Pot Roast

I love a good pot roast. Flavorful roast beef cooked with veggies until the meat falls apart and the potatoes and carrots are full of the beefy juices.

 Leftovers turned into a hash for dinner the next night and roast beef sandwiches for lunches. Yum!

 This past week, I found some boneless chuck on sale. The ad said ‘7 bone.’ But the meat cutters removed it. Damn. Love them bones! I forgot the freeze my last batch of $.99 ribs (I know, wasteful) and they went bad; really, really bad. I cooked up the roast, boneless, and we did pig out!

Hamburger Gravy over Mashed Potatoes

One of the best dishes our school cafeterias put out was Hamburger Gravy over Mashed Potatoes. They served it with sauerkraut. Hey, it was still the ‘50’s/’60’s and people are differently then.

We were allowed to eat one ‘hot lunch’ a week. Otherwise, Mom made us cold lunches. At first she sent milk in a thermos but we liked buying our milk. I guess it made us feel more independent. Or maybe we were embarrassed to be one of the few who brought milk from home. I remember milk was $.03 a day.
My favorite ‘hot lunch’ was HGoMP. When we tried to get Mom to make it at home, she never got it right. She always made . Sometimes she would crumble a hamburger patty into the gravy.
So I took over and got it right through trial and error.

$.99 Ribs and No Barbeque Sauce in Sight

I found beef ribs for $.99 a pound! So a bought a couple of racks. We’ll cut one rack in half for two meals. The other rack will be put to other uses.

One of the things that I don’t like about modern meat counters is the lack of bone-in meats. The bone and marrow give a lot of flavor to meat. The Victorians enjoyed eating ‘marrow bones’ (the long leg bones of bovine) so much they had silver long handled ‘marrow spoons’ as part of their silver sets. (The spoons look similar to ‘ice tea; spoons.)
I find I miss the boney flavor in a roast beef or in swiss steak. Thus the reason I bought the ribs. They give off the boney/marrowy flavor to roasts, stewed or braised meats. I feel that the best beef stock comes from using bones along with the meat.
I cut the ribs into individual ribs and freeze them on a cookie sheet. When they are frozen, about four hours, I drop them into gallon zip bags so I can pull them out as needed.

Soups, Gravies, Stocks, Broths, Oh My!

Our dinner (Mom and Dad called it 'supper.'  "How old-fashioned," I thought in the first grade.) was meat, potatoes, gravy, a hot vegetable, and a fresh vegetable, 95% of the time.  The other 5% was chili, soup, stew, spaghetti or barbequed ribs (Mom's recipe from the green cookbook, I'll post that later.)   I remmeber standing at Mom's or Dad's elbow while they removed the meat from the frypan, added a little more Crisco to melt, stirred in the flour, let it brown, added lots of milk to make a pan gravy.  As a kid I didn't like pan gravy.  Sometime around puberty I found I loved pan gravy.  I have always loved a good roast gravy.  Mom made hers with cornstarch and so do I.
I guess here is a spot to explain how I grew up with plain cooking.  Dad doesn't like spices or herbs in his food.  (He got kicked out of a nursing home when he broke his hip, last Christmas, because he caused a mutiny over the food.  No lie.  They put basil in the tomato soup!)  He loves meat, potato, gravy, a veg, bread, and butter.  When we had spaghetti, we cooked him a hamburger patty and a boiled potato.  Mom served her barbeque short ribs with rice.  We cooked Dad a boiled potato.  The only casseroles we had were scalloped potatoes and mac & cheese.  At the same meal.  He has loosened up since he married Dorthy.  He still will not eat lamb, mutton, goose, or rabbit.  I'll tell you some of his goose and rabbit stories later.