Beef and Vegetable soup

This is one of my absolute favorite dishes. It is hearty and delicious.

The first thing is we need to sear the chuck roast in the stock pot. Make sure to give the roast a generous coating of salt and pepper before searing.

Also, it is a good idea to get your peas on as well in a separate pan. The reason for this is that I am using dried beans (the least expensive) and they need to be boiled hard for a while to get them tender.

It is important to get a good sear on the chuck roast. We want a good brown on the roast and a good brown on the bottom of the pan. We don't want it burned but we do want a good amount of caramelization. This is what provides the flavor to this dish.

Now we want to add the carrots, onions and celery to the pan. Do not clean the pan just add the vegetables

Turn the heat down on the pan and stir the vegetables thoroughly. Cover the pot.

So now we want to cut up the roast into bite sized pieces. Also, cut up a package of mushrooms into bite sized pieces. Add the beef, mushrooms and a 24 oz can of crushed tomatoes.

Now I am also going to add 1 bottle of red wine. I can hear you now "YOU CANT BUY ALCOHOL WITH SNAP!!! YOU ARE AN EVIL REPUBLICAN!!!". Yes, you cannot buy alcohol on a SNAP card and it is true; I am an evil republican, however, Walmart sells bottles of wine for $3. It is not particularly good wine but it does make for good cooking wine. Also, I have personally stood behind people at the grocery store who paid for chips, dips soda and other assorted party supplies with a SNAP card and then whipped out a wad of $100 bills to pay for the 10 cases of beer they also bought on that trip to the grocery. Somehow the poor are still able to get drunk in America. Who knew? This being said, if you really cant afford a $3 bottle of wine then you can use water. It won't be as tasty but it will get the job done.

So, combine all this into the pan and then cover and simmer on medium high heat until the beef is fork tender. It will take about an hour or so and you should probably stir and test the beef every 20 minutes or so. It may be necessary to add some water (or perhaps more wine) from time to time during this process but be careful not to add too much. The finished product of this should be more beef and vegetables than liquid. We will be adding a lot more vegetables later and they will release more water into the soup.

So, here is the finished beef.

Now we want to add our frozen vegetables, the black eyes that have been boiling in the separate pan,  and some potatoes. The potatoes are left over from last week. Reserve the greens until the very end. I like my greens nice and bright green. This should be simmered until the potatoes are fork tender. I am using frozen vegetables at this stage. The frozen vegetables are more nutritious than canned or even fresh. Don't believe me? Google it.

Once the taters are done you can add in the greens. No need to cook anymore after this, just let it sit in the pan for a few minutes.

Fin. A bit of cornbread from last week and this is a delicious meal. This yielded around 2 gallons of soup.

Week 2 shopping and inventory of week 1 left overs.

Well, I made it through the first week without dying of starvation or becoming constipated. Let’s have a look at what remains from last week.

 2 lbs chicken legs and thighs

3lbs chicken back pieces

carrots

celery

3 biscuits

biscuit dough

2 lbs apples

6 eggs

frying oil

And here is what I bought this week

I have to admit I got a little poultried out after last week. This week I bought a huge chuck roast and some ham hocks. The chuck rosat will be used to make vegetable and beef soup (I am craving vegetables since I didn't have any last week). The ham hocks will be used for black eyed peas and rice which is another one of those items that I grew up eating and still crave to this day.

Basically, after this week I wouldn't even really need to go to the grocery for the third week. Between the soup and the beans and rice I will most likely have 2-3 gallons of left over food in the freezer. That along with what was left over from this week would easily put me through a third week without a problem. So, the point of this is that this is not even a challenge. From what I have learned talking to people is that once you have the initial stockpile built then most people dont spend much more than $30 a week per person anyway. Snap is supposed to be "SUPPLIMENTAL" and I am easily able to feed myself with only the $30 a week so I am going to make the assumption here that politicians and CEO's who claim that people don't get enough food with their SNAP benefits are either full of shit or they don't know how to manage money or live within a budget. Truth is it's probably both.

By the way, I would sell any Panara Foods Inc stock that you have because apparently their CEO is completely incapable of taking care of himself or living within a budget. And we all know politicians can't live within a budget, so....

Day 3

Hello all

Breakfast: Biscuit and fried eggs

Lunch: Cold fried chicken and mashed potatoes

Dinner: Same as what was for lunch

I snacked on Gala apples today. If you have not had Gala apples then I would highly recommend them. Galas are smaller than red delicious but are highly concentrated in flavor. I think they have a honey flavor to them. 

I am not posting pics of what I have eaten today because it is mostly stuff I have eaten in the past three days. The first week of doing something like this is always the hardest. You basically cook 2 or 3 meals and then are eating leftovers for the rest of the week. The key to doing something like this is the fact that you accumulate food from week to week. I will have a little more than half of what I bought last week going into the next week. Next week I will make up for the vegetables that I missed this week, I will basically have a full week of beef and pork next week, and I will build up even more of a "food stockpile". This is how these things work. As I said from the beginning, this is easy, all it takes is a bit of planning.