Basil on the Terrace

Dinner: beef with broccoli.
When I was much younger, I don't know, maybe 11, maybe as old as 13 I wanted to make this. But I made the crucial mistake of starting to cook when I was hungry, and I didn't much know about reading recipes yet. The beef marinates for 20 minutes.
I was not a fan of that at all.
I just remember waiting, and messing up, and waiting, and not getting anything particularly delicious at the end.
Tonight was good. Peppery, with a good thick sauce. As often happens when I make stir fry, the meat was a little tough, but not hugely. It was a tasty meal over rice, and streched to fit three comfortably (Z had a friend over to feed).
It went well with chocolate chip cookies cooked till still very soft in the middle. I'm not much of one for Asian desserts. After stir-fry or fried rice I always want brownies or cookies or ice-cream. A nice easy familiar sweet.
Then time passed and, as will happen, we got hungry again. Z's parents had brought us two loaves of cinnamon challa, so we took one out of the freezer, thawed it in the microwave and cut off thick slices from the diameter. I soaked them in three eggs combined with somewhere between a quarter and a half cup milk -- closer to a half, and maybe three tablespoons of cream. No cinnamon needed.
I fried them in butter in my cast iron skillet (9 inches) and we ate. The cinnamon sections turns hot and melty, and the whole thing was really nicely eggy and soft.
Delicious.
I'm going to go eat some more of it.