Recipe modified by You Want Me to Cook? – April 28, 2011
Maybe it’s time I tell everyone how I come up with blog posts and dishes.
I have literally thousands of recipes to choose from. I try to pick recipes from the most current magazines I have and then will dig through my recipe archives if I can’t find anything that tickles my fancy. Honestly, I go a lot by what sounds good to me at the moment I’m creating my menu for the week. I’ve tried to keep track of everything I’ve made recently, but that just adds a lot of time to the process… time I’d rather spend writing and cooking.
When I cook, I follow my rules: clean my cabinets, empty the sink, pull out the ingredients and equipment. Then I take pictures of everything (and now take pictures of all the nutritional information labels as well) and write down any changes to ingredients and any supplemental equipment I need (or feel I need) for the recipe. Finally, I break down the recipe on a marker board so I can take notes and pictures while I’m cooking. When I’m all done, I take pictures of the finished product, write down all of the notes from the marker board and make detailed notes about the mess I’ve created, taste of the dish and what I would change, if anything.
The reason I felt the need to point this out to all of you is because I realized I’ve made this particular dish, I don’t know, probably 5 or 6 times this year. It is from different sources and the recipes all have their own little tweak, but the Swiss steak / beef stew / creamy beef and noodles seems to be ever present in my cooking rotation. I sat down and really thought about why and it is probably for the following reasons:
- Slow cooking rules… minimal cooking and perfectly cooked beef.
- Tomatoes and mushrooms are abundant in these recipes and this girl LOVES her tomatoes and mushrooms.
- I can serve it with noodles or potatoes to mix up the leftovers.
I guess it just looks tasty and I get drawn to the stewed beef like a bug to a light.
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| © You Want Me to Cook? Slow Cooker Mushroom Swiss Steak and Gravy |
I’m torn by my finished product. On one hand, it is so gravy-licious and you can tell the meat is perfectly cooked (meaning falling apart) but is also looks very messy and like it is missing something. Of course it is – egg noodles. One day I will learn to compare the picture with the recipe to the ingredient listing.
