A Roast in Every Pot

Tomorrow we're serving beef stew to about 20 of our friends. I chose beef stew for the menu for a reason; I had a couple of pot roasts in the freezer that I'm sacrificing for the cause. Sometimes when I make stew for just the two of us I start from scratch, but usually I use leftover pot roast. This time I used my regular pot roast recipe and chopped the meat into bite-sized pieces after it was cooked. Tomorrow I'll do the vegetables and put everything together for the stew.

Here's how I fix pot roast. The red wine tenderizes the meat, adds flavor, and cuts some of the grease.


Pot Roast with Red Wine and Mushrooms

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds pot roast
1 cup dry red wine
1 cup beef stock or bouillon
1/2 pound chopped fresh mushrooms
3 crushed garlic cloves
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a stockpot until smoking. Brown the meat on all sides. Add the wine and simmer until it's reduced by half. Add the beef stock and cover the pot; simmer for an hour. Then add the mushrooms and garlic. Cover and simmer until the meat is very tender (this will usually take 30-60 minutes). Taste the stock after 15-20 minutes and add salt and pepper as desired.

Remove the pot roast and carve it. Either reduce the cooking liquid and serve on the side or use it as the base for gravy.

“Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.” ~Diane Ackerman

Didn't Get What You Wanted For Christmas?

If the emails I've been getting are any indication, the technology and electronics manufacturers and retailers didn't sell as many high-tech toys as they had hoped over the holiday season.  Many of them are offering pretty deep discounts to unload their excess stock.  The most interesting email I received about tech gadgets, though, came from my boss.  He sent me a link to an article on Mashable entitled 80+ Terrific Tech and Gadgets Resources From 2010.  Here are some of the most unusual items:

• A USB flash drive that looks like a piece of sushi.  Comes in several different "flavors;"
• Winter gloves that allow you to operate your touchscreen phone without removing them;
• Earmuffs with built-in earphones for outdoor listening pleasure in the wintertime;
• Custom-knit laptop sleeves;
• A GPS dog locator for those whose furry friends like to wander; and,
• For the bride who already has everything else, an illuminated wedding dress.

Too bad I didn't find out about all these gadgets before Christmas; my Dad would have loved the Moonwalker II Robot Kit.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  ~Arthur C. Clarke

Hand Over That Machete

Friends of ours normally throw open their house on New Year's Day and feed gumbo to everyone who shows up.  A good time is had by all.  This year, though, the combination of illness and house guests made them decide not to throw the usual bash.

In a normal year we would have hosted at least a couple of large parties ourselves by now - probably on or around our birthdays.  Unfortunately, my birthday is at the end of August, when we were at our lowest financial ebb this year, and Barry's birthday was in November when we were traveling, so we have been unusually unsociable.  As a result, Barry suggested that we take up the slack and throw a New Year's Day party ourselves.

Despite the short notice, many of our friends have said they're coming.  This means the hysterical preparation phase of entertaining has begun.  Fortunately (from my point of view, not his), my boss was ill today and texted me not to come to the office.  This freed me to spend the afternoon on yard work.

You might think a yard surfaced with gravel rather than grass wouldn't need much maintenance, but you'd be wrong.  Our homeowners' association mandates that our "desert landscaping" is crammed with miscellaneous trees, bushes, and ground cover plants that need to be fed, watered, and trimmed on a regular basis, and we're way behind on the trimming.  Our front yard in particular was well on the way to being a jungle rather than a desert.  Several hours and three giant bags of debris later, it looks pretty good.  Now if I'm really lucky, my boss will still be under the weather tomorrow and I can attack the shaggy queen palms and Mexican bird-of-paradise pseudo-hedge in the back yard.

I guess the best way to look at this is that I'm saving more money by not calling a landscaping service than I'm losing by not working for a couple of days, I'm getting a little extra exercise, and we won't have to trim anything again for three or four months.  I just hope I can finish the back yard without falling off a ladder or accidentally chopping off an important body part (mine or Barry's).

"What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. " ~Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1871

Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

Well, it finally happened.  The graphics card on my HP laptop is DOA.  The cooling pad I bought kept it alive for an extra 8 months, but the computer is still kaput a month short of its second birthday.  Considering that my dad just got rid of my first computer, which was 20 years old and had been in more or less constant use that entire time, this is pretty disgusting.

If this were a desktop machine I would just rip out the defective card and replace it myself, but no.  The card is soldered to the motherboard and the only way to get a new one is to send the whole computer to the manufacturer and have the motherboard replaced.  The shipping, handling, parts and labor would cost almost as much as a new laptop.  I also considered getting a bigger hard drive for my 6-year-old Dell laptop (that's what I'm typing this on), but it's really too slow and doesn't have enough memory to handle the graphics and website work I do now.

So, I spent the afternoon shopping online for a replacement.  Fortunately Dell is running a sale on the model I wanted to buy.  Even with a 30% discount the total was pretty painful, but I kept the price as low as possible by buying Microsoft Office and Adobe CS5 separately from a vendor offering deep academic discounts.  Good thing even part-time adjunct college instructors qualify for them.

My new laptop and software are supposed to arrive on January 3, almost like a late Christmas present - at least, they would be if I didn't have to pay for them myself.

“Experts agree that the best type of computer for your individual needs is one that comes on the market about two days after you actually purchase some other computer.”  ~ Dave Barry

Still Celebrating

It was a good Christmas. Although the futon was our main present to each other, Barry also bought me a big box of chocolate truffles and I got him the DVD for the fourth Shrek movie. We went to my cousin Stan's house for Christmas dinner with the other members of our family who live in the Phoenix area. This year we had ham with cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, tabouli salad and three kinds of pie. Last night, we watched A Christmas Story and the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol while snuggled on our new futon with popcorn and hot spiced apple cider.

But the holidays aren't over yet.  Tonight we're watching the Shrek movie while sampling the truffles.  Tomorrow my cousin Don from Oregon will be in town and we're having lunch with him, my parents, and my sister.  We have tickets for a formal dance on New Year's Eve and a black-and-white ball the following week. With luck, we can keep the holiday spirit alive until at least Valentine's Day.

I hope your Christmas was wonderful, too, and that you have a happy and prosperous New Year.

"One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day.  Don't clean it up too quickly."  ~Andy Rooney