Spring Beef Casserole

It's done nothing but rain here lately. We had a beautiful March, and now we're having a very wet April. I have to admit, I kind of love it - not least because I get to wear my wellies often!

Last week seemed to just rain constantly. I didn't feel like going out, so I stayed cosy indoors catching up on some work and lots of snuggles with Izzy. I wanted to make something delicious and warming for dinner, but also something easy and using ingredients that I just had in, and that's how I came up with this recipe. You can substitue whatever veggies you have on hand.

Spring Beef Casserole

Ingredients:

400g stewing steak
1 turnip
1 shallot
2 carrots
Half courgette
Handful sugar snap peas
3 garlic cloves (
2 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp mustard
100ml red wine
3 oxo or beef stock cubes
1 tsp Hendersons Relish or worcestershire sauce
Black pepper

Method:

Gently soften shallot and garlic in a little olive oil, taking care not to brown them, you want them just to be soft and translucent. Cut steak into bitesize pieces. Toss to coat in the plain flour. Cut all veggies into bitesize pieces. Add to a casserole or oven proof dish along with all other ingredients, add water to just cover all the ingredients and give it a good stir. Cover with casserole dish lid or tin foil. Add to a 180 degree oven for 3-4 hours, until meat is tender and sauce has thickened. Serve with mashed potatoes or fresh bread.

This really couldn't be simpler. I'm a big fan of dishes that you just combine all the ingredients, and leave them to cook on their own!

A big project

Yesterday I was overcome with an urge. An urge to get started on my garden! Our garden needs a lot of work doing to it before it can be as lovely as I imagine it, and yesterday was the day I got to work. I hired a skip and began getting rid of all the old flags and bricks that were cluttering it up. It felt so good to get my teeth into a project, and I've already cleared quite a lot!

I dug up one of the beds which had become overrun by weeds, and imagine my delight when I dug up about a dozen of these little beauties:



Pasnips! Rather suprising too, as I haven't planted any parsnips since we first bought the house - three years ago!

I think my project to turn my garden into something beautiful is going to be hard, but it will be so worth it in the end. Mind you, it probably wouldn't be quite so hard if I didn't try to rescue every last ladybird that I saw!

Looking Forward

The weather here for the past couple of days has been so light and mild; it's really making me look forward to Spring. So much so in fact that I dragged Adam to the garden centre today for a look around on the promise that I would buy him a hot chocolate and a cream scone! I'm so excited to get growing again, this year I'm actually most excited to grow flowers, which I've never really done before. I work on a community garden with children aged 8-18, and we grew some flowers on there (basically, we put some seeds in. And the flowers went wild!). It looked so pretty and made me excited to do the same in my garden this year, too.



We've acquired a load of wooden pallets from somewhere which I'm planning to take apart and build some raised beds with, so I'll be sure to post about that. I also want to grow blueberries, herbs, jalapenos, peas, potatoes, sunflowers, squash and salad. Do you enjoy spending time in the garden? Have you ever grown your own food?