The Beef Stew Debut

Currently listening to: Beirut, "Postcards from Italy"

Boyfriend and I received a crock pot for Christmas from my parents. I thought the best first meal for the new toy would be beef stew-- one of my favorite meals.

It was happy work, chopping the beef into cubes, mixing together the good smelling ingredients, dancing to iTunes as I double-checked the online recipe-- but THEN, the surprisingly miserable part: the vegetables. I chopped vegetables for TWO HOURS. Three finger cuts and two sore hands later, I called boyfriend to whine about the devilish vegetable dicing. He promised to love the soup and reminded me where the band-aids were.

My hard work was rewarded when I came in that night to an apartment that smelled gloriously of beef stew goodness. Boyfriend arrived, complimenting me on the smell, promising he'd been thinking of stew all day... and as he pulled off the crock pot lid, he stared into the stew-- and LAUGHED.

Boyfriend laughed because in the stew were my vegetables, chopped into tiny, tiny pieces. I had chopped the vegetables into bitty bits because-- well, I'm a new cook. I was thinking of the Campbell's soup, or something, and that reference point led me to chop 5 carrots, 4 potatoes, a bushel of celery, an onion and a garlic into the smallest pieces imaginable. No wonder it took me two hours to chop those veggies-- I practically shredded them! I still can't totally explain why I thought they had to be so small...

And in the end, the finger cuts didn't even pay off because the stew would have been better if the veggies had been bigger... oh, the satire of the stew. Overall, though, a success.

Live and learn.

-Sarah

Click on the photo to view the recipe