Very Late Holiday Beef Stew (Written Nov. 2012)

Today as a pre-curser to Thanksgiving, we are making Beef Stew. I figure, there's only so much you can mess up beef stew, and since it's in a crock pot and we ALWAYS have left overs, with 4 people eating it, we will probably have the exact right amount. Oh yeah! My half-brother/cousin (don't worry, it's not incest, but it's also none of your beezwax) and his girlfriend are coming for Thanksgiving!!! I’m so excited to have people here, and OUR people too :). So, a few of the recipes that I looked at required beef bullion cubes, which we don't have, so hopefully the addition of extra salt will do the trick. The greatest thing about making beef stew the day before thanksgiving is that it uses the exact same ingredients for parts of thanksgiving so we didn't need to buy anything extra, just more of what we were already planning on buying. I'm hoping that this will help with having leftover carrots and celery that we forget about after tomorrow and then find 5 months from now.

Charlotte and David's Splendid Holiday Stew!

Ingredients

-2 cubed potatoes

-1 sauted white onion

-4 chopped celery stalks

-2 peeled chopped carrots

-1 tsp. Parsley

-1 tsp. Salt

-1 tsp. Black pepper

-1 tsp. Rosemary

-1 tsp. Marjoram

-1.47 lbs. “Stew beef” diced into small mouth sized pieces (so you don't look like an awkward 4 year old trying to eat a poptart with a spoon)

-4 C water

CROCK POT TIIMMMEEE!!!!

Step 1. Turn on Christmas music. Frank Sinatra usually does the trick.

Step 2. Toss all ingredients into your crocky pot and put it on high. We just finished it and are going to keep it on high since we just got it all together and it's 11:30. Hopefully it will be ready in 8 hours. We'll see.

Notes: Timing works best if you chop the onion and throw it in a fry pan FIRST. Then do all of the other ingredients and check the onions every few minutes. Cut the meat last so you don't have to think about it touching everything else and killing everyone with salmonella.

Result: THIS STUFF WAS AMAZINGGGG. I wish I could swim in a giant vat of it.

Home Made Tomato Sauce

So something really amazing happened today. I MADE TOMATO SAUCE FROM REAL LIVE TOMATOES HOLY MOLY. This is seriously something that I have wanted to do my entire life and I am so proud of myself. It feels awesome. I am working on so many projects this week that I wasn't sure I would actually get to the tomatoes before they went bad. And I did it!!! (on a separate note, I also saw the oscar mayer wiener hot dog truck this week and basically died of joy). So what a bucket list week baby! I'm so excited about this tomato sauce for several reasons.

1. bucket list win
2. healthy healthy healthy!
3. The only thing that's not as awesome as I thought is the fact that it comes in big batches and thus, is a bit more expensive than I would have thought. For the tomatoes I got (probably 2 or 3 meals) it was about 7 dollars, which, I guess really isn't too expensive. Kind of like a Costco situation.

Roma tomatoes skinned and seeded

1 tsp salt

2tsp pepper

2 tsp marjoram

2 tsp basil

2 tsp oregano

1 tbsp. Lemon juice

1 small onion

small handfull of mushrooms

3 tbsp minced garlic

olive oil

1. skin and de-seed the tomatoes, not as fun as it sounds
2. blend tomatoes.
3. Saute chopped onion and diced mushrooms with garlic in olive oil.
4. Add everything to the crock pot. I'm turning it on high at 11:15 so we'll see what happens. I'm thinking I maybe shouldn't have blended it before I cooked it up whatever. David doesn't like chunky sauce so ce la vi.
5. So boil them down as much as you can with your patience.
6. I then blended the sauce as much as I could (about like ½ of it so that I still had pieces of tomato in it.
7. DELICIOUS DELICIOUS DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!

I made a big ol thing of this, but it wasn't cheap, it was just delicious, My favorite thing about this sauce was that I knew exactly what was in it because I PUT IT THERE!!!

