Beef Stew

Yesterday, I said that I would share my favorite beef stew recipe. Since fall is on the way, winter soon to follow, I'll be making this quite a few times. Believe it or not, I've had this recipe since I was in Home Economics class in 9th grade!!

So, here we go:

Ingredients:

About 2 pounds of stew beef cubes
1 small can of tomato soup
2 tablespoons of instant tapioca
1 slice of white bread, torn into somewhat cube shaped pieces (It really doesn't matter about the size--just tear it up!)
potatoes
carrots
onions
celery

Preheat the oven to 250 (yes, that's right--250). Mix together the tomato soup, 1 and 1/2 cans of water, the tapioca and the bread. Cut up the potatoes, carrots, onions and celery. You don't have to peel the potatoes if you don't want to. Me, I prefer not to peel potatoes!! I use however much of the veggies that I like--if you like more taters, use more taters!! If you like more onions or carrots, you can just use more of them. That's the beauty of this recipe--you can use however much of whatever!!

Place the veggies and the meat in a roaster pan. Pour the tomato soup mixture over the meat and veggies. Mix it all together and cover with a lid.

Place the roaster pan into the preheated 250 oven for 5 (five) hours!! DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN, DO NOT STIR--DO NOT DO ANYTHING!!

After 5 hours, take the roaster pan out of the oven, stir once and dinner is ready!! I usually serve this with my grandmother's baking powder biscuits. I particularly love this on a cool fall evening or for some reason, when it's snowing!!

That's it!! It's easy, quick to prepare and only one pan to clean up. I like to make this on a Saturday around noon and then just forget about it until it's time to eat!!

Just a quick note about my son's foot--he is feeling somewhat better today. This is going to take time to heal. He has been staying off his foot for the most part. Up and around for a little bit not too long ago, and it started to throb again. But the swelling is starting to go down and it's not quite as red.

And, oh--I didn't receive the DRT box today--probably tomorrow--so I'll have some pics to share since I now have the UB cable (I still like camera thingy majingy) and batteries!!