Rantings of an Amateur Chef

For dinner, I think my wife enjoys what I make more than what she makes. Not that the actual quality of food or even menu choices are different, but it comes down to the effort vs satisfaction equation. When I make something, her effort is low (until time to clean up afterward) and the satisfaction is hopefully high. When she makes it, the satisfaction is high but the effort moves somewhere up the scale. There are several times that a recipe is decent but I’ve deleted it from my catalog because the effort was just not worth it. Maggie comments on the effort in a lot of prep work below and give some quick time saving suggestions. Here’s Maggie….  

I love to make soup, and vegetable beef is one of my favorites. For years I tried to make it, and never got it to taste the way I remembered it growing up- beefy, tomatoe-y goodness. I landed on Paula Deen’s recipe, and it was really close. With a few tweaks, I got it where I wanted it. I added wine, fresh garlic, beef soup base, and a little ketchup. That did it! Yum!

The soup can be a lot of work, so when I am not in the mood to chop tons of veggies, I just buy two bags of frozen veggies, and it works perfectly. Frozen potatoes work too. No sense in working harder than we need too, right? I do still use fresh onion and celery even when I use frozen veggies.

This recipe make a lot of soup, so be prepared to feed a crowd or freeze some of this, or cut it in half. This makes the house smell soooooo good!

Vegetable Beef Soup

What you need:

1 cup diced potatoes

1 cup corn, fresh or frozen

1 cup butter or lima beans

1 cup diced celery

1 cup sliced green beans, fresh or frozen

1 cup carrots

1 28 oz can diced tomatoes

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp celery salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

2 bay leaves

1 Tbs seasoned salt

1 tsp garlic powder

1Tbs Italian seasoning

3Tbs dried parsley

½ cup red wine or cooking sherry

4 quarts water

3 lbs beef short ribs

4Tbs beef soup base

4 Tbs ketchup

½ uncooked elbow macaroni or barley (optional)

What you do:

Place beef ribs, water seasonings, onion, soup base and tomatoes in a large stock pot and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Cover pot, and reduce  heat so the liquid simmers and cook for 1-2 hours until the meat is very tender. Remove ribs from the pot, cut the meat from the bones then return meat to the pot. Add the remaining vegetables, wine, ketchup and macaroni or barley. Return the soup to a boil, stirring to incorporate. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for another 30-45 minutes. Add additional seasoning to taste, serve with bread or oyster crackers.