After reading the discussion in this forum about allergies to fig leaves and the fig sap, I guess I should caution some of you to be careful of the green fig tenderizer, especially while you are cutting it up since you will get the sticky white sap on your hands.

Loved your story, heaven! I'm sure your guys got a huge kick out of that. :) Here's a good basic marinade that you can fiddle with in a lot of different ways. STEAK MARINADE 1 T. oil 1 T. worcestershire sauce 1 T. soy sauce 1 T. balsamic vinegar (or you can change it up by using different types) 1 tsp. mustard (yellow, dijon, whatever you prefer) minced garlic (I add 1 clove, but we're not garlic fiends) salt, to taste (we think it's plenty salty enough because of the soy sauce so I don't add extra) freshly-ground black pepper, to taste If you're rushed for time or just feeling lazy, you can substitute a commercial garlic pepper blend for the fresh garlic and pepper. Or, as someone else mentioned, use the Montreal Steak Seasoning. Very good stuff. About cooking in the marinade... Most of them aren't suitable for that and are meant to be discarded once you're ready to pan-fry or broil the meat. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong about this, but unless there are specific instructions in the recipe to baste with the marinade as it cooks or for making a sauce of it, you need to pour it down the drain instead of into the skillet. :) sm

ajsmama, I use just one bag per serving of meat, they are very thin and all air is easily pressed out of them. Then I put several (wrapped) servings In either a Foodsaver bag and heat seal that, Or in a regular ziplock type freezer bag, and freeze that way. Makes it so easy to remove just however many servings you want at a time. When I don't have the veggie bags on hand, I use the cheapest fold over sandwich bags I can find for the separate meat servings. If I were to use the veggie bags only, I would probably use 3 or 4, but I've never been brave enough to try that. I feel quite sure a Food saver would melt them and they'd probably ruin the food saver. Rusty

Any kind of meat will get tender if it is cooked long enough. But, it can also get so dry and tasteless so as to be worthless. A thick sauce can cover this up to a certain degree, especially if the meat is cubed small, as it seems it is for your chili. I have found with slow cookers, that if you are trying to cook a too-small quantity the liquid can come too close to boiling, which toughens the meat. Browning small-cube meat can be problematic in a similar way...in the course of getting it brown enough, it is cooked completely through and can toughen too much. My solution for this is to brown the meat in larger chunks, so as to get the lovely flavor for my dish, but without cooking through. Then I dice the browned pieces.