Posts (page 2)
We went out to the OPH for brunch today. Good times, as always. It's especially nice to enjoy one of our Minneapolis favorites here. We had fun, and stayed way past the point where they stopped refilling our water and coffee.
This afternoon, I decided somewhat last-minute to make some kind of stew. I bought two pounds of beef at Bob's yesterday without knowing exactly what I was going to do with it. Given my lack of plan, I ended up falling back on an old favorite of ours - Penzey's Harvest Stew. It's meant to be made with lamb, but I nearly always make it with beef instead. It's not up on their recipe index, so I'll reproduce it here:
Harvest Stew
2 lb stew meat, cubed
vegetable oil
1 tsp sweet curry powder
1 tsp hot curry powder
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 Tb water (for mixing with spices)
1 onion, finely minced
2-3 carrots, peeled and cut into thick coins
4-6 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
3/4 C chicken stock
1-2 tsp salt
Preheat over to 325F. Heat oil and brown meat; put it in a large casserole dish with the carrots and potatoes. Mix spices and water to form a paste. Add the onions to the frying pan, reduce heat to medium, and cook until onions are golden. Add spice past, and cook one more minute, stirring to prevent burning.
Pour the onion/spice mixture over the beef. Add the stock to the pan, stir to get up the tasty browned bits, and pour over casserole. Add the salt, and mix everything together very well.
Cover tightly, and bake for at least an hour and a half, covered. Stir occasionally. Then remove the lid and bake for an additional thirty minutes to thicken the sauce.
Servers 4-6 Prep. time: 20 min Cooking time: 2-3 hours
It ended up being quite tasty, and went well with the half-whole-wheat bread I made to go with it. Victor ended up carrying back a 15-pound(!) bag of potatoes from the grocery store, because apparently our ghetto-mart doesn't have any other potatoes at present.
We also had the end of a bottle of wine with dinner, so now I'm a tad tipsy... but still able to post (mostly).
And that's a good thing. Finally, I have my office here in Seattle unpacked, a computer (though not my main one, sadly) hooked up, and am ready to Get Stuff Done.
Stuff like: replacing this horrible keyboard (thank you, Apple, for breaking my hands), getting a working office chair (my hydraulic mechanism broke during the move, apparently, so I'm basically sitting on the floor as I write this), and starting this blog.
The blog: will have dissertation updates (theoretically daily during the week, but who knows?), cooking updates (because recipes are fun!), and some other junk, misc.
If you're not in my friends 'n' family list, you'll probably miss a lot of personal angst and/or whining. This could be a benefit... but maybe you want to know a bit more about what's going on with me, ESPECIALLY the angst. Because maybe you love angst? If so, drop me a line and I'll add you to the list! (Or however it is that Vox manages these things.)
EDIT: It looks like you'll need to have a vox account to be my vox friend. Sorry about that! Also, all non-vox-friend comments are moderated.
