Kitchen Meets Culinary Clutz

Boy was today filled with all sorts of mishaps and misfortune!! I was in a rush this morning and had two pounds of  Boneless Beef Chuck top blade steaks that needed to be cooked off, otherwise it would have gone to waste. By the way, this is the best beef to use when making Beef Stews! (Never buy that crap, which is a cheap top round, that they cube up and label "Beef Stew Meat". *bleh*)

I decided I would make Wild Mushroom Beef Stew. Well I cube up the beef, dump it into my pregreased crockpot bowl, start adding the ingredients and low & behold I can't find the beef broth!  Well I take my chances and open up two cans of chicken broth. I pour it into the pot. No harm, no foul, right? Wrong! Potatoes, chopped and tossed into the pot, carrots are. . .well . . . what happened to my carrots? Somehow my new bag of carrots went moldy!!!!! *Eww* So, no carrots. On with the stew. . . I need a white onion but I only have yellow ones, no biggie, I need shiitake mushrooms and I can't find 'em! Good Lord! So on with the ingredients  . . .  and yeah, you might as well omit the celery while we're at it because somebody ate them with a bowl of ranch dip the other day. . . I turn on the crockpot, secure the lid and rush out of the house to take Rachel to school and head to work.

Eleven hours go by. On my way home from work I made a detour north to the grocery on Tinker AFB and come home patting myself on the back because dinner was actually done at a decent hour. NO SIR-R-R-E-E-E-BOB! Dinner was not done. After poking the potatoes and finding that they were still hard as rocks I couldn't help but notice my crockpot was set to the "Stay Warm" setting!! OMG What was I thinking?! This was totally not happening to me!

In a hustle I started Tweeting my friends on Facebook in hopes that someone with good sense could help me out of this awful predicament. Fortunately a few friends came to my rescue (Thank you Tarun & Jen, Ooooo and Billie-Jo!!). Doctored up Redneck Style, I threw the stew into the microwave for 10 minutes and managed to save dinner!

To my surprise, the stew tasted much milder and hearty using Chicken Broth as opposed to Beef Broth! And I cannot stress to you enough about how important it is to use a good quality beef when making crockpot stews! The beef chuck was so tender! It practically melted in my mouth!

• 
  
  2 Lbs  Boneless Beef Chuck Top Blade Steaks, cut into 1-inch Cubes
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 2 14-oz cans Chicken Broth
• 1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (1 tsp minced garlic from jar)
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tsp paprika
• 4 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 med yellow onion cubed
• 1/8 tsp celery seed