Feast of the Epiphany
Today marks the Feast of the Epiphany, end of the twelve days of Christmas, and Día de los Reyes in Spanish-speaking countries.
This is the customary day for gift exchanges in many Christian cultures because it is the day that the Magi finally arrived in Bethlehem with their totally inappropriate gifts after putzing around for a week and a half because they didn’t want to ask for directions.
[Give me a break! They bring soft metal, smelly tree sap, and bitter medicine associated with embalming to people who could use a hot meal, baby clothes, and diapers.]
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Speaking of feasts… I though this would be an appropriate place for a recipe from Wil Wheaton I found in my inbox (I follow him on Medium). I tried it last night & it was surprisingly good! LOL (Not vegan friendly & uses flour). I had a heck of a time getting some ingredients! Luckily we have a good marketplace that has almost everything! 😀
Reasonably Good Beef Stew
If anyone is brave enough to try, let me know how it turns out. 😀
Otherwise, you may simply enjoy (or not) Wil’s sense of humor! I did. 😀
How do you screw up beef stew? The paprika is OK and mushrooms are always welcome, as is red wine. but garlic, onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes are the base for a lot of meals. If you don’t cut up the chuck roast it becomes a pot roast instead of beef stew.
I generally use a chuck steak and let the whole thing go in the crock pot over night. The steak is easy to cube and brown and if you leave it long enough it will turn to shreds for burritos.
I don’t “do” beef (it doesn’t agree with me, it sits on my stomach like a giant lump of, uhm, lump), but do something similar with pork stew meat. Really, it’s hard to go wrong. I don’t flour the stew meat, I just brown it before adding it to the crock pot. I don’t do the mushrooms. I add black pepper because, black pepper is supposed to be in stew. It needs potatoes and carrots and onion and celery and potatoes. No bell pepper in this, bell pepper is for gumbo, but gumbo doesn’t have potato and carrot. Wine is a bit much for pork, you need it to offset the stronger flavor of the beef, but you want to add a bit of kick — a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes and chives does that. I used to add garlic and red pepper but now I cheat and add them as 1/8th of a cup of Tapatio hot sauce, which also has black pepper in it. Recipe? There’s a recipe for all this? Not really. End result is a pork stew that can be eaten with crusty bread or corn tortilla or whatevs. Not much brain surgery involved.
I always brown the beef for most recipes, & saute the onion & garlick (which someone pointed out in comments). I also added zucchini. 🙂
I was raised on predominantly UK (Irish, Welsh, English & a bit of Scottish thrown in) & Mediterranean cooking. The recipe is rarely the same twice! LOL
When I had a decent House/Kitchen, i used to enjoy experimenting. That was many years ago. 🙂
I like pork. it’s a good lean meat & tasty. Not huge fan of lamb, but a lamb shank is good. 🙂 I also use Kangaroo & Venison. Both very lean & low cholesterol. There was a ban many year ago on Kangaroo (the greenies won that stupidity). It was a time of drought which made it worse. Roo’s breed like… well, rabbits. Until their food supply runs out. then they die of starvation in the 10’s of thousands! I and many other veterans & reservists were called up to cull them. One of the hardest thing’s I’ve ever done. But they were all skin & bones & unable to move, so it was a mercy. I really wanted to cull the moronic greenies responsible. I am a staunch conservationist (and work with many global organisations), but it has to be done responsibly & realistically. Not “Ooh! Kangaroos are so cuuuuute! You can’t eat them! It’s evil!” Ignorant highly emotive fools are the bane of existence IMHO!
Like with rabbit’s (sorry, cuuuuute bunnies!)
Rabbit’s were introduced to Australia in 1859 by Thomas Austin. The spread of feral Rabbits from the initial release of 24 in 1859 was rapid & destructive. By the 1920s, in less than 70-years, the rabbit population ballooned to an estimated 10 billion (each female capable of breeding up to 30 per year)! They are an invasive species whose introduction to Australia has caused devastation of habitats and is responsible for the major decline and extinction of many native Australian animals (marsupials) such as the greater bilby and the pig-footed bandicoot. The introduction of the rabbit has also strained the native wildlife of Australia. Rabbits have been blamed for the destruction of the eremophila plant and various species of trees. Because rabbits will feed on seedlings, many trees are never able to reproduce, leading to local extinction. Loss of vegetation leads to soil erosion as the exposed soil is washed or blown away, removing valuable soil nutrients required for new plants to develop. This soil is typically deposited in waterways, causing siltation and destroying aquatic ecosystems.
