beef stew

I don’t know what possessed me to think that I would have enough time before work to throw some beef stew in the CrockPot to simmer all day, but nonetheless, Thursday morning found me scrambling — hair askew, bathrobe flapping — to assemble that night’s dinner. The meat was already cut, so I pulled it from the fridge along with the bag of carrots.

The carrots were frozen. They were shoved into the very bowels of the refrigerator, so I guess they ended up near a vent or something because my fridge is definitely not that cold. The good knives and the cutting board were in the dishwasher, so now I’m hacking away at frozen carrots on a paper plate balanced on the stove burner and wondering why I felt it necessary to save a few cents by buying regular carrots rather than baby ones that require no slicing. It was right about then that a carrot top slipped through my fingers, skittered across the kitchen floor, and disappeared beneath the fridge.

We don’t have a yardstick, which is what my mother always used to tease out things stuck beneath appliances, so I pressed my cheek to the (filthy) linoleum and peered into the dusty abyss to see if my fingers would reach it. No dice. I decided to give up on the carrots and focus on potatoes, which went into the Crockpot with no issue. A little gravy mix here, some cold water there, and I was ready to roll … until I glimpsed the lonely onion sitting on a shelf in the fridge. Crap — I promised The Husband there would be onions in the stew.

Have you ever tried to cut the ends off an onion with a crappy serrated knife? I nearly took my fingers off. After much maneuvering and flinging of onion skin into the stove burners, I had a perfect round onion waiting to be sliced. Until, that is, I dropped it onto the floor, where it exploded. (“Outback’s got the bloomin’ onion — you’ve got the kaboomin’ onion,” quipped a friend at lunch.) I gathered it up, washed it off, and chopped it a bit more viciously than needed, but eventually I had not only a CrockPot full of stew, but onion-y fingers, a big splotch on the floor, and tears running down my face as well.

Not exactly a successful prep session, but here’s the finished product:

Don’t mind the spotty Dollar Store bowl — all the nice ones were dirty and I was lazy.

Perfect for Thursday’s 11-degree weather. What is this, Pennsylvania?