Take that Rachel Ray!

Today was my mom's birthday, and for her birthday my aunt took her out to dinner.

This story has nothing to do with my mom though.

(Happy Birthday Mom!)

Because mom was gone, it was just my dad and I for dinner.  Yesterday he'd mentioned how he loves stew but hasn't had it in awhile. I figured, well I do nothing else all day, so I'll make dinner! Yay!

In my family, my dad is the main cook. So it's not as if we were going to starve with mom gone.  As the newly married one though, I figure maybe I'll get some cooking practice in.  So before we went to lunch I pulled out two very old cookbooks, both at least older than I am.

One had a recipe for "Beef and Onion Stew," the other for "Old Fashioned Beef Stew."  I decided to just combine the two and make it up as I went.  The ingredients we lacked at home were stew meat, carrots, and all spice.  Okay I lied, we did have carrots. Baby carrots.  But I'm just not a fan of those slow cooked. I really don't like them a whole lot raw, and since I was the chef I bought the kind I liked.

After lunch (mom's birthday Red Lobster meal) we stopped at the store to pick up my ingredients (and happened to pass the craft stuff on the way so I came home with more seed beads and a really cool storage container for the tiny beads).  I was VERY happy to find out that the meat was already cut up! Hooray!

I hate to cut raw meat. I had to handle raw meat.  But I especially hate cutting it.  It's flesh.  Actual flesh. That you have to saw with a knife and then squish in your hands while  you put it in the pan.  Can we say "ew"?

Ew.

So we got home and I started cooking.   I prefer to chop over cook. So I did the peeling and chopping first! Carrots (6), Potatoes (4), Garlic Clove (1), Onion (1).  Three years ago I could have chopped an entire room full of onions with zero tears. Today, I had to take my glasses off and put a wet cold towel on my face. My eyes didn't tear as much as they BURNED.  But dangit, my onion was CHOPPED!

I browned the meat- proceeding to get oil everywhere.  Oh wait, stop.  I must add a very important fact- I am an extremely messy cook. Extremely.  Thus, oil is splattered on the stove top, the counter next to it, my arms/shirt, and even the microwave above it.  Then I tossed in the onions and garlic, browned it all.

Next on the recipes was either 2 cups water or 2 cups dry red wine.  I found a can of beef broth and a can of tomato paste.  Those went in. An hour later, I tossed in the veggies and covered with water.  20 minutes later I remembered to turn the heat back up to make it all simmer. Lol.

At this point I have veggie pieces all over, oil all splattered, paper towels littering the counters, and the smell of allspice floating in the kitchen.

Allspice. What is it?  Neither of my parents could answer this question. I used it, I still have no idea.  But I do know that it costs $2.43 at Walmart for a very tiny bottle of it.  Like maybe an ounce.  Probably not even that.

Anyway, I put in my dash of allspice and then could only smell that in the air for the next hour. That was a problem.  Luckily in the end it all tasted good, but for the future I'm thinking just to use half a dash of allspice.

Then, I was bored.

I'm not much of a patient person.  (background laughter)
Okay fine, I'll be honest. I have no patient bone in my body.

So I made muffins. Peanut butter muffins, a new recipe.  They're yummy but boring. Next time I'll add more peanut butter and chocolate chips.  A nice touch was my melted butter/sugar mixture I brushed on right out of the oven. You can never have too much sugar.

So I got to serve my dad dinner at 6pm.  We had Beef Stew (the Jess version) where the veggies were practically falling apart (mmmm) and the meat was tender (which dad told me since I'm not a beef person and didn't try it).  Then for dessert, a peanut butter muffin.

Can we say SUCCESS?

Look out husband, delicious meals are on their way! =)