Recipe time!

It occurs to me that I do a lot of cooking. It further occurred to me that I do a lot more griping about cooking than I do talking about cooking, and so I thought I would try to rectify that. I actually enjoy making meals, when I plan ahead. I have a couple of hard and fast rules about cooking - but literally only a couple. I don't use fake sugars, and I don't use monosodium glutamate. That's it. I also tend to be pretty approximate in my cooking, though that's a more recent trend. I used to stress about getting exactly a tablespoon of that or a pound of that, but now? Eh, whatever. Every recipe I have and use often has what I think of as "fudge" points - if I don't have this, I can substitute that, if I don't have enough of that, I can throw in the other thing. That sort of stuff. I'm sure this is all old-hat to cooking experts, but it took me a long time to figure this stuff out. I thought maybe I'd start posting some recipes of my favorite dishes (and not just my favorites - the stuff I make that other people go "wow yum! I want that again!" I've done more cooking for large groups than I ever imagined I would a few years ago).

Tonight's dinner is 5 Hour No-Peek Beef Stew, a variation on a recipe my stepmom gave me when Todd and I first moved in together. This recipe is great because you can prepare most of it early, then come home on your lunch hour, dump stuff together, put it in the oven, and return to a tasty dinner and a yummy smelling house five hours later.

( Recipe within! )