Recipe: Sweet Potato & Beef Stew

Here's the thing - I'm not usually a huge fan of your standard beef stew. It's okay, but the flavor combination never enthuses me. So I set off a couple of days ago to do something different. And I did - it is still stew and has many of the qualities of stew that we all know and love. But the flavors are new, to me anyway.

Sweet Potato & Beef Stew with Caramelized Onions

2 onions
1/2 stick of butter
4 cloves of garlic
1 pound stew meat (or chuck cut into cubes)
1/2 cup flour
1 leek
1 large parsnip
2 sweet potatoes or yams
4 cups beef broth
2 bay leaves
Rosemary, salt & pepper to taste

I used my slow cooker for this, but it should be easily adaptable to stove top.

Night before: slice the 2 onions and toss into the slow cooker with the butter. Set on low for 8 hours. Wake up to Caramelized Onions. This is a good thing.

In the mid-morning: cube parsnip, sweet potatoes, and slice leeks. Mince the garlic. Dredge the stew meat in flour and brown in a skillet with the garlic. Place veggies, meat, herbs, and beef broth in the slow cooker. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve with crusty bead and salad.

No Liver N' Onions For Me...

I really don't like liver. In fact, I refuse to eat it. There is something in the texture and flavor that I can't force myself through. Foods like that make me crazy, because I have very few foods I just don't like. Most things I can eat and even enjoy.

But liver is good for me - I know that as a nursing mom my body needs the iron and vitamin D in liver. Add to that the fact that I buy our meat in sides, split with friends, so I get half a cow liver once a year. That's a lot of liver. And so I have to eat liver. Somehow.

Wonder of wonders! This year I have figured it out. On recommendation of my midwife I have been grinding my liver, a quarter-pound at a time, into our ground beef. It takes a few minutes. You can't taste the liver, can't even tell that it is there. If anything, the beef is even tastier for the deeper flavor the liver imparts. And it bulks up a pound of ground nicely, just making those burgers a little bigger.

Maybe someday I will learn to love liver for its own sake, but for now I am just glad I found a way to get it in our diet.