I'm a bad blogger
9:41 AM
I'm trying to write something for this site, but I don't have much to say. I guess I
live a pretty boring life.
I recently read The
Omnivore's Dilemma and it really made me think. I feel like I really should
start eating better. I've been trying to make a real effort to buy as much local
food as I can and avoid factory and processed food. I don't know how successful I
will be in the long run, but so far so good. We joined a CSA program
from Full Circle Farms. We
hope to get the majority of our produce from them. We've also been buying our meat
from Skagit River
Ranch at the University Farmers Market. I've learned from all this that grass
fed beef makes a world of difference in flavor. The flat-iron steak that we used to
get was pretty flavorful and tender; the new one, although not as tender, just blows
it away in the flavor department. The best dish I've made with the new stuff was
definitely a stracotto. The recipe is as follows:
3 lbs of beef roast (I used a cross rib roast)
2 carrots
1 onion
1 leek
3 cloves of garlic
1 oz dried porcini mushrooms
2 bay leaves
28 ounce can of peeled tomatoes (San Marzano style)
dried thyme
dried rosemary
beef stock (I used store bough stock)
dry red wine (If you can use a chianti it will be best)
olive oil
butter
Salt and Pepper
Pre heat your oven to 300. Simmer one cup of beef stock. Take it off the heat and
drop in the porcinis to rehydrate and set aside. Finely dice the carrots, onion,
and leek (I made 1/8 inch cubes and that seemed to work). Mince the garlic. Drain
and hand crush the tomatoes and set aside. Heat a heavy dutch oven over high heat.
Liberally coat the roast with salt and pepper. Add enough oil to cover the pan and a
pat of butter. Brown the meat on all sides (and I mean really brown, it should be a
dark color on all sides). Remove the meat and then add the onion carrot and leeks
to the pan. While the vegetables are cooking remove the mushrooms from the stock
and shop them into 1/2 inch pieces. Once the onions are translucent, add the garlic
and mushrooms and cook for a few more minutes. Now add about cup of the red wine and
deglaze the bottom of the pan. Make sure you get all the good bits scrapped up. Now
add in the tomatoes and the beef stock from the mushrooms. Place the roast back into
the pan. If there is not enough liquid to come up to about 3/4 of the roast, top it
off with water. Put in the two bay leaves and the dried herbs (I used about two
teaspoons of rosemary and one teaspoon of thyme, but feel free to vary this). Check
the seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed. Once it's back to the boil cover it
and put it into the oven. It will cook for about three hours, or until the meat is
very tender. Turn the roast every half hour or so and make sure nothing is
sticking. If you want to be anal put a meat thermometer into the roast and set it
to go off when it hits 210 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it gets there cook it for one
hour more. Take the roast out of the liquid and let it rest for about ten minutes
before carving. Remove the bay leaves from the sauce. If the stock is still very
thin, boil it to thicken on top of the stove (you shouldn't need to as the
vegetables just about disintegrate to thicken the sauce). Unless you are feeding
five or six people you will have left overs. The best thing to do is shred the
roast with a fork and add it back to the sauce. When you reheat it, add enough beef
stock to make a pasta sauce consistency and then toss it with egg noodles.
Thanksgiving is almost hear as well, and I'm very excited about roasting a chicken
for the first time. If all goes well, you might just hear about it. If it doesn't,
just assume that I screwed it up royally.
In other news, Kathrine has finally gotten fed up with CRT televisions. Apparently
she is very susceptible to the 16kHz sound that most of them emit. So we decided we
need a LCD TV. Since they have gotten cheap recently, we decided that would be our
Christmas present. Of course then buy.com
decided to have a one day sale on exactly the model that I wanted. the final price
was $175 less than newegg.com. I
couldn't pass that up, so we went ahead and ordered it. I'm soon to have a HDTV,
and a life long dream will be fulfilled. This is the TV
that gets here on Friday.
I've also been playing quite a bit of PlayStation lately. I recently purchased both
Guitar Hero 2 and Bully. Both fun games. Although, I'm not sure I
like Guitar Hero 2 as much as I did the original. There are more songs this time
around, but I think I liked that last group of songs more. Plus it sure feels like
the easy and medium settings are less difficult this time around. I've got 100% of
notes hit on almost every song on easy, and five stars on almost every song on
medium. But, the hard setting seems much harder this time around. The jump seems
to be dramatic. Bully is super fun. I think I might like it more than the GTA
games. The story line is fun and the NPC's are much cooler than anything in GTA.
You know a games is good when it makes mowing the lawn and serving detention fun.