Cleaning Out the Refrigerator

 Hi everyone.

This week for Food Wednesday  over at  Kathy's blog (Hummingbird Studio at the Lake) I have a lousy photo of a cooking experiment that turned out delicious. 

It started when I was searching the freezer for something for dinner, and I found a package of stewing beef pieces. I love beef stew, but I really wasn't feeling anything stew or soup like. Then I remembered how my mother used to use stew beef pieces and mash potatoes to make a meal you could put on the plate and eat with a fork.

My mother's cooking was good, but not anything to get excited about.  She never really enjoyed cooking, but like me, she would much rather bake. (And when she did bake, it was delicious.) To be fair, my mom worked full time, and as many of you probably know, after coming home from a long day at work, who really feels like putting on a big spread for dinner?

My husband's tastes never matched my Dad's, which was who my mother claimed she cooked for, so I decided to take her food idea and make it my own. 

As an aside: Now my grandmother (my mother's mom) was a great cook, and I know I got my interest in trying new recipes from spending time with her. Funny, my mom said she cooked how my dad liked his food, but my grandmother used to say that my father was her new recipe guinea pig. She would always bring a container of something she had tried down to our house, and usually it was something my mother would never make. And my dad would always love whatever it was.  Hmm. Makes me wonder if my mom was really cooking for my dad or just saying she was. 

Here's what I made last week:

I took my package of stewing beef and browned it in a Dutch oven. Then I hit the frig to see what I had. I added 2 thinly sliced onions, a couple of cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, some carrots and a big spoonful of Hatch chiles.

This is a jar of Hatch chilies I bought at Costco, but I have also found them in small cans at Trader Joe's. I'm sure you can get them other places also. If you're not familiar with them, Hatch chilies are from New Mexico and are a variety grown originally by some of the Pueblo people and later by the Spanish population. They are zesty and you can taste them, but they're not really hot.

Once the meat was browned and the veggies soft, I added a 15 ounce can of tomato sauce. I used the whole can but probably 1/2- 3/4 of the can would have worked and not left so much remaining sauce in the pot. I also added  1/3 of a bottle of wine that was left on my kitchen counter, 4 big shakes of Worcestershire sauce and some dried parsley.  Once that was heated, I covered it and put it in the oven for a couple of hours to simmer until it was dinner time.

Of course I forgot to take a photo of my meal, but I did remember to take a photo of the remains in the pot. There is  enough for one more meal, but more sauce than that, so the meat and veggies are lost in the sauce. This sauce could be used as a pasta sauce though, which would have a slightly different taste than the usual red sauce but still be good.

You may have made or had something like this, and there may be a name for this. I'm not familiar with one though, so I will stick with my "Cleaning Out the Refrigerator" name until I hear differently.

Have a great week of food. And as always, thanks for visiting my blog.