Featured Recipe

Here's a quick filling meal you can make on a weeknight. Delicious on a cold winter night when the wind is howling. This has a bit of kick from red pepper flakes and will warm you right up.
Tip: if you have Johnny's Garlic Powder (you can get it at Costco), use it in place of the regular garlic powder as it adds more flavour.

Weeknight Beef Stew

Ingredients:
1 pound cubed lean beef (not stew meat as it's not tender enough)
4 medium red skin potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 cup baby carrots, diced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
splash extra virgin olive oil
3-4 cups beef broth
3 TBSP plain tomato sauce
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp each dried oregano, parsley and thyme
1 TBSP garlic powder
2 pinches red pepper flakes
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste


Method:
1. Cook the potatoes, onions and carrots in a large non stick pot in a little olive oil until the potatoes are fork tender but still a little firm. Transfer to a bowl and set aside
2. Season the beef with salt and pepper, to taste. Cook the beef in the pot you cooked the potatoes in until cooked through. If liquid collects in the pot, spoon it into the bowl with the potatoes (there's a lot of flavour in that liquid)
3. Once the beef is cooked, return the potato mixture, along with any liquid to the pot. Add 3 cups of beef broth and the tomato sauce. Stir. Add all the spices, the green pepper and the Worcestershire sauce.
4. Mix the flour with 1/2 cup remaining beef broth until there are no lumps. Stir into the pot.
5. Simmer over medium heat for at least 10 minutes, uncovered, until the potatoes are melt-in-your-mouth soft and the stew has thickened. If you like a thinner stew, add the remaining beef broth.

Featured Recipe

The Day-Before-Payday Soup

I wrote this on Thursday last week, but had an incredibly lazy weekend and didn't get around to posting it (I couldn't find it in me to tear myself away from watching Sliders on Netflix. Yes, that show from the early nineties with Jerry O'Connel about 4 people who slide to parallel earths. So Awesome).

Sometimes payday comes at a really inconvenient time: your mortgage payment is due and bills must be paid all on the day before you get your paycheque and of course, your fridge, cupboards and freezer are looking more than a little bare. And you have to figure out what you could possibly take to work for lunch the day before payday. Well, last night, I came up with an idea and it turned out tasting pretty darn good. Now, I am a big fan of soup. I love to make it and I love to eat it and it warms me up on a cool, gray, rainy day like today. And this one used what little produce I had in my fridge and freezer,  took about 5 minutes to make and doesn’t require a pot. I prepped the night before and assembled at work. Let me share it with you:

The Day Before Payday Soup - Serves 1

Ingredients:

• 1 bouillon cube (I used chicken, but beef or vegetable would work just as well)
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds about half a cm thick
• 2 green onions, sliced thinly
• 1 handful frozen corn kernels, thawed
• 2 slices deli meat (we had a wee bit of old fashioned ham in the fridge, but chicken, turkey or roast beef would be yummy too. Whatever you have in your fridge)
• water

How To:

• Put the carrot slices in a microwave safe bowl and cover with a little water. Cook on high power for about 1 minute until soft but still firm (mushy carrots in soup don’t do it for me). Drain and set aside to cool slightly
• Mix all vegetables together in a small, tightly sealed, reusable container. Pack the meat in a separate container or plastic baggie. Keep the bouillon separate.
• When ready to assemble, boil about 2 cups water in a kettle (2 measuring cups worth (500ml), not the 2 cup line on your kettle (that line is for tea or coffee cup amounts)). Crumble the bouillon cube into your bowl (start with half the bouillon first, then add more until you reach your desired broth strength. I used 1 cube for about 1.5 cups water but I like my broth fairly strong. A typical bouillon cube yields 2 cups of broth). Fill the bowl about ¾ full with the boiling water and stir to dissolve the bouillon.
• Add the vegetables and meat and let stand for a few minutes so the veggies get warm all the way through. If you’re like me and you like your soup piping hot, you may need to microwave it for about 45 seconds to a minute on high as the cold veggies will have cooled the soup down some as they warm up.

That’s it. Easy peasy.  You can use whatever veggies and meat you have lying around, though veggies that don’t require much (if any) cooking work best. A tomato or some zucchini or spinach would work nicely and you could cook them with the carrots. A nice piece of whole wheat toast or some grainy crackers would be good for dipping and would round out the meal quite nicely. I admit, I did need a few crackers and some cheese about 2 hours later.