Beef Stew for Fall

Never mind that she was supposed to be having a yard sale today -- the first Saturday in over a month for which rain had not been forecast!  But as the weatherman had promised, there was a frost last night, and the thermometer outside of her kitchen window now reads 30 degrees fahrenheit.  The sun is shining, though.  And yes, that's a plus.  But preparing for a yard sale with such a forecast was out of the question.  Who would want to browse at all of her tchochke when they're so cold that they're hands don't even want to come out of their pockets?  No one.  So instead of preparing for the ill-fated yard sale, Marash Girl spent yesterday afternoon preparing her first beef stew of the season.  How?  After a trip to the market to buy a large, uncut piece of stew meat, she gathered small red potatoes, yellow onions, carrots, celery, garlic, and a can of Italian crushed tomato sauce.  Carefully rinsing the beef under cool water, a trick Marash Boy's mother taught her many years ago,  (and Marash Girl had made sure to buy a whole piece of beef rather than cut up pieces of "beef stew meat"), she cut the beef up into 2 inch cubes with scissors (faster than a knife), browned the cubes of beef in olive oil, olive oil that had already been browning sliced up onions and garlic, and then added  the cubed vegetables and the tomato sauce.  All of this was done in her largest orange le Creuset iron pot, which she then placed in the oven at 325 degrees fahrenheit for 2 hours.  Amazing.  She didn't even add herbs or spices or salt and pepper and the meal was perfect.  Something to be said for using those old-fashioned iron pots and ovens rather than the more contemporary slow-cooker!  And believe me, at dinner time,  Marash Girl did NOT say, "Yapan yemez!" (Scroll down to see yesterday's blog.)