1. Around Wednesday last week, knowing that July 20th would be my day to host family dinner, thoughts about the chuck roast I knew was in our freezer were dancing in my head. Not knowing what I'd do with it, I brought it up to thaw in the fridge.
On Friday, I decided I'd turn the chuck roast into beef stroganoff, so I cut the roast into bite sized pieces, salt and peppered them, and marinated them in Beef Better than Bouillon broth, Worcestershire sauce, and soy sauce over night and on into Saturday.
On Saturday, I followed most of this recipe from America's Test Kitchen (if it's behind and paywall, but you'd like to have it, contact me and I'll turn it into a PDF and send it to you).
I slow cooked the sauce for about nine hours from early Saturday afternoon until into the late evening.
Before I went to bed Saturday night, I refrigerated the stroganoff sauce, knowing that on Sunday the fat from the chuck roast would congeal on the surface and I'd be able to spoon it off.
2. On Sunday, I fixed the rest of our family dinner meal.
I did in fact spoon the fat off the surface of the refrigerated stroganoff sauce and returned the sauce to the crock pot and let it simmer until close to dinner time.
I thawed two baguettes from Beach Bum Bakery, baked them for about twelve minutes at 450 degrees, as instructed when I bought them, to make the crust hard, even crunchy. Later, I sliced the baguettes and topped some of the pieces with Trader Joe's Greciann Style Eggplant with Tomatoes and Onions for an appetizer and saved out other pieces to eat with our stroganoff.
I got out the wok and fried bacon pieces and then dumped a package of green beans on top of the nearly cooked bacon and stir fried the green beans and bacon until they were ready to eat.
I boiled a package of egg noodles.
I set out two Lemon Snickerdoodles and two Chocolate Chip Cookies from Beach Bum Baker for our dessert.
It was very enjoyable to prepare and serve S-L-O-W food.
I took pleasure in knowing that I started fixing the stroganoff Friday night, let the sauce slow cook all day Saturday, and that it simmered until near dinner time on Sunday.
I find that slow cooked meals are relaxing to prepare and always prove to be delicious.
3. Christy, Carol, and Paul arrived around 5:30.
Christy fixed them each a root beer and bourbon cocktail. We dove into the appetizers. We sat at the dining table to eat dinner and everyone enjoyed the beef stroganoff and the green beans and bacon.
The cookies worked beautifully.
I think I enthralled Paul, Carol, and Christy when I initiated a scintillating discussion of compression socks.
No comments:
Post a Comment