After destroying two million acres of Victoria’s floral lands, they crossed the states of New South Wales, South Australia, and Queensland. By 1890, rabbits were spotted even in Western Australia. Actively competing with domestic livestock, rabbits can alter pasture composition by selectively grazing on more palatable and nutritious plants. Seven to ten rabbits eat the equivalent of one adult sheep, and, during drought periods, rabbits can totally strip a landscape bare leaving no food for sheep, cattle or native animals. In 1901 the Western Australian Government started building the first Rabbit Proof Fence, it was finished in 1907 and at about 1,830 kilometers it was the longest Rabbit fence built. In 1902, before the first fence was even finished, they had made their way past it, west of the fence. Two more fences were built; the 2nd fence further west was started in 1905.
In 1950 the alarming increase of Australian Rabbit population lead to the deliberate introduction of Myxomatosis (a severe viral disease) which led a drop of around 500 million, this still left the population at about 100 million. By 1991 the population had recovered to about 200-300 million due to genetic resistance. In 1996 CSIRO scientists released calicivirus which turned out to be too successful because it killed too many, leaving some native predators starving.
That’s what happens when people don’t think! Especially about consequences, which most humans seem to be incapable of thinking about. Thomas Austin brought them here because he loved to hunt. Foxes were introduced to help keep the rabbit population down, but the foxes found easier native prey and grew to large numbers also.
Humans! The worst species on Earth. There is more than enough evidence. The irony being that humans have what should be an amazing brain & intelligence. Evidence shows that few are capable of using it to any positive benefit of the species. However, using it to negatively impact the species or simply to ensure personal gain, Humans are masters of this. Most of the rest are too cowardly, lazy, stupid, insecure or self-absorbed to do anything about it. Homo Sapiens is a rare species that actively tries to destroy it’s own species. I should make a huge gravestone with that epitaph. Maybe some more intelligent space faring race will see it one day. And think (their equivalent of) “what a bunch of morons!” *shrug*
The reality is that if you dice the veggies rather than cubing them and don’t add flour or roux you have soup. I usually throw in any left-over veggies in the fridge – broccoli goes with anything.
Parsnips are a non-starter. My Mother loved them and made them all the time, but they were usually bitter, just like Brussels sprouts. I can get by the sprouts with bacon and garlic, but abstinence is the solution for parsnips.
Like the deer here. The ultra left think deer hunting is horrible. If they aren’t hunted they grow in population and starve. The meat is super lean and makes a fantastic jerky. In the south the Brazilian boats unleashed fire ants and they have no natural predator. They are horrible and makes living there just crappy.
Jennifer
If you live with fire ants you learn to keep a packet of baking soda in your pocket. Their bite is acidic and the the baking soda neutralizes it. The problem for fawns and even people bed-ridden in nursing homes is that they don’t or can’t move and cumulative bites will kill. Fire ant bites is the number one cause of fawn deaths in Florida.
Fewer and fewer people can afford to hunt. If you don’t inherit a rifle or slug shotgun you can’t justify the cost of a new one. You need the cost of licenses, transportation, processing, and storing if you have a successful hunt. Like a lot of things, kids today can’t afford to buy into the system, and there are too many deer in New York. In addition to everything else, the wildlife are losing habitat. An obvious solution is to re-introduce top level predators like wolves, but that scares the hell out of farmers.
And in Australia they’ve basically made it impossible to hunt, at least with guns, so that isn’t going to stop the invasion of the killer bunnies even if rabbit hunting was easy (it’s not, bunnies basically come out in the early dawn hours and early dusk hours and stay hidden the rest of the time, which is pretty limiting on how many you can kill which in turn means that since they breed like, well, rabbits … ).
Deer are hooved rats, Bambi nonwithstanding.