go. I'm happy again with the results, this time making Honey Roasted Garlic Sirloins. Surprisingly the sauce didn't completely char and it wasn't incredibly sweet, being comprised mostly of honey. I added a lot of pepper which really worked well with the smoky flavor (of course, since pepper is in pretty much any meat rub known to (wo)man) but also with the honey flavor.

We were having trouble coming up with side dishes, despite a still seemingly endless supply of standard salads and grilled vegetables. Instead we went in a completely opposite direction and made a Tangerine and Candied Cranberry Salad. The tangerines on the shelves right now are amazing. I'm quite partial to the taste of citrus in general, but since tangerines aren't available as often I tend to like them that much more. That part of the salad was good. The candied cranberries were still quite bitter. The whole desired candied effect didn't really seem to work out too well and instead just left some run off syrup stuck to my baking sheet. The salad dressing could've used something to thicken it a bit as well, but other than that it's a good combination of fruit and vegetables for a sort of spring side salad. I was going to prepare broccoli as well but basically forgot as things went on. This was quite filling on its own so it would've been completely unnecessary anyway.