Beef Stew

Thought I'd drop on a quick recipe while I'm at it. Nothing warms the belly on a cold night like beef stew. With Spring here, I wanted to make up a good stew one last time before Summer hits. The best part of stew is its adaptive nature. A stew is whatever you have on hand to throw in the pot that day. It can also be cooked just as easy in a campfire as it can be on the stove. A cast iron dutch oven can make the trip from one to the other easy. Throw in today's meat, veggies and greens and you're good to go. 


Here's this week's recipe for beef stew. 




1/2 to a whole onion chopped up
Baby carrots (what ever amount you want)
Green beans with ends removed (what ever amount you want)
Mushrooms (handful or whatever)
1 can tomato sauce
1-2 lbs. grass-fed beef (I like london broil for this)

• Put all the veggies in the dutch oven
• Season with basil, oregano, herbs de provence, salt and pepper. 
• Add the tomato sauce
• Cut meat into little cubes. 
• Sear the meat in a cast iron with oil until browned. (Work in batches, don't crowd the skillet).
• Add cooked meat to dutch oven.   
• Add water (or wine) to the cast iron to get brown bits up and add to dutch oven. 

• Cook at 325 for about an hour and a half

I always cook some sweet potatoes in the cast iron skillet while I'm waiting for the stew to finish. Then I throw them on as a last minute topper. You can add them in with the stew, but they tend to liquify in a stew, and i like the texture of the crunchy fried potato on top.

Enjoy!

Day Off

Today I had the day off, so I was able to get around to some things I'd been putting off as well as do a little carving. The spoon is coming along nicely. I've nearly finished shaping it. Now I just need to trim it down some more to make it a manageable size.

While I carved, I ate some leftover chicken legs from the other nights dinner. Not too shabby a lunch if I do say so.

Then I did some gear repairs. Anyone who knows me knows that I almost exclusively wear wool socks during the colder months. So after almost a season of wear I had a cheap pair blow out on me. No worries. Just a chance to practice my sewing skills. So today I did some repair work on the socks as well as a wool sweater I had torn out at the arm pit. For sewing and other repairs, I use bankline. It's waterproof and will hold up to almost anything. I've had a bankline bracelet on for over a year, and it is showing no signs of wear. Any man worth his salt should be able to sew and do it well. I've got a sewing kit in my office and my kit stocked with bankline. If you don't have any, I recommend you pick some up today. It's as versatile as it is tough. 

Pathfinder Store

What is Paleo?

The general idea of Paleo nutrition is that we remove all those foods which weren't eaten by our hunter/gatherer ancestors. This is done to achieve optimal health according to our evolutionary biology. This infographic should provide some specifics. The benefit is that eating this ways eliminates all processed and refined foods which have no place in our bodies. In essence, if you can't hunt it or gather it - don't eat it.