Hungarian Beef Goulash (Kinda)

Hi all!

You may have noticed that little box up there in the corner. Or maybe you didn't in which case please ignore the following couple of sentences, they weren't that good anyway.

End communication.

I'm nearing the end of the NaNoWRiMo word count, not that it means much as I still have perhaps double that to go in spinning the yarn I'm trying to weave into a comfy wool sweater for rest of metaphor not found.

This means that my brain shall have to remain bubbling at half burner for at least another month or so and because of that my dinner plans have gotten a bit more "Oh god just let me throw something into something else for a few hours so I can spend unquality time with my laptop."

Enter the Hungarian Beef Goulash - I snagged the recipe from Roots & Zest.

It calls for stew meat which isn't to be used in stew - a welcoming proposition as I hate stew. Make up your damn mind, are you going to be a soup or a chowder? You can't be both! Oh and I love paprika, it's a downright sickness at this point.

Don't mind the two kinds of pasta, that happens a lot in this house. Its like a sampler platter.

Ingredients - I cut it all in half for the two of us and because I only had 1 pound of stew meat. Oh and the green alien on my shoulder told me to.

• 2 pounds beef stew meat, (such as chuck), trimmed and cubed
• 2 teaspoons caraway seeds
• 1 1/2-2 tablespoons sweet or hot paprika,
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 1 large or 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1 small red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes
• 1 14-ounce can reduced-sodium beef broth
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with 2 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Obviously I left out the peppers - blech, and I added some vindaloo for a little spicy kick.Oh and the caraway seeds were one of those things we thought we had but never materialized. I shouldn't have put my spice rack so close to a black hole.

Preparation

1. Place beef in a 4-quart or larger slow cooker. Crush caraway seeds with the bottom of a saucepan. Transfer to a small bowl and stir in paprika, salt and pepper. Sprinkle the beef with the spice mixture and toss to coat well. Top with onion and bell pepper.
2. Combine tomatoes, broth, Worcestershire sauce and garlic in a medium saucepan; bring to a simmer. Pour over the beef and vegetables. Place bay leaves on top. Cover and cook until the beef is very tender, 4 to 4 1/2 hours on high or 7 to 7 1/2 hours on low.
3. Discard the bay leaves; skim or blot any visible fat from the surface of the stew. Add the cornstarch mixture to the stew and cook on high, stirring 2 or 3 times, until slightly thickened, 10 to 15 minutes. Serve sprinkled with parsley.

The cornstarch mixture didn't really thicken it well but luckily the pasta sucked up tasty juices. It was a nice warm ooey gooey tomatoey meal for crisp days that was gobbled up without any leftover. Next time I might try to make the full recipe because it'll be a good I have another 2,000 words to get out pick something from the fridge dinner.

PAPRIKA FOOTBALL RