Biggest kid had to come home from school today, due to feeling terrible. By terrible, I mean headache, stomach ache, and vomiting....sounded familiar. He concludes that he's giving up the gluten.
I have mixed feelings--great that he knows himself better, great that he's paying attention to his health, and great that if gluten makes him ill, he's put in the effort to figure it out, etc... On the not-great list, there are things like...there's no more warm homemade bread with jam at Grandma and Grandpa's?!! No ordering pizza? No battered and fried anything?!!! No carefree consumption at restaurants?! No gravy with fries? So there's that sadness for him. Life's a lot easier when a kid can just eat whatever he wants... Oh well, he'll adapt. There will be bumps, but he'll adapt.
Tonight's dinner is mostly done, the kids and I have eaten anyway. It turned out kind of funny...the littles were all over the broccoli soup I made. Like, all over it--it's gone. So I didn't even cook the green beans I'd planned to cook...we were already all greened up before dinner. The beef in the slow cooker was ready a little while later, so after beef and potatoes together--that was that--dinner was done.
The old school aspect of dinner was the beef and potato combination, I think the ginger is all that made it "new school". I haven't done ginger in the slow cooker before. The beef was two cups of boiling water into the slow cooker, with slivered ginger infusing while I prepped the rest. I'm not sure the ginger made much difference, but if it did, it was in the potatoes I didn't eat...I'll have to survey the family. I normally poke garlic holes all over and into the roast, and stuff the peeled garlic cloves into them...today was no exception. I think it makes it more tender too, but that's hard to prove, as each roast is different.
Then I added three soup cubes to the water and ginger, added the beef atop that, quartered in a red onion, and added lots of potato wedges, with the scrubbed peel left on because that's where the B vitamins are at, and I think it just looks so much more interesting. I'd have added carrots, but the kids are a little potato crazed these days, so I just went all potato. I'd have added parsnip, but I didn't get to them in time, and they were wilted...so none of them made it in, which meant more room for potatoes.
It's interesting, buying beef on price rather than cut...I've learned a few of the cuts by how they turn out, but I still can't say a "____" is an outside round, or "____" is an inside round, etc....This piece of beef was a bit adventurous. It was about the right price for a really tender slow-cooker dinner...but when it was cooked, it was like two different pieces--one super tender, and one rather firm, connected by a huge piece of gristle/marbling/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. The beef tasted nice though; but I did only eat the really tender pieces...
The other nice thing about the meal is that it's ready to become tomorrow's school lunches. Nutritious, and ridiculously easy at this point...put in container, done!
Cheers and chao.
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