An Impromptu Stew. #fritz

An unusual presentation, but whatever works. #fritz

 

The fact is, (and has always been), that cooking for one has its difficulties, not the least of which are leftovers.

May I be frank with you? I’ll be earnest if you’d rather—

We had a few ounces of beefy stock left over after cooking a roast a few days ago. We still had cold beef in the fridge, and this after hot beef sandwiches, as well as one helluva good cold beef sandwich.

We still had a couple of mushrooms left over, from making a series of four pizzas, all of which came out pretty good. Things being as they are, that is to say things, means that while we used up the cheese and the pepperoni and the bacon, we still have (or had) mushrooms left over. We still had red pepper left over. We still had the vegetable cocktail, which we bought and dribbled over our aforesaid roast. You can see where I put a bit of that in our stock/gravy/juice.

Love that veggie cocktail.

Then there is the whole question of lunch. I had some idea that I was going to do this. I try to keep the makings for some kind of salad around here.

The prep time isn’t huge, there is some simmering time.

So, with most of a tin of beef gravy, left over, and our bit of beef stock, (left over from cooking), and our mushrooms, and a few leftover green peas, we sort of had the makings for what I like to call Impromptu Stew.

Before we even got to putting that on the burner, we had already peeled a very large (and free) potato. The free ones taste better, for some reason…

***

More fucking leftovers. Cook 'em up and get rid of them.

 

That has to be thoroughly boiled, otherwise they can be pretty hard to mash.

We made a salad of Romaine, green onion, red pepper, and tomato. We set out the bottle of Thousand Island dressing. We polish up our sexy black plate with a bit of paper towel, and voila.

It’s beginning to look like a darned good lunch. So, you want the potatoes to boil, the salad to stew in its own juices in the fridge while you’re cooking, and then to have the stew simmer and bubble a bit, not excessively, but basically, the mushrooms are the only thing in there that really hasn’t been cooked before.

There is no butter or margarine on the potatoes. Salt and pepper maybe.

That is either a thin gravy or a thick soup, ladies and gentlemen, and one hopes you all will excuse the rather unusual presentation.

Whatever works, works.

The meal was good, quite frankly my soup beats the hell out of those industrial soups…

And the funny thing is…we have leftovers. I guess that goes in the fridge alongside that half a pizza from a day or two ago.

You can never have enough leftovers, that is what I always like to say.

(Fuck.)

#fritz

 

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Shopping With A Ten-Dollar Bill. Ludicrous. #fritz

Onions, mushrooms and peppers, roasted in beef juice...OMG.

#fritz

Today, I went shopping with a ten-dollar bill, which sounds ludicrous. I figured I could get lean ground beef, buns and a bag of chips—and I would have been right too.

The funny thing is, I failed, but in a good way. I already had the buns in the basket, (no need for a cart here), but the Angus beef roasts are right there on the end of the chiller, with the ground beef a bit further on. I saw a sticker that said reduced.

To make a short story marginally more interesting, I took a roast for $10.03, and put the buns back for another day.

I still got the chips, $0.97 for 150 grams, (Walmart). I got a tin of beef gravy for $0.67, vegetable cocktail for $2.47 and green onions for $0.97. I reckon, with the purchase of a plastic shopping bag, the whole five items cost $15.25, rounded off as we no longer use the penny here in Canada.

The other day, I had bought, at Food Basics, the smallest red pepper I could find…there was one smaller, but it was dark, with just the impression of translucence, and sort of showing the signs of having been there too long. Might have gone below the proper cold point at some time in its history…

The one I got was nice and red, and some of that went on a recent pizza, along with some major mushrooms. These are the largest white button mushrooms I’ve ever seen.

In the photo, our 1.7-lb Angus roast lies on a bed of red pepper slivers, two pretty big green onions, with a generous portion of the dark green left on, and of course one big mushroom in four thick slices. We have dribbled a little vegetable cocktail over the roast, and judiciously sprinkled the resulting results with white pepper, black pepper, chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder…and I think that’s about it. Oh—a bit of thyme.

You can find a million recipes on the internet, but I rarely have all of that stuff anyways. I really don’t expect that to stick to the pan.

This is a nice simple treatment that works pretty well.

We will preheat the oven to 450 F, and stick that in for fifteen or twenty minutes, considering the size. Then we turn it down to 325 F and let it go until about one hour and five minutes…a little longer maybe. We can turn off the heat and just let it sit in there for a while, in case there is any doubt as to whether it’s done.

We do that in tinfoil, and save the #jus

***

When you can’t stand it any longer…that’s when it’s done, essentially. (As I write this, it’s been in four minutes and it’s already starting to send out that ineffable aroma.)

One aspect of these roasts is the sort of small on one end and big on the other end nature of the chunk of meat. It makes it difficult to cook the whole thing to the same standard, in my case just a nice, medium rare and not grey all the way through.

(The slices on the plate came off the small end, in this case.) 

And it's perfect.

We’re going to boil up one big potato, as my mother got a fifty pound bag the other day. She paid $19.95. 

Seriously. So, that, I guess, is why she does it...

That will be split between four or five people, as for myself I grabbed five pounds of free potatoes. I’m so cheap I didn’t even pay the two bucks…

That seems reasonable enough. As for the tin of beef gravy, it won’t go to waste, considering the leftovers and things like hot beef sandwiches on #superdough

It’s always good to have one in the cupboard anyways, and that’s thirty cents off the regular price—

Other than that, a bit of Romaine, some bread and butter pickles, and that is about it for what is sizing up to be a pretty good lunch. I know I sure enjoyed it, but then a certain amount of anticipation adds a keen edge to the old appetite.

 

END

 

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

 

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