Beef Bourguignon

So good! Monday morning. We had lots of London broil leftover from Sunday dinner. Good! 

I've sliced the leftovers into bite sized pieces and into the slow cooker it goes. I'll turn it on high around 3 pm. I have two batches going. The leftovers will be even better tomorrow after the juices have "married" for a day.

It'll simmer in the slow cooker about 3-4 hours.

I'm not measuring anything. My mother always told me "use what you have", and it's good advice. If you don't have bacon, leave it out. If you don't have consomme, use boullion. You get the idea, I'm sure.

What makes a meal delicious is the love and time you put into it. That and experience. 

But if you have it, fry some bacon in your skillet, then add it to the slow cooker. Save a little of the grease, because it's good for sauteing the next few ingredients. 

Onions

Carrots

Mushrooms

Olive oil 

When all the above are nicely caramelized add some garlic and a little butter. 

Add flour; About a spoon's worth of flour. Stir. Let it all simmer until the flour is incorporated, then put it in the crock pot. Stir.

Deglaze your pan with the red wine by heating the pan up, pouring the wine in and letting it sizzle for about 20 seconds. Scrape the pan with a metal spatula. Add the deglaze to the crock pot. 

I happened to have fresh rosemary in the fridge, so I made a little bundle of it and tied it with twine. Into the slow cooker it went to be fished out later before dinner. Ahh, fresh herbs are from heaven!

Add some consomme to the slow cooker. Let it all simmer and enjoy the wonderful aroma and love in your kitchen. Taste to see if it needs salt or pepper.  

Bless us oh Lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive by Thy bounty through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

And bon appetit! 

Great Depression Cooking - Depression Breakfast

 Here's a YouTube vlogger I really enjoy. You may know of her channel, because it isn't new. But if you've never seen her videos, I think you'll enjoy them. 

As a young women Clara made it through difficult times during the Great Depression with her family. I think she offers encouragement to anyone who wonders about the future and whatever difficulties we may face therein by keeping a sense of humor and by not wanting too much.

Enjoy!

What's for dinner?

Ground beef with Italian veggies to lighten it up a bit. Spinach, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, mushrooms, onions, garlic. Served over pasta with parmesan cheese. Tuesday night special.

The Girls say fair well not goodbye to their piano teacher and 5th sister

Good luck and God bless! We await your return.

Who Is The Patron Saint Of A Well Ordered Home?

I can't figure it out, When I did a search, St. Joseph came up for the selling of homes.

So officially I don't really know who it is. However to my mind, for patron saints of homemakers, there can be no better than the Blessed Virgin Mary, her mother St. Ann, and her cousin St. Elizabeth. Do you ever ask these three women to help you order your home?

I do that all the time, especially at certain parts of the Joyful mystery. Because of their sanctity and the fact that the family and home were essentially their vocations, I need their help.

I like to invite them into my home, and ask them to help me find order there in the midst of a very busy life. Most moms have a lot to balance: spiritual and material needs of their family, the needs of their household, and their own personal needs, too!  So we have to prioritize. 

For myself, that means deciding what's most essential and when to do it and then mostly sticking to the plan and not straying off on some tangent. 

1. Pray the rosary each morning. If I get a good night's sleep, I can get up in time to do this. 

2. Provide good food for my family. Have grace and a sit down family dinner--almost every night.

3. Tend to the various spiritual and temporal needs of my children.

4. Make sure the kids are helping with the chores and responsibilities at home. 

5. Pray at least a decade of the rosary as a family each night.

6. Get some real exercise a few times during the week.

7. Be kind to my spouse.

8. Make those chapel veils!

In my world that means a lot of things--or activities--I'd like to do are simply  not going to get done, because like everyone else, I'm limited by time. I can't do everything, and my home can't look like a house beautiful photo spread. It's okay and I need to be at peace about that.  

Our Lord is with us among the pots and pans.

Busy mamas, isn't this so good to remember?! Thank you, St. Teresa of Avila!

“Don’t think that if you had a great deal of time you would spend more of it in prayer. Get rid of that idea! God gives more in a moment than in a long period of time, for His actions are not measured by time at all… Know that even when you are in the kitchen, Our Lord is moving among the pots and pans.”
- St Teresa of Avila

Blessed Easter Joy To You!

We went to the Vigil Mass, which was very, very beautiful. 

 I was filling Easter baskets after we got home--that was at 2 AM in the morning.  

Then later that day we had the extended family over for dinner.

I left a plate on the kitchen table for my boy who had to work late. 

That's an easy lamb recipe; a real keeper... It's just as delicious as it is simple.

Roast Beef

Roast Beef was on sale so John wanted it on New Years Eve. I used the recipe from Julia Child's "The Way To Cook", Roast beef is a lot like cooking a turkey or any other roast for that matter.

'It's not so hard', Julia says. 'It's mostly about getting the timing right.' I think that's true. The meat is so good, you don't need to do much else other than make a gravy or in this case we made a creamy horse radish sauce from the same cook book. 

