Pot Roast!

This week, something just felt "off." I was wiping my countertops and felt I just wasn't getting them clean enough, so I used my clorox bleach pen to whiten around the sink area and tidy up a couple of coffee stained spots. I folded and refolded my daughter's tiny underpants so they would all "face the same way." I used a lint roller to remove fuzzies from the back of the couch.

Then, it dawned on me. I just wasn't feeling domestic enough! So, for the first time ever, I made a pot roast. I felt quite housewifely asking the butcher dude at Hy-Vee for "a pot roast, about three pounds please." Then I felt vaguely repulsed when he handed me what seemed like a giant slab of meat wrapped in brown paper. What can I say...I went through a brief vegetarian phase and sometimes enormous cuts of animal are still weird.

But that repulsion quickly went away, because, people, I have a message for you: pot roast is delicious. In fact, I think I may need to take a break from writing this to go downstairs and have a bit of the leftovers (turns out three pounds is a very generous cut for two adults and a toddler, fyi).

I'd link to my pot roast recipe but I sort of cobbled it together from a couple different sources, as I am wont to do. It basically started off as one recipe, from my mom's low-carb slow-cooker cookbook, and then took on attributes of my own crockpot recipe, and then I just started throwing things in the slow cooker. Here's a brief version: dump almost all of a bottle of beer (we had a can of Foster's in the fridge, so I used that) into the bottom of the slowcooker. Add a beef bouillon cube, a package of dry onion soup mix, a slosh of steak sauce, and some black pepper. Stir. Meanwhile, brown the pot roast on all sides in a pan. Don't get all nuts or anything...just make the outside not pink. Then pick the giant slab of meat up (not with your hands or anything--perhaps some tongs) and put it in the slowcooker on top of the beer mixture. Then flip it over so both sides get the sauce. Also, before you turn the heat off under your pan you browned the roast in, throw the remaining couple of ounces of beer in there. Slosh it around and dump that on top of the roast. I believe the french call this "deglacing" or something.

According to both of my recipes, this is it. Turn the slowcooker on high for five hours. But I wanted veggies in there, too, so I chucked in a quartered onion, some roughly chopped (two-inch lengths) celery, baby carrots (as is) and mushrooms (halved). I just randomly threw those things in, tossed on the lid, and then turned on the slowcooker. Then I left for school.

When I got home five hours later, I walked in on Jeff and Charlotte hunkered over the slowcooker like lions over a wildebeest, surreptitiously sneaking bits of mushroom (Charlotte) and meat (Jeff, of course). "Busted!" Jeff said sheepishly. I shooed them out of the kitchen and made mashed potatoes. Then we all feasted.

Results:
Me: Yep, it was good. Next time, I'll get a smaller roast and throw in more mushrooms.
Jeff: I think he felt like a real man after eating this meal.
Charlotte: Also felt like a real man. And boy does this kid love mushrooms. She also ate a few of the carrots and some meat, but declared "mashed potatoes are yucky." Beg pardon? Are you my child?

Verdict: Make it again!