Adventures in Slow-cookery

Ah, the crock pot.

Put 8 ingredients in, wait 10 hours while the entire apartment begins to smell of your cooking prowess, and whamo: 1-dish dinner.

Simple, understated, home goodness. Sometimes.

My first attempt at a beef stew did not go well. Submerged with water dosed liberally with chicken stock mix, potates, and beans, it came out with an odd aftertaste that was almost synthetic. And then I had so much of the stuff left over that I couldn't justify just tossing it all away. Hence another three days of odd synthetic aftertaste.

This time I came in a little bit more prepared. We started with the standard packet of grocery-store stew beef, red potatoes, carrots, and celery. There was also a proper-sized container of beef broth from whole foods, and half a sweet onion.

I was also better armed with spices. My mom has a friend of a friend who closed his restaurant, so we all got two plastic bags full of spices like garlic powder, parsley, and bay leaves... which I would never bother paying for on its own, considering how rarely I use it. In went sea salt, garlic, two bay leaves, and parsley and thyme in liberal doses.

I also added a small can of condensed cream of mushroom soup. My mom said that makes all the difference, and she's the killer cook, so we do what she says. I was a little concerned about adding significant calorie content, but Campbell's has a low-sodium version that hardly altered the calories per serving. In went the soup... about three hours after the mix began boiling. It just disappeared into thin air, within the broth, and I had to remind myself I had put it there in the first place. The broth continued to be the same color and consistency. It was just weird.

And then the final step - my mom reminded me that I was making a stew, not a soup, and would therefore require a thickening element. For the third time today, I got out to my nearby Fry's and picked up cornstarch.

I am suspicious of cornstarch. It seems like it could be very close to... corn syrup? But is in fact something totally different? And is only 30 calories a serving. So I dissolved one tablespoon in cold water and added it to the boiling pot.

I checked back in an hour - no thickening. Blaming the continued high heat for any lack of reaction, I unplugged the pot, since A was going to be home in about 45 minutes, added yet another tablespoon, and waited not-so-patiently.

Nothing. But.

The "soup", as it were, tasted pretty killer, once I removed the limp translucent onion and two very tired bay leaves. We ate it with some Trader Joe's wild rice... and then headed off to chat with a good friend over hot tea at Barnes and Noble. And there's enough stew to also be dinner Wednesday night, and a couple of lunches.

There has been a week of meals crafted, and ready to go, with all ingredients in hand. Tomorrow: chicken lettuce wraps from Costco and red indian quinoa. I'm not totally sold on quinoa yet... I still like other grains so much better, like bulghur and durum and couscous. Which isn't technically a grain. But it IS technically delicious.