Ginny’s Hearty Pre-Christmas Stew

When we visited yard sales over the summer, Ginny bought used or out-of-date pillar candles for next to nothing; yesterday, she surrounded these with glass balls we scrounged from the trash to decorate our table with this centerpiece which cost less than $3.

Clever girl.

As Christmas approaches, so do a myriad of activities. More shopping, wrapping presents, phone ringing, church meetings, Luminary Night, birthdays, parties, house cleaning, decorating, visits from friends, charitable activities—we hardly have time to eat.

Problem solved.

Clever Ginny cooks up a huge pot of her hearty Pre-Christmas Stew.

Theoretically, when pressed for time by all the goings on, we can eat on this delicious one-dish meal time and time again. All it needs is warming up and serving.

Here’s how she makes it:

First she buys a two or three pound beef roast and cuts it up into bite-sized chunks; She spoons some flour into a paper bag, drops the beef chunks in and shakes it up to coat them.

In her largest pot, she browns the meat in about a ¼ cup of oil.

Then she adds about four cups of water, a can of stewed tomatoes, four or five onions cut up into wedges, 6 or 7 bouillon cubes, a bay leaf, a teaspoon each of ground coriander, cumin, oregano, and a dot of garlic powder.

She brings this stuff to a boil then turns down the heat to let it simmer for about two hours.

Now, she adds a head of cabbage she’s cut up into wedges, several sliced carrots, and a couple of ears of corn.

She tops all this off with a can of mild green chili peppers.

She lets this stew cook until the cabbage, corn and carrots are soft.

Served with buttered toast, this meal sticks to your ribs on a cold day.

It’s supposed to serve eight and I’m told that it stays delicious for days and days and days for eating through out the busy days before Christmas.

I wouldn’t know—the two of us ate the whole pot over this past weekend!

Here’s the clipping from Ginny’s receipt book:

In other news:

Donald dropped in Sunday afternoon to discuss making further movies; he’s posted a description of technical details on his blog at http://www.rdex.net/blog/ .

More about our movie plans later.

A Note For The Kid In The Attic:

At a press conference in Baghdad where President Bush spoke, some little person threw his shoe at the President of the United States.

The President ducked.

Secret Service agents did not spray the whole room with machine guns; the U.S. Air Force did not A-Bomb the city; Cruise missiles did not obliterate the country.

The President ducked.

The arab reporter was ejected from the conference.

What would have happened to that same roomful of arab reporters if one of them ever had thrown a shoe at Saddam Hussein?

Our President soft-pedaled the incident as an expression of free speech!

Petty little insignificant people seek revenge; the great and mighty pass over insults.

I’m not particularly a Bush supporter, but I’m impressed in that he teaches me that the king does not swat flies.

Forbearance.

Maybe that’s why God puts up with so much that we do.