[Black Balloon, Goo Goo Dolls]

I was going to write a witty and wonderful (wonderfully witty?) blog post but then I helped my husband with something "quick" and it took over two hours.  Now it's nearly 11pm and I'm sleepy.  I have an appointment with an endocrinologist tomorrow morning so I need to sleep so getting up at a normal time won't be an issue :)

So, this short post will show you tonight's amazing dinner!  I'm on a roll this week!

My parents gave us some venison when we were with them for Thanksgiving- yup, I'm from a small town (tiny town, really; it has less than a thousand residents in the city limits) in the mountains and my parents totally hunt each fall and own many rifles.  I don't have any objections to these things, though I personally don't own, nor really ever wish to own, any guns and don't hunt or fish or any of those things now that I'm out on my own.  Anyway, one of the packages of venison (aka deer meat) is meant for a stew, so I made a venison stew today.

First, I spiced up some gluten free flour (sweet sorghum flour) with paprika, granulated garlic, a touch of cumin and coriander, salt and pepper, and a wee bit o' chili powder.  Then I coated the meat in it and did a quick browning of the flour-covered-meat in some olive oil.  Here's what it looked like:

Meanwhile, as the meat browned, I cut up an onion, two small red potatoes, one large yukon gold potato (I thought I'd use two but there wasn't enough room), a yam (I want twins !), and had a bag of baby carrots on hand.  A LARGE bag of baby carrots, because I loves me some cooked carrots!  Additionally, we had two quarts (quarts?  I'm not sure and I'm too tired to go look) of beef stock for the occasion.  I thought chicken stock wouldn't be hearty enough and beef did the trick.  Here's a pic o' the shindig on my cutting board:


Then I put it all together in the crock pot for a cookin' party.  I added about 90% of the second quart of stock (not pictured, since I am sure you all can count) and then put the rest in the refrigerator; you'll understand why in a minute.  This is the beginning of the stew party in my handy dandy crock pot (btw, I have an actual name brand Crock Pot- yes, I do know I should always use the proper noun form, ie capitalize it, but I don't care- so I refuse to say "slow cooker".  Now you know.)  Anyway, enjoy the pic:


After cooking on low all day, while we were at church and the like, the stew was smelling SO good!  I used the refrigerated leftover stock to mix up a few TB of corn starch; I added it to the stew about 5 minutes before serving and the thick consistency was perfect.  As the thickener did its thang I chopped up a few sprigs of fresh, organic flat leaf parsley.  Then, I spooned the stew into a bowl, added a dollop of sour cream (my husband was disgusted, because he thinks he doesn't like sour cream, but then when he had seconds he added it on his own because he realized that I was right- it really does add a rich creaminess, another layer of flavor, to the deliciousness of the stew!), and sprinkled on the parsley.

Here are two pics of the final product; the first is with flash and the second is without.  Usually I think a flash washes out the food, though it doesn't here, but just in case you get both views :)




It was SOOOO good!  Warm and comforting, tasty and filling, very healthy and totally gluten free, so my husband won't get sick.  Plus, the meat was so tender- usually venison can be a little tough, but cooking on low all day made it super tender and it had the same melt-in-your-mouth consistency as beef.

So... that was dinner :)  Yummy, right?

Hasta kids!