Reviews are coming in...

Wow, ok - so in the past few weeks we've all begun to sample our freezer/crock-pot meals and I think it's safe to say some are better than others. Disclaimer* our crock pots vary, as do the hours these babies cook while we are at work as well as how we serve the dishes. I'm going to start the reviews with the Chunky Beef Stew since Shawn & I just had this tonight. We enjoyed this meal and so did one of our other "chefs".  Now as I mentioned in a previous post that we like to cook, we like to add a twist to conventional fare and experiment in the kitchen.

This morning I placed the beef stew slush in the crock pot. A little background on this particular crock pot - it is straight from my mother in law's kitchen circa 1975. The stew cooked on low from about 8AM - 6:30PM (all of these recipes call for cooking on low 6-8 hrs). The stew was runny when I got home but the potatoes were cooked through. "P" had issues with the potatoes being a little tough so make sure when preparing you cut them thick enough that they won't disintegrate but small enough that they will fully cook. The original recipe didn't give any direction on the potatoes. I added the stew to a pot on the stove and thickened with cornstarch/beef broth. I will mention that I also removed the potatoes. These crock pot meals have needed some sprucing up, we've tried a few and none have really impressed. One way I can ALWAYS get the hubs to eat foods is to make mashed potatoes with the meal...I also feel like I'm kind of contractually obligated to make mashed potatoes for Shawn once a month since he got me the kitchen aid diva mixer for Christmas ;). Cooking Light mag inspired us to add some sautéed kale and green onion to our redskin mashed potatoes (NF organic milk/butter/salt).

Our meal was delish! I really liked the flavor of the stew, we both did, the tomato base with the spices worked well and the kale mashed potatoes finished it perfectly. There may be no serving beef stew without them in my future. The best part - plenty of leftovers so I get at least one night off this week. Attaching a photo if the recipe from whoneedsacape.com and a photo of our creation which will go into the recipe box. This recipe was made even simpler by buying pre cut stew meat from my
favorite discount grocer. We also did not brown the meat prior to packaging - just kind of threw everything in the freezer bags! Win!