Lucky Chocolate Cake

So, it's been an incredibly long time since I've written. That's not true. I wrote a speech for my Uncle's Memorial Service. I wrote a list for a friend's baby shower. I wrote two weeks worth of grocery lists. I wrote a webpage for my Uncle's remembrance webpage. I wrote notifications and thank you letters to as many of my uncles friends as I could contact. So, I did write. but not for me. Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, my favorite holiday of the year. I spent it in my shamrock shirt watching 9 hours of wedding shows and cooking corn beef and cabbage. It was glorious.

So tonight, I get back up on my feet. I ignore my current pant size, I muster up my strength, and I start to put my own words back in the right order. For myself.

Without further ado, Lucky Chocolate Cake!

I call this recipe lucky chocolate cake because I will be lucky if it turns out well. It is very closely based off a recipe from allrecipes (link HERE) and a frosting recipe from MY HEAD! The other incredibly lucky thing about this cake was that the only ingredient we had to actually go out of our way to purchase was FLOUR. THAT'S RIGHT! I HAD EVEERYTHINGG IN MY CUBOOORRRDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, that is like THE greatest and luckiest feeling. (Ignoring the fact that I have a grocery store less than a block from my house. with 6 inches of snow on the ground, it may as well be a 20 minute drive across LA. That's just how I feel.) It felt amaaaaazing to get back in the kitchen and not have a hungry boy asking when food would be ready. It's 9:46 right now and you know what? It will be ready WHEN. IT. IS. READY. I have chocolate all over me, all over the floor, and I could care less. Here is my recipe:

Cake:
1. Set the oven at (say it with me 3 groupies of mine) 350 degrees! ( I could already tell this was going to be a good recipe just from that.)
2. combine these ingredients in large bowl:
1 3/4 C Flour
2 C white sugar
1tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2 C Cocoa powder
SET ASIDE. HILARIOUS PHOTO BREAK TIME! YES, this is Peanut peeing on a 6 foot tall snow cat. ain't it GLORIOUS??? We happen to think so.

3. Brew some coffee. (need 1 c for the cake. the rest is for your belly. I made mine a little extra strong)
4. melt half a stick of butter with 3 squares of baking chocolate. Set aside.
5. dig a hole in the middle of the dry ingredient bowl and combine the following:
2 eggs
1C buttermilk (or 1C cream and 1tbsp. vinegar or lemon juice pre-combined)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 stick of butter
1/4th C vegetable oil
1 C Coffee
6. Blend 2 minutes on level 2.
After this I added some extra cocoa powder and literally a handful of sugar. Also the counter and sink between the bag of sugar and my mixing bowl got a nice serving of that handful too. MOVING ON.
7. butter two cake rounds and throw the batter in there. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

FROSTING TIME!
I made my frosting with 1/5 C powdered sugar mixed with 3/4 C cocoa. I mixed those and set them aside. then I put a stick of butter in a baggie and put that in a bowl of hot water to let it soften at MY pace since I didn't want to wait. I blended the butter, 1 C of the sugar mix, and 1 tbsp of heavy whiping cream. I added 4 more tbsp. of cream and the rest of the sugar alternating. and voala! Frosting. Oh, and add a tsp. of vanilla at the end. Really ties it together. 

I took the cake out of the oven and let it cool for a while. then since david kept asking me if it was ready yet, I put it in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Making It Look Cute

Cake Stuck to pan. OH WELL!

I am seriously so bad at this part. I don't even really try anymore.With the amount of sugar i put in this thing, if it tastes bad then someone should really take my apron and wooden spoon away. I know all of the recipes say to cut off the top of the cake to make it flat but that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. so, I just stacked the cakes with a thin layer of icing. sure, they completely fell apart, and sure, it looks like the cake from Matilda, but also made by Matilda, BUT as David says, if it looks good to my stomach, it looks good enough.

It took him a whooping 2 minutes to completely clear his plate and down a glass of milk. He was literally scraping his plate with his spoon. Proud girlfriend.

Cute and put-together Matilda cake- NOT!

Probably WON'T be one of those mom's with a spotless Kitchen. Preparing now, planning on just running with it :)

Semi-Final Result

Life is Messy, and so is our Dining room table. I'm coming clean. It will probably always look a little like this- LIVED IN!

Almost gone...

that took a total of 45 seconds.

Plankton Snowman

 Mostly that's it. Snow and Chocolate and a dog and a boyfriend.
loooooooove, Charlotte