beef steak

A couple of months ago, our coffee group friend Ruth had a beast killed from their small farmlet. Just as she was about to leave for Christchurch, baby in the car and three year old all set to go, the butcher turned up with 14 banana boxes of meat, only a portion of which would fit in her freezer. So she had a problem and never has it been easier to help her solve it. Another coffee group friend (you know, the kind you set up when you have small babies and then you help each other through very little sleep and lots of parenting challenges for years afterwards -very wonderful) acted as a distribution point and we all got some wonderful meat. Apparently the meat was a bit tough, according to the butcher, so tonight I turned the sirloin steak into a casserole.

Some steak
some portabello mushrooms
one onion, chopped.
some garlic, chopped.
bay leaves and thyme
big squirt of tomato paste
slosh of red wine
slosh of say sauce
some water

cook 160 censius for 90 minutes. Run round town doing errands like spending almost $300 on glasses for Fionn. Devoted parenthood not cheap.
come home for ten minutes as husband still at pub with fresh pint in front of him, feed chooks, light fire, cut fruit for children, cut and wash and chop silverbeet and put in casserole and turn down to 150. Go back to pub, husband ready, back home.
Realise there are no coloured veges and no starch. Find soba noodles in back of cupboard which cook fast. Chop a large carrot up to serve raw. All on the table with hardly a raised voice, not necessarily the norm.

Kid test: Fionn loved the soba noodles and the sauce. Puddled with the actual meat. Brighid ate the carrots and played with the noodles and declared the sauce yucky.

Price/Fallon test: Good I think. Garlic, herbs, onion all with merits and she likes meat as well. Fallon cooks most things for so many hours I wonder if it is a competition. Ninety minutes was enough for tonight.

The wine was a timing boon. At school pickup I forgot about our friend J who comes to our place on Fridays. Luckily he found us before I drove off home altogether. Most undeservingly, his Dad gave me a bottle of red wine just as I was about to put the alcohol-free casserole in the oven. So it got the slosh just in time.

I thought the mushrooms tasted fantastic. I'm tempted to make another casserole with mushrooms and similar sauce but without the meat.

Today I made caraway rye bread which is a good sign of some settledness returning to our mad household. I call it the home made bread index. It takes very little hands-on time the way I make it, but requires a certain calmness to remember to add the ingredients and cook it across 2-3 days.

Apparently it is mothers' day on Sunday. I have said that I would like Favourite Handyman and Fionn to do all the cooking that day. Fionn is keen to make me breakfast in bed. He was also keen to go out for bought breakfast like last year, but Mrs Budgeter put the kybosh on that one.

Comments

Sharonnz said…
I love how you are keeping a record of what your kids like/don't like. I'm not game enough to do that. Things are pretty dire in the food stakes with my youngest eater and I'm sure it would drive me over the edge to record it;-)

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