The Remains of the Freezer Recipe – Beef Stew

Hello, my beautiful followers! Thank you for taking this journey with me. I haven’t posted a recipe in a while, and thought I’d share what’s been going on in our little piece of the world!

I have discovered that I do not like to run low on food…like ever. This led to stockpiles of ingredients in our old house because I had a large freezer. I rarely let it run low. I liked to have choices.

Now that we have a much reduced freezer space in our apartment, I have had to figure this out. It’s painful for me because, I never realized how much it stressed me out not to have those choices.

You see, as a child, my family was very poor. My mom rarely planned meals and, though the freezer was somewhat full, I still was afraid we wouldn’t have enough to eat. She never seemed to make enough to fill me up (or I didn’t like it enough to take seconds, not to mention the dirty looks and comments made if I did!) and I was encouraged to fill up with bread and butter. I had no idea that I had celiac disease and that the bread was making me so sick.

So, when I grew up and had my own household, I made sure there was enough and we even had leftovers sometimes. It was pretty novel for me. I was free to eat the good stuff.

What we are doing this week and until I visit the food pantry next weekend, is use whatever we have in the apartment. This has brought up all kinds of long-buried trauma that I am working through, but it has also been good knowing that no food is going to waste. I made my dinner schedule and we are not buying any extras, except possibly baking powder and xanthan gum, which we realized we were pretty much out of recently.

One of the things in the freezer was about a pound and a half of thin-sliced chuck steak. I threw it in the gf cooking sprayed crockpot mostly frozen (only defrosted enough to get the paper piece on the back that is used to suck up the juices!) To this I added a 1/2 tsp. of salt, 1/4 tsp. of ground black pepper, and 2 tsp. granulated onion. Next, I diced a medium onion and added that. After that it was the 1/4 lb. bag of baby carrots (I would have used more, but we didn’t have any! At least that’s what I thought until I found them the day after the stew!) Next I added five scrubbed medium red potatoes, cut in half. A 14 oz. can of diced tomatoes with the juice went in next and then 1/2 cup of water. I covered and cooked it for 9 hours. Delicious! And all from the remains of the freezer.

I just love it when I can come home from work and be greeted with the smell of a home cooked meal that I can serve without any extra work! I mean, honestly! Home many of you want to stand at a hot stove and cook? No me! I’ll take easy any day! I can also rest easy qqknowing that I have prepared a healthy meal for my family.