Crockpot Beef Soup
I’ve invented a new tasty soup very loosely based on the Hamburger soup that my mom makes. There are some major changes, including the fact that it’s made in the crockpot, and the fact that it does not contain barley (the grocery store near me sells four kinds of barley, none of which look like the stuff my mom uses in soup, I gave up in confusion).
The ingredients were all thrown together in the crockpot last night. I had originally intended to brown the beef and some of the vegetables, to be honest I’m glad I didn’t as the chunks of beef were super tender and fell apart in the mouth much better than they would have if pre-browned, based on my experience.
I used:
- One can of diced tomatoes
- Two cups of beef broth
- Two marinating steaks, cubed
- Three large peeled potatoes, cubed
- Two stalks of celery, sliced
- Two carrots, sliced
- One can of corn
- Two cloves of garlic
- A good dash of Worcestershire sauce
- Ground black pepper
I put the crockpot on this morning, on low and just let it cook all day. I came home to perfect beef soup. It’s almost half way between a soup and a stew. Yum.
Jogging Update
Hubby and I are still jogging. We are advancing very very slowly through the couch to 5k program. We started out advancing at the recommended rate, but every time we moved up a level we ended up feeling miserable. So now we spend two to three times as long at each level as the website suggests, and we’re loving it again.
Last night was the best jog we’ve had in ages. We quit listening to music while jogging a while ago because I found that I was keeping time to the music, even when that wasn’t an appropriate running tempo, and it seemed to be wearing me out too quickly. So last night we were jogging along when we realized that we hadn’t had to stop our conversation when we switched from our three minutes of walking back to five minutes of jogging. Needless to say, I’m very proud of us.
I’ve definitely learned that there’s no one-size-fits-all jogging program. Even though this program is great, it still isn’t perfect for us, and we have more fun by slowing it down. I figure we’re still out moving two or three nights a week, which is a huge improvement from the couch potatoes we used to be.
How Marriage Changed my Eating Habits
I do not consider myself a particularily picky eater. I like a wide variety of foods, however there are a few things that I don’t care for. The major ones are: cheese, coffee and coconut. A little over a year ago, that list would also have included tea and red wine, but then I got married and everything changed.
I was converted first on the issue of tea. I could drink tea before, but I wouldn’t normally chose to. About the only times I ever had a cup of tea were when visiting my Nana and Grandad at the retirement home, because they didn’t really keep anything else on hand to offer, and I didn’t like to refuse they’re hospitality.
Then, the day after our wedding Hubby noticed that there were instructions on the coffee maker for how to make hot chocolate using it. Knowing that I love hot chocolate, Hubby offered to make some for me. Once he got the water going however, he realized that there were no packages of hot chocolate among the tea and coffee packages. Feeling bad that his nice gesture wasn’t working out, I agreed to his offer to make me tea instead (he knew better than to even suggest coffee) and I was amazed to discover that it was really, really good.
At first I thought it was just the awesomeness of having my new husband make tea for me that made it taste good, but I had tea several more times over the course of our Honeymoon, and it stayed enjoyable. In fact, I now start most days with a cup of tea.
The red wine conversion started earlier, but took longer to take full effect, and in fact, I still prefer white wine to red, except when eating red meat. My first good interaction with red wine occured at the wine and cheese shower that a very good friend threw for me right before my wedding. She had paired the wines with the perfect foods (and then left the cheese out of my servings). It was there that I discovered that red wine really does work exceptionally well with roast beef. However, away from these perfect pairings I still didn’t like it much, and chose white wine every option I got.
Then, on our Honeymoon, Hubby and I went on a wine tour (for anyone who’s never been, Prince Edward County, Ontario has an awesome wine industry). Once again I was exposed to really good red wine, and I was in a romantic mood. Between the two factors, I really enjoyed it. In the year and a bit since then, we’ve been gradually drinking up the shower gifts and wine tour purchases. Alot of that was red wine, and I’ve discovered that really, I actually kinda like the stuff.
My Dad is still holding out for marriage to change my feelings toward cheese I believe, but I just don’t see that one happening. However two years ago I wouldn’t have expected to like red wine, so I guess you never know.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hubby, my sister and I celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with a big turkey dinner. Because we’re halfway across the country from the rest of our family, it was just the three of us, but that didn’t stop me from making enough food to feed an army.
I’ve only made thanksgiving dinner once before, last year. That was the year I got to transition from person who makes the gravy while Mom does everything else to person who teaches sister to make the gravy while doing everything else. Among other things it involved about six phon ecalls to either my mother or mother-in-law with questions such as: which way up does the turkey go?
This year, I can proudly say that I did not have to phone home once. That’s right, I made turkey dinner all by my self. And I’m more than a little proud of it. We had an almost 20 pound turkey (yes, there were only 3 of us, we like leftovers) Grandma-style stuffing (bread with a bit of sausage), mashed potatoes, mashed yams, peas and carrots, dinner rolls, corn and the all important blue jello with fruit in it. For dessert, my sister brought a home made pumpkin pie.
I even did such a good job prepping stuff early in the day, that around four o’clock I had an hour to kill with nothing to do. The turkey was cooking. The yams were cooked once, mashed with sugar and waiting to go back in the oven. The potatoes were peeled and sitting on the stove waiting to be cooked. The table was set. And I was going crazy. I’m not good at waiting, at all. Hubby had to distract me with video ganes just to get me to stop going in circles.
It was a very successful meal, we are still very full people. We’ve already dug into the leftovers, with hot open face turkey sandwiches for lunch today. Hubby’s talking about trying to invent turkey curry for dinner, and I plan to make turkey broth either tonight or tomorrow. Yum.
Fantasy Novel Addiction
I’ve always been hooked on books. And for many years fantasy was among my favourite genres. A few years ago I went off fantasy a bit. This wasn’t for any particular reason, but I guess I got a bit sick of it. Earlier this year I got back into fantasy big time.
Hubby had a couple of books by Brandon Sanderson, and I had some of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth books. I’ve posted earlier about us guessing back and forth at the contents of books the other had already read. Well, I’ve caught up to him on Brandon Sanderson, and I’ve taken the lead with the Terry Goodkind.
After reading the first Terry Goodkind in about two days, the second took me almost three weeks, due to a visit from my parents in the middle. I’ve been rationing the books, as attempts to reread this series in the past have usually ended with me getting bored about 2.5 books in (not that the third book isn’t good, just too much of a good thing).
The result has been me going crazy. I’ve forced myself to read at least one non-fantasy novel in between each of the Sword of Truth books that I’ve been reading. I spent Friday night rushing through the end of a Susan Howatch family saga novel, so that I could start book 4, Temple of the Winds, on Saturday. Since I started it yesterday afternoon, I’m now 240 pages into it. I predict I’ll be done by the end of the week, and will then rush through a random other book until I can read book 5. Terry Goodkind=awesome. book rationing=works beautifully for me.
