Simple Beef Stew

Here's a quick, easy, simple, simple, simple beef stew I threw together last month.  I made it again tonight for dinner and it was still a hit...you just never know with this crowd here at my house!

Ingredients:

I made it early in the day then put it in the crockpot.

1 1/2-2 lbs of stew meat
1 onion, cut any way you like (I cut in big pieces so certain people can eat around them easily)
1 small bunch of carrots, sliced
1 package of mushrooms, sliced
2-3 potoatoes, cut in small pieces (the smaller you cut, the faster they cook)
1-2 bay leaves
2 cartons of beef stock/broth
1/2 cup of flour, more or less
salt and pepper
2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1. Place the flour in a bowl, season with salt and pepper
2. Toss the beef in the flour to coat.
3.  Add the oil to a large stock pot (I am hoping for a long-desired Le Creuset dutch oven this Christmas!) and heat med-high
4.  Once the oil is hot, add the meat, sear on all sides
5.  Once the meat is cooked, you can removed it to cook the veggies, or move it to the side (lazy me, I moved it to the side)
6.  Add the bay leaves then the onions to cook them down a bit, 5 minutes or so.
7.  Add the carrots, cook another few minutes.
8.  Add the mushrooms and cook for a few more minutes. 
9.  Add the broth to the hot pan-this will help deglaze and pull up all the flavorful bits from the bottom of the pan.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour or more.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I add very little salt, especially if my stock has a lot of salt already in it.
10. Add the potatoes the last 20-30 minutes of cook time if you prefer firmer, less mushy potatoes in your stew.
11.  Remove the bay leaves before serving.
12.  Serve with crusty bread, cornbread or over egg noodles.

Enjoy!

Another baby?

So, our youngest has been set on our "need" for us to have another baby.  After what we believed was our clear reasoning for why 3 kids is enough for our family, he put both arms out and exclaimed, "Well, there's 4 holes in the toothbrush holder!"  Hard to argue with the logic...

When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses.
-- Joyce Brothers

The Ice Cream Debaucle

So, I wanted to do something fun with my 3 kiddos toward the end of the summer and I'd recently found what appeared to be an easy, no-cook ice cream recipe.  There's nothing we love more in our house than our local Graeter's Ice Cream, but it can get expensive with multiple visits each week!  What a fun, memorable thing to make our very own ice cream....or so I thought!
I gathered the ingredients (which included a visit to Whole Foods for the crème fraiche and Sur La Table  for the vanilla bean paste---the what?  More on this find later!) and surprised the kids late one afternoon as they were getting restless and daddy was headed out of town.  I really needed a distraction for all of us!  They were fairly patient as we pulled out ingredients, set up the ice cream maker and started measuring and pouring. 

Well, the debaucle began with the first step...add the first 4 ingredients and mix.  Did you know marshmallow fluff and a hand mixer are not friends?  Yeah, we didn't either!  What a sticky mess...the mixer revolted almost immediately.  I am sure if I'd let it go any longer we'd have burned the motor out.  It gets worse...

One of my lovely older children tried desperately to help, offering up a solutions.  One of them reminded me of the next step- to add the milk; so we did.  BIG. MISTAKE.  Milk started flying everywhere.  I am often kind of a rock star in the kitchen (no Iron Chef), so I think my poor kiddos knew not what to think or do.  I was in tears from laughing to avoid crying, I think.  Ha!  Who am I kidding?  I WAS crying! They stared, and I am certain I detected a bit of discomfort coming from all three (and perhaps some quiet disappointment that this wasn't' working out so well!)Thank goodness for my sweet kids-I've taught them something...they were so positive and helpful as milk flew all over the floor, cabinets, coffee maker, me...

We followed the final steps, putting in into the maker and letting in churn.  And churn. And churn. And churn.  Clean up was a lengthy process and once done the "ice cream" still hadn't changed in consistency, so we gave up and put it in the freezer and waited.

Later that night, they were excited to pull it out and scoop some of our handiwork.  I gathered our best scoop and pulled out the ice cream.  The kids were waiting patiently with spoons in hand as I started to scoop....I was met with resistance...hard as a rock!  I put a little more oomph in my scoop and SPLASH!  The scoop went right through to pure liquid underneath the thin layer of hard whatever we made.   The kitchen counters, toaster, floor and cabinets were, once again, covered. TOTAL FAIL!  We put it back in the freezer.

Guess where that ice cream still sits, untouched 4 months later?