First Drafts and Granny Style Veggie Soup

The sequel to this fantastic novel is almost done.
Also you can buy this one on Amazon. . . ;-)

Well the good news is that nearly 10,000 words later I've finished the first draft of The Diary's Zombie. Bad news is that I've already erased two and a half chapters because I'm a cranky diva author who wasn't happy with what he wrote. But technically, the first draft is done and I'm to the hard work of editing my new novel!

In other fun news, it's raining again. That sort of really crappy misting that soaking everything and coming down in a nice 45 degree angle. It's cold. It's windy. It's acting like it's Autumn and I'm having to break out my heavy wool pea-coat already (I'll need to get a picture of me wearing it sooner than later, it was much too warm last winter to need it).

Last week my wonderful Granny made me some of her homemade veggie soup last week for helping her finish up a huge garden project at her house. Eating the last bowl of it this morning, I realize that not enough people make these wonderful soups, they are cheap and very filling if you do it right. I'm using prepackaged frozen veggies from my local supermercado to save some prep time.

This is a very easy recipe to double in a larger slow cooker if you need to feed more people, and the ingredients are relatively cheap so you can feed a slew of people for cheap. I tend to eat this meal with either a good crusty bread to soak up the broth, or with far too many oyster crackers.

Granny's Veggie Soup Recipe

Tools:
skillet
2-3 quart slow cooker
spoon you can use in the skillet

Ingredients:
1/2 to 1 lb of stew beef
1 package of froze soup veggies (about 1 lb, mine comes from Kroger with a huge mixture of veggies including corn, green beans, onion, carrot, potato, etc. just get the veggies you like)
1 cup of shredded cabbage
1/4th cup of lentils
2 cups of tomato juice
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp cracked black pepper
2 tbsp of parsley
1 tbsp of oregano
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp Tabasco sauce
water

Another awesome slow cooker recipe for the fall, this is another really easy dish. Get your slow cooker out and set it on low. While the slow cooker is warming up, take your skillet and get it hot on the stove top on medium high heat, we are going to seer the stew beef. Seering is when you quickly cook the surface of any meat, adding in wonderful flavors as you caramelize the sugars at the surface of the meat. Once the pan is hot, add in the oil, moving it around with your spoon to get warm. This should only take ten seconds or so on a hot pan.

Add the meat to the pan, you want to hear a sizzle when the meat strikes the pan. Don't play with it too much, you want to give it time to get a nice crust on one side. Quickly turn it once, and take the entire skillet off of the heat. Add the meat into the slow cooker. While the pan is still hot, you will want to get all those wonderful flavors off the pan that could be trapped due to heat. Add a small amount of water (about 1/4th a cup) and swish it around the pan. You will hear it sizzle as all those good bits release from the pan. Add this directly to the slow cooker.

At this point you'll just want to add everything in the ingredient's list to the slow cooker. Once all the main ingredients are in the pot, add in water to within half an inch of the top. Close the lid and leave it alone for 8-12 hours, adding water when it gets too low (I try to keep it within half an inch of the top, this is a soup after all).

Variation!

If you don't want to use a prepackaged mixture I have a general sense of what you need for a successful pot. I will chop up one medium to large red potato, one stalk of celery, one small onion, one large carrot, two ocra pods, a quarter can of green beans, a quarter can of corn, and a quarter can of lima beans. As you can imagine, the single bag of veggies is much cheaper, but if you have the ingredients fresh, you can use them.

Bien Camino!