February 28th

I haven't been sticking to the menu very well over the last couple of weeks because I just couldn't seem to get to the grocery store. Between appointments and illness I kept putting it off. I got to the point that I was piecing meals together and not getting really great results so I had to go. I finally made it to Giant Eagle last week. I once again filled the cart and managed to cover dinner for 3-4 weeks. I stocked up on cereal and a few other things too. I managed to save about $90 between sales, coupons and foodperks.

Monday the 28th I made a Beef Stew recipe that I found on a message board. It was a bad Monday and I forgot to get the meat out so I had to try to thaw it with enough time to get dinner cooked. I opted to buy a Sirloin Tip roast and cut it up instead of spending several dollars more for "stew meat".

I opted to deglaze with broth instead of red wine because I didn't want to open a whole bottle of it for such a small amount. Since I'm so new to this learning to cook thing I didn't even know what deglazing meant. I had to text message a friend of mine who is an awesome cook and ask her how to do that. Boy did I feel stupid. What I would do differently next time is to just put this all in the crockpot and cook it for several hours. I don't feel like the meat, potatoes or carrots were tender enough for my taste. I also prefer a thick beef stew and although this recipe was titled "Thick and Hearty Beef Stew" I didn't think it was thick enough. I wonder if I had left in the crockpot for a while if it would have thickened up.

Here's the recipe:

1/4 cup flour

2 pounds beef stew meat, cubed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup red wine

4 cups beef broth

1 teaspoon dried parsley

salt and pepper to taste

3 large potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks

4 or 5 large carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

9 or 10 cremini mushrooms, cut into quarters (I didn't do this part. We're not mushroom people)

1 large onion, roughly chopped

1/2 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

1 1/2 tablespoons ketchup

1 tablespoon A-1 steak sauce

Toss the beef and flour in a bowl until the beef is coated. Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat; add the beef and cook until nicely browned. Set aside.

Deglaze pot with red wine, scraping up the brown bits from the bottom of the pot. Pour in the beef broth and add in the beef, parsley, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer 1 hour.

Stir in potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, onion, Worcestershire, ketchup and A-1. Cover and simmer 1 hour more.

Hubby and the kids liked it. I wasn't a huge fan.