Beef Roast - Take 1

While I do enjoy cooking I don't have a huge passion for it. I aim for healthy food that is tasty and I try to make different things because eating the same thing over and over gets really annoying! These days, it is more difficult to get supper made when I have kids getting fussy, melting down and demanding more attention at the same time! We rarely eat out especially when having two wee ones makes it impossible to sit and enjoy our meal.

But all that aside, there are a few dishes that I want to learn to make well. I guess their sort of like my holy grails of cooking because so far I have not been able to make one to my liking. A juicy, flavorful roast beef accompanied by yorkshire puddings is one of them.

Just before our vacation I bought the October issue Every Day with Rachel Ray and really like it. I've made a few recipes and they turned out good so I thought that I give her method of making a roast a try. (And I've since got myself a two year subscription. It seems like a nice replacement for the chatelaine and Canadian Living magazines that are just. too. expensive. to have sent down here. I miss them very much, especially at this time of year when they're coming out with all their holiday baking issues.)

When I was at the grocery store I noticed that a bottom round roast of Angus beef was on sale and so I thought that it should work. I even asked the butcher guy because, frankly, I'm a little clueless on which cuts are good for roasts. Especially because the States uses different terms than Canada. I had forgotten that recipe stated to get a rib roast and when I got home I was talking with a guy whose family raises cattle and he told me that bottom round was just another word for rump roast. Good lord, I know that the ass cut doesn't make a nice roast for how I wanted to cook it.

But I got it started anyway. After 15 minutes on 475 and another 15 on 375 there was no moisture at all coming from the roast, so along with my parsnips and carrots I added a cube of beef bouillon dissolved in a cup of water.

In the end, I did manage to get it medium rather than well done but it was tough and the flavor was lacking. I had no time for Yorkshire Puddings. It looked much prettier than it tasted.

An extra, completely unexpected bonus we did encounter was that Sweet One ate her roasted potatoes and the roast! She hasn't eaten beef like this EVER!

I'm thinking that next time I need to not cheap out and just spend some money on a rib roast. We'll see how that works.

Mmmm, pie

For the past couple of years, my attempts to try and make a pie crust on my own have been complete failures. Whether it was gluten-free or regular, margarine or shortening, nothing worked.
So when my mom was visiting last week I had her help me make a pie crust and voila! it didn't suck. It was good to be doing something with my mom where we just joked around. (Any time she was given the tiniest opportunity during her visit to start talking about her theology and all that she's learning as a minister, she'd get going on this brainwave that left no room for anyone to be involved - the pitch of her voice also jumped up an octave or so and the sing-song was incredibly which made me start to wonder if any LSD behind my back.) SO, it was nice to not have to venture into the 'land of wonder and amazement' and just have some pie at the end of the day! She did get a little grossed out when I ate some of the scraps from the crust. I had to make sure it was the same recipe that she used when I was little and since I'd gorge myself on the raw pie dough, it was the only way I knew how!