At Home and Cooking..

There's no one to take care of little Tara today so I had to take a day off.

And knowing that we both will be grounded because of her chicken pox, I bought some groceries yesterday for my meals. I had this craving for beef stew, so I bought some beef and onions. It's a good chance for me to clear the carrots and potatoes my MIL left behind.

I only tried cooking beef stew once, and following a recipe I pulled off from the internet. So I can't remember what are the ingredients I need to get. Anyway, I tried to get a basic beef stew recipe this morning and found there's still quite a few stuff that I lack. Like I mentioned, I'm grounded, I can't even bring her to the provision shop down my block, so I thought, I'll just make do with what I have and pray for the best.

I had to substitute a couple of ingredients. I used potato flour instead of wheat flour, fresh tomatoes and get this, tomato ketchup, instead of tomato puree. Chicken stock instead of beef stock. And china potatoes instead of small potatoes. I don't have sage leaves, some other herbs and celery. And I thought, hmmz, it will be quite a task to get a decent meat stew.

When I started cooking the onions with the butter, Tara stood beside me and kept saying how nice the smell is. She kept telling me she wanted to eat.

After an hour, my stew was done. And I would say it's pretty decent. And I'm really surprised that the ketchup really brought out the taste of the stew. And the flank steak wasn't tough at all. It's so easy to prepare. I sms Bob to tell him that I will cook beef stew for him when he's back. He's been asking for it for eons, but I didn't dare try after my 1st attempt, which was quite near to disaster.

I even cooked the butter and herb rice I bought some time back. And also stir fried some mushrooms to make the meal complete.

Here's my lunch:




The butter rice was too salty, even though I followed the instructions on the box and added the right amount of water, it tasted like I added a packet of salt! I even added almost twice the amount required but still it was too salty.. I don't think I will ever buy it again. And I really love the stir fried mushrooms. Just some garlic, butter and salt and it will taste fantastic!

Anyway, Bob replied my sms just now. He said "Good! Can add oxtail?".