My Beef Stew

Several years ago, I started making a very simple beef stew. It really caught on with my wife's family and my sister-in-law requested the recipe. The only issue with that is that I never write down the recipes of what I cook, I just go into the kitchen and make it.

So yesterday evening, my sister-in-law calls me and asks how to make the beef stew. It had been a _long_ day and a while since I made it, so I couldn't remember -- not to mention that I wasn't actually making it, which makes it even more difficult. At any rate, she emailed me last night (or rather early this morning) and tells me that apparently I *did* at one point write the recipe down. It was a couple of years ago when she first requested. I will now blog it so it will be forever living on the internet.

Phillip Beef Stew

1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tbsp salt (I use sea salt, but whatever)
1 Bay Leaf
2 tbsp butter (real butter please!)
2 onion (sweet onions are best, but if you can't find them, the white onions turn out nicely)
1½ tsp. minced garlic
1-2 lbs. top sirlion, cubed
3-4 potatoes, cubed
6-8 carrots, sliced
1 stalk of celery, sliced

Season your beef! First things first, once you have cubed your beef, season it with the garlic powder, salt and pepper.

Begin cooking by caramelizing 1 whole onion and at least 1 clove of garlic in 1 or 2 tbsp of butter.

Once the onions & garlic are golden brown -- onions should be slightly translucent, add the bay leaf, cubed beef and brown. While the meat is browning, make about 1.5 cups of beef broth using the Wyler's Beef Broth cubes or granules. Once the broth is boiling and the meat is browned sufficiently, add the broth and boil the browned beef for 15 - 20 minutes. Add the potatoes & carrots and cook for 15-20 more minutes. Finally, add the celery and cook 10 more minutes.

NOTE: I also change things up depending on what I have in the cabinet or what herbs are growing fresh in the garden.

I think I am going to start blogging all the recipes that I just throw together, if I remember. Also to note, we generally have wheat rolls with the above meal.

be bold

got my new blackberry this week... so far, it rocks. :)

quick update

been awhile again it would seem... quick update for all.

October really flew by, I managed to stay busy with work and family games for pretty much the whole month. I did manage to take the last week of the month off, which was nice.

On the subject of Crappy Things That Happen to People (tm), our water heater decided to fail. A real problem since it is in the attic above the second story of our house. We caught it fairly early, but it still managed to ruin several walls, carpeting etc. Still waiting for the insurance scumbags to pay us. Now seriously, they couldn't manage to put the water heater in the attic over the GARAGE?!?! 

I do have a funny story about how the water heater replacement went down. I set out to get 4 quotes from various places to replace the unit and perform the 1 code upgrade required. The first bid came back from a place called "RotoRooter", they are known for being expensive, so I knew that I would take it in the shorts if I went with them. At any rate, here is how the quotes worked out:

RotoRooter: $1431

ARS Plumbing/Rooter: $1250

Lowes: $848

Home Depot: $825

I already had an issue with Lowes several months ago when I had my dishwasher replaced and they sent some heroin addict (srsly, not kidding) to do the replacement. By the time I had Home Depot talked down and negoitated, the final price was around $728 (plus $55 for the code upgrade). I knew I was running a risk going with them, but then again, I didn't want the herion addicts back. 

The funny part is that when the folks arrived (the next morning) to do the install, it was the same dudes from RotoRooter that had given me the quote. So there you go... 

I love food.

I don't think it's a secret, but I don't talk about it much.

I LOVE FOOD.

Eating the local food is one of my favorite things to do when I travel, especially internationally (caveat: P. R. China). Here is a picture of a pizza I ordered in one of the small cities we stopped in while in Czech.

I actually ended up eating the whole thing, I just happened to forget to snap the photo before I started :(

here's the damn picture

fyi, I'm still annoyed at flickr.

here is one of the many Borat-style joints I saw while on my most recent trip to Eastern Europe:

apparently the cats that own this particular joint live in a small section of this _massive_ house and rent the rest out to small companies for retreats. I found the business intriguing and after speaking with one of the folks with whom I was traveling that happened to be from the region, I came to find out that it's not an uncommon practice. In the post-Communist times, people had to go from being supported by complete social welfare to supporting themselves almost overnight (litteraly folks).

There is (of course) more story to this place, maybe someday I'll write it all up.

Now I am just annoyed

This all started about 32.8 minutes ago.

I headed over to Flickr where I have recently uploaded a few pictures to my photostream that I snapped while on my most recent trip to Eastern Europe. I'm not much of a shutterbug, but I do occasionally take photos when I travel just to jog my memory at a later date.

Anyway, as I was saying, I went to Flickr to grab some URLs for some images that I want to use in my blog and I notice the well-placed "Blog This" link over one of the photos. Instinctively, I click it to see what happens. I then proceed to spend the next 11-13 minutes configuring Flickr to be able to post directly to this blog. Not a big deal, I just had to go in and remove a couple of other blogs that I had started on my blogger account and never did anything with. I finally get the "congratulations" message and get on to selecting the picture and writing my blog post; which, like a complete dummy, I did not copy into my buffer. I hit submit and get some ugly error about how it didn't work and there might have been some sort of web services error and I get two choices from here: Try Again -or- Cancel

I hit "try again" repeatedly grasping at any straw to get this long-drawn out explanation of the piicture to somehow post to my blog, all the while in my head is processing Einstein's definition of insanity:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. --Albert Einstein

It didn't work. Sucks to be me. I'll just go old-school and do it the traditional way I guess.

"Honey, did I just run over somethin?"

Andrea and I went to the movie theatre a couple of weeks ago...

saw this: