This past weekend I realized that I, yet again, had celery going soft, potatoes sprouting new baby potatoes and tomatoes that would have probably GROWN a worm because they were sitting on my bar for so long. There are no words to describe how lazy I was this past weekend so this girl wasn't getting dressed to go to the store for anyone. Not even me, because I was hungry. So I created... a simple stew! This was inspired, too, by a Facebook pal that posted her crock was broken and I realized I hadn't used mine since last winter!
After I washed and sliced the celery, dug out all the roots on the potatoes with my fingernails and cubed them then chopped up my tomatoes, I tossed everything in the crock pot on high. I opened a small can of diced tomatoes from the cabinet, pulled the rest of my baby carrots from the drawer and halved all of them, grabbed the red onion - on the bar - next to the bag sprouting potatoes - finely chopped, grated two large cloves of garlic, chopped up 2 tablespoons of rosemary and one basil leaf and tossed in three bay leaves and about 1/3 cup of sour cream. I remembered I also had left over cooked chicken from the enchiladas *ahhhh HAA* chicken stew, it is!
I ground in some sea salt, black pepper corn, tossed in about a tablespoon of cumin and chipotle chili powder. I poured in 50% less sodium beef stock just to cover everything, gave everyone a shimmy-shake around the crockpot and covered it - cooked on high for 4 hours. At this point, I checked my potatoes, made sure my tomatoes had burst, cubed the left over chicken and threw that in and let it cook for another hour. Now... at this point, I thought to myself, "self, this would be great over egg noodles... " So, as I'm scrounging around for egg noodles in the cabinet, I run across Lentils. WHAT A TREAT! I was so excited! I finally have a reason to cook these! Great source of protein so I popped those in a pot (these things take 45 minutes to cook!) and cooked them up while the stew finished up. When the lentils were finished I drained them, dumped them in the stew, gave everything another shimmy-shake and grabbed a bowl.
My friends, this was by far my best "just throw it in and see what happens" experiment. Ever. Most of these things do already go together in a beef stew. And I have to admit, I keep a lot of "staples" on hand at home - but this was by far my favorite, without having to leave the house!
Just do it. Left over meats, ripend veggies, herbs that are going to rot.... just do it.
Haha! I just figured out who Sassi_Gyrl is! Hiiii! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd what exactly would you suggest for a stew for someone that eats NO veggies? Meat and potato stew? Haha.
hahaa!! Yep... Meat and potatoes! make a roux to thicken up your sauce and dump it over egg noodles or rice! You eat beans? You could do red beans, meat and potatoes! Oh, that would be good over long grain brown rice... man, now I'm hungry!
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