Beef Stew and Marionettes
It was a good weekend, rather quite overall, but that felt right. Saturday was full of errands and sorting, puttering and cooking. I made a terrible pork roast (sometimes things work, sometimes they don't) but balanced it out by making an outrageously good beef stew. We rarely eat beef. Once or twice a year I get a taste for a hamburger, and then again once in a great while a steak. Other than that...mmmm maybe once or twice every other winter I make a meatloaf and then of course I use ground beef, along with ground pork, in our holiday meat pies. The other day I suddenly thought about beef stew. It was one of the regulars on the rotating menu of my childhood. My mom's version was beef, Lawry's seasong salt, potatoes, carrots and onions. Mine wasn't all that far off really. Ernie bought a piece of chuck roast a bit under two pounds. Yikes it was expensive. No wonder we don't eat beef much! I cut it into chunks, dusted it with flour, salt and pepper and browned the heck out of it in an uncrowded pan. It got nice and crusty and I set it aside and put in a couple of garlic cloves (some chopped, some sliced), a couple of stalks of celery sliced and two huge leek size green onions from Greg all sliced up. I stirred that every so often until it was limp and starting to color and then poured in a cup of cabernet and two cups of turkey stock I found in the freezer. I covered that all up and let it simmer for about an hour. Oh yeah, I threw in a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce and a spice mix that had cayenne, paprika and oregano I think. After an hour I added some pretty little gold potatoes, quartered and some sliced carrots. When they were almost tender I added about a quarter of a green cabbage cut into small pieces. We let that sit over night and when I tasted it yesterday afternoon all it needed was a bit more salt and pepper and it was perfect. PERFECT!
On Sunday, before we got around to eating the stew, I spent some time taking pictures and throwing a few things up on eBay. Midday on Sunday the four of us stood in front of the computer and watched the seconds count down on an auction of a something that had been in my sister's collection. I had no idea what it would go for and we were giddy when at the last second it went for enough for enough to make a dent in the bill for the stove! The boys thought I'd figured the magic out and begged to put something else on there. Unfortunately, as I told them, it just doesn't work that way. Who know though, show knows? Anybody want three 1960's faux Beatle marionettes?