Beef Stew

Sundays are usually so hectic at my house. I have to get up early to snag my newspapers (for my coupons of course), get home, get the kids fed & ready for church. Then it is time to eat lunch & get on our way to the church building... & of course I somehow have to find time between all of that to go through the new sales ads for the week & flip through the coupons. Church is three hours and by the time I get home I just want to relax with my family before my husband is back to working early mornings and long days for Uncle Sam. That is why Sunday is OFFICIALLY (well... sometimes unofficially) Slow Cooker Sunday.

I love my slow cooker because I can throw an assortment of items in there, set it on low, live my life, and come back to a delicious meal ready for my family with little effort. Tonight's meal: beef stew (a favorite of my husband).

Ingredients:

1 lb beef, cubed (I usually buy pork roasts whenever I find a cheap sale & divide up my meat before they hit the freezer)

3 medium carrots, cleaned and chopped in large

3 celery stocks, leaves removed

3 red potatoes (I used russet because that is what we had, my son insisted on four so we just went with it)

1 medium onion, quartered (again, I used what was on-hand,half of a very large onion)

salt & pepper

1 can cream of mushroom (optional; or cream of chicken, you can also use 2 cups of homemade creamed soup)

1 Lipton onion soup mix packet (or 5 TBSP of your own homemade onion soup mixture)

1. Quarter the potatoes and put them in the bottom of your pot. Salt and pepper them (about 1/2 tsp each).

2. Add onion, celery, and carrots & salt and pepper (about 1/2 tsp each). I don't skin my carrots for this recipe. I just give them a very good scrub, everything gets tender in the slow cooker.

3. Add the beef on top of everything (I do defrost it first) and sprinkle with the onion soup mix. Cover and cook on low for eight hours (you can cook on high four hours but it tastes better the longer and slower it cooks).

SIDENOTE: I'm very particular about how I layer the ingredients in the pot. After cooking this meal SEVERAL times I feel like this makes all the ingredients their best. The potatoes are moist and tender because they sit in the liquids dripping down from the meat and the sweating veggies, slowly infusing them (with DELICIOUSNESS). The vegetables are sitting on top of the potatoes, creating a steamy environment that keeps them slightly crisp (I hate mushy veggies) but not mushy. The meat is well-seasoned by the soup mix. Perfection.

You can simply serve it this way or stir in your creamed soup.

Enjoy.