Easy Peasy

Easy Peasy Beef Stew

Well, I promise this isn't turning into a recipe blog, but my main writing topic is very under the weather and we haven't done anything worth photographing or even mentioning, unless of course you are into boogers and Barney.

I adapted this recipe from my Mother in Law's recipe. It was already a delicious and easy one but I thought I'd give it a try in the crock-pot, and boy does that make everything easier!

Here goes:

1 64oz. bottle of V8 Juice

1 24oz. Veg-All canned veggies (I used a smaller can and added baby carrots, chopped celery and onions that I had previously chopped and froze, and a potato.)

1 pkg. Lipton Onion Soup Mix or McCormick's Beef Stew mix

2 lbs. beef stew meat

Throw it all in the crock-pot for 4 hours on high or 8 on low. Ta-da! Now if you want to go even further in the easy category you should invest in these:

There was a coupon in last week's SS for $1.00 off making these $.92 a box. With 4 in a box, that means it only costs 23 cents not to do the dishes! Well worth it if you ask me! And to get over the guilt factor from adding more trash that's not recyclable, I am investing in these:

You can order these on Etsy here. What a great idea! I LOVE my Swiffer, but hate throwing away the mop part every time. Since I won't be throwing out my mop heads, I think the net effect from the liners will be zero.

Too Much Basil??

I'll show you my garden in another post, but let's just say my thumb is much greener than I ever expected. I "gave up" on my garden in the middle of the summer. With 100+ degree weather and being newly preggo, there was just no way I was going to stand in that heat to water my plants. I thought surely they would all just die and I wouldn't have to worry about them. Well, my basil showed me...

Yea, that's all basil, and it is not a plant that comes back every year. I had started a lot of seeds expecting most of them to die, but no such luck. What are you supposed to do with all of that basil?

Make Pesto! It was actually much easier that I expected and you only need three ingredients. First, clip some basil. You are going to need two cups packed down which starts off looking like a ton.

Then wash, dry and pick all the leaves off the stems. Combine the leaves with 1/2 cup olive oil and 1/3 cup pine nuts in your food processor. (I used my mini one and had to split the amounts in half.)

Since it makes so much, I busted out AG's baby food kit and put it in the compartments to freeze. Then all you have to do is pop one out and melt on your pasta or salmon and add some parmesan cheese.

Ta da! If you have a picky husband, I recommend not showing him the sauce at this stage. Wait until it's actually in the pasta or he may not want to try it.