Dawn Brocco's Life & Design Blog

I made that beef stew last night from the leftover sirloin roast. Which is a good thing, as hubby has a friend coming to visit sometime this weekend, up from Florida, and I have 2 showings so far for tomorrow and 1 so far for Sunday, so cooking for me is OUT!

Onions, carrots, celery, then later 5 cloves sliced garlic, sauteed in olive oil and butter, then a large can of diced tomatoes, 4 cups beef broth (low salt, naturally!), diced leftover roast, of which there was plenty still remaining, salt, pepper, 2 bay leaves, a little rosemary, some basil, oregano, bring to boil, then lid on and simmer 1 hour.

I then cooked some pastina and the remains of my homemade egg noodles, which I broke into smaller pieces and tossed all that in along with 1/2 - 1 lb green beans. Didn't have enough noodles by themselves. Simmer more, then I made a small roux of butter and flour and thickened the stew.

The only thing I didn't have was some red wine for it. But I did stir in the remains of the gravy I had made for the roast. It was still perfectly good so I saw no reason to let it go to waste.

It all made a big pot of stew, which should get us through the weekend.

But damn and blast, I do need to get a couple loaves of oatmeal bread baked again, as I swapped a loaf and a carrot/apple cake with my daughter for some face moisturizer she didn't like but I could use. And some cookies wouldn't go amiss with the company coming.

I really, I mean really, gotta get back to my designing and knitting. I've been on sabbatical too long already. Especially after finishing up my taxes, and being faced with the cold hard facts that are numbers.

As much fun as I've had cooking and baking and posting about it, it doesn't pay the bills. If only. And that book I'm writing is only inching along.

I'm not feeling the love yet, but hopefully it will well up again, once I knit more. It seems as if it hardly matters *what* I do as long as it's something creative. I'm not overly attached to any particular creative activity. Though I think my garden has the most tugs on my heart, at least until every August, when the heat wears me down, and I begin to wonder why I insist on doing something that necessitates trudging 300 yards and back to a few piles of dirt and weeds in the hot sun.

But it's not August. It's January, and the seed catalogs sit here in their full-color glory, beckoning all the hopeful and dreamers, aka gardeners, to place their seed orders, whilst envisioning their most perfect garden!

"In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death." ~Sam Llewelyn

But this one nails the work involved:
"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

This just in - change of plans, company next weekend, whew! So, maybe I'll get some knitting done after the showings. Bread rising as I write.