Beef Burgundy Stew.

Here's another recipe that's good for a Sunday dinner. I'm planning to make it this Saturday while listening to the opera on WQXR.

Verdi's Aïda

Like the beef bolognese, it's best made a day ahead because it tastes better on the second day. It also freezes really well, like the bolognese.

It's one more from my father-in-law's repertoire of recipes.

 Years ago a certain food critic's a son was over for dinner. He liked this Beef Burgundy and asked for the recipe. Then he passed it along to his father. Evidently the father liked it, too, because he published it in The Daily Record.

Everyone likes this dish!

6 strips bacon, cut into 1/2 inch slices

3 pounds beef chuck, cut in 1-1/2 inch cubes

1 large carrot, sliced

1 medium onion, sliced

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons flour

2 cups beef broth

2 cups burgundy

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon thyme 

1 bay leaf

1 pound sliced fresh mushrooms

1 pound small white onions

It all starts with the browning of the bacon in cast iron pans.

You want to cook that until its nice and crisp. Then remove the bacon and set it aside.

Above is enough beef to double the recipe, which I almost always do. Then I can freeze half. But the ingredients given above are enough for one batch of stew.

But anyway, you want to brown all that nicely in the bacon greese, until the meat is really brown. Then remove the beef and set it aside.

Brown the sliced carrot and onion in the pan drippings.

Next, spoon off the fat and return the bacon and beef to the pan with the carrot and onion. Add salt, pepper and flour, stirring to coat meat lightly.

Transfer the entire contents of the cast iron pan into a slow cooker. Add beef broth, wine, tomato paste, and herbs. Cover the slow cooker and let it all build up to a slow simmer.

Meanwhile, brown the mushrooms in 3 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of salad oil, about 5 minutes. Remove and set aside.

In the same skillet, brown the pearl onions about 10 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

Once the crock pot ingredients begin stewing, you can add the onions and mushrooms. 

And here it is! 

Beef Burgundy goes nicely with a good red wine, a Burgundy, of course! Cheers!

It's also nice with a little shrimp salad on the side. However I must get on with my day, so I'll give you the recipe for this one another time!

Bolognese Meat Sauce

This is so super yummy! My father-in-law (requiescat in pace) gave me this recipe. I'm making it today to be eaten tomorrow for Sunday dinner, because dishes like this are even better on the second day. If you like bolonaise with a real bite to it, then this recipe is for you!

From The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
Ann, Clem and Marcella Hazan's Bolognese Meat Sauce

2 heaping cups for about six servings and 1-½ pounds of pasta
(Feel free to double or triple the recipe if you're cooking for a crowd. But then use two pans; don't crowd your pan. Also, this recipe freezes really well, so save some time and double or even triple up!)

1 Tbs vegetable oil 
3 Tbs butter 
1/2 C. chopped onion
2/3 C. chopped celery 
2/3 C. chopped carrot
3/4 pound ground beef chuck
1 C. whole milk
1/8 tsp. grated nutmeg
1 C. dry white wine
1 1/2 C canned plum tomatoes, chopped and with their juice
salt
pepper (fresh ground)
freshly graded parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Pasta: Hazen says that tagliatelle is best, but also rigatoni, fusilli, and conchiglie will do. Coat with butter.

1. Put the oil and butter in a pot with the chopped onion. Turn the heat to medium. Cook, stirring the onion until translucent. Add the chopped celery and carrots. Cook about 2 minutes more, stirring the vegetables to coat them.

2. Add the ground beef, a large pinch of salt, and a few grindings of pepper. Break up the meat and stir well, cooking until the beef has lost its raw, red color.

3. Add the milk and let simmer gently, stirring frequently, until it has bubbled away completely. This can take a while. 

Important: if you want the bite that makes this dish so special, then it's really very important not to add wine or tomatoes until the milk reduction is finished and you can't see any milk! That's the whole key here!!

4. Add the 1/8 tsp of grated nutmeg and stir.

5. Add the wine. Let it all simmer until the wine has evaporated. Add tomatoes and stir thoroughly. Coat all the ingredients. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, turn heat down. Leave it so that the sauce cooks at the laziest simmer with occasional bubbles breaking. Cook it uncovered in a pan Let it go for 3 hours or more, stirring from time to time. If the sauce begins to dry out and the fat separates from the meat, add 1/2 C of water to keep it from sticking to the pot. At the end, however, no water should remain and the fat must be separate from the sauce. This takes time, don't let leave the pot neglected, keep stirring. Taste for additional salting.

6. Attention Busy Mamas: as mentioned in the above step, Marcella and Clem would let the meat bubble slowly in the skillet for the rest of the cooking time. But then you can't leave the kitchen; you'll be in the kitchen all day, because it'll burn if you're not constantly stirring the meat every few minutes. We mamas can't always do that, right? There's too much laundry to do! So my solution is to put it in a crock pot at this point--for the final three hours, but just make sure all the tomato juice is evaported prior to serving.