Monday, April 21, 2003

 
Let's try something new. The last blog was too hard to keep up on. This one should be easier. I just want to keep track of dinner meals that either work or don't work for our new "healthy" diet. Nothing too extreme, but we are trying to eat relatively lowfat, lots of veggies, not too many refined carbs....just healthier in general. It's been working so far (we've both lost about 15 lbs each in the last couple of months), but I sometimes forget some of the great meals we have come up with that actually work.

So, on Saturday we made our own version of "Boeuf Bourguignon" (or Beef Burgandy). It wasn't too fancy and definitely not made in the traditional fashion, but still tasty and good. We just happened to have some beef tri-tip steaks in the freezer (that we have not had very good luck cooking so that they don't end up pretty tough) and Pop has been bugging us about beef burgandy since he moved in, so we gave it a shot.

Basically, I started by cutting up the meat (four 4-oz steaks) into 1-inch pieces, dredging them in flour with a little salt and pepper and browning in a non-stick pot that had maybe a teaspoon of olive oil in it. While the meat was browning, I sliced up an onion very thinly and peeled and smashed 3 garlic cloves. Took the meat out of the pot and set it aside and added about 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil to the pot, then poured off the excess so that just a small amount actually coated the bottom of the pot. Added the onions and garlic and sauteed them over med-low heat for about 8 minutes until they were soft and browned. Then I added about a cup of red wine, turned up the heat and let that cook until most of the liquid was evaporated and added the meat back to the pot. Then added about cup each of red wine and beef broth. And, since I forgot we need beef broth and we didn't get any at the store, I added another cup of mushroom broth to just barely cover the meat. Let that simmer for about an hour and a half. It smelled SOOOO good while it was cooking. I would say it smelled better than it even tasted! Oh yeah, and I threw in a bay leaf and some fresh thyme and rosemary. I added some carrots, potatoes and mushrooms and cooked for an additional half hour til they were tender. Served it over some egg noodles with whole wheat french bread and Voila! It was done!

The tri-tip was probably a much better cut of meat than it calls for, since it's essentially a stew, so it didn't have to cook for too long. Other recipes I saw call for marinating in the wine overnight and then cooking for 3-3 1/2 hours. I think mine turned out just fine without all the extra work. The only thing is that it was pretty heavy on the mushroom flavor, due to having to use mushroom broth for the remaining liquid instead of beef broth, so it probably would have been even better!



Jacki 4/21/2003