Since the last few days have been on the crazy cold, wet and windy side I decided that tonight I wanted to make something hearty and thick and filling.  The result was my very first “stick to your ribs” stew.

Basically what I did was buy a couple of “beef stew” spice packets and follow the directions on the back.  Basically.  I used a pound and a half of stew meat, two packets of beef stew spices and then a crap ton of veggies and potatoes.  Mmmm.  Spuds.  I also only used four and a half cups of water which created this great gravy for me to dip my bread into after I fished eating the “body” of the stew.  Tonight my bread was a hamburger bun because I forgot to get better bread when I was at the store (after I searched all over for bread bowls I got distracted by the super awesome potato sale and forgot about getting any sort of thick rolls to go with the stew).

My stew/pot roast veggie collection is pretty standard: potatoes, carrots, celery and an onion.  Will has asked a few times that I add some variety to the veggies but I’m not sure where to start.  I wandered through the produce section at Fred Meyer this afternoon looking at all of the different vegetables and thinking “radishes? good idea? bad idea?  green beans? yes? no?  peppers? yay? nay?”  and in the end stuck with what I know.  I am contemplating tossing in some chunks of red and green pepper next time.

Have I mentioned that I’m falling a little bit in love with red and green peppers?  The more I use them the more I like them, which means that pretty soon I’ll be adding peppers to everything just to see how the taste will change.

In other news I spent the last couple of days doing laundry and today I discovered that Will’s super thick Columbia Sportswear pants do not lend themselves nicely to ironing.  Martha Stewart says that it is best to iron stuff while it is still a little bit damp so I decided to iron Will’s pants today after I pulled them out of the washer instead of just tossing them into the dryer or hanging them up to air dry and then ironing them later.  I was so smug.  I was all “look at me! I’m thinking ahead!  I am an ironing rock star!”

I should never think so highly of myself because? It only leads to disaster.  I spent almost an hour trying to iron the creases out of the Columbia Sportswear pants and you know what?  I think I ironed more creases into those mofos than out of them.  I finally gave up and decided to just let them air dry the rest of the way.  Will said he doesn’t care of those pants are wrinkly anyway since they aren’t really for dressing up.  His dress pants, however, were perfectly ironed in a matter of minutes…and then smashed into the closet with the rest of the clothes so I’ll probably just have to iron them again anyway.

Oh well, it’s good practice right?

So: what is your favorite stew for cold wintry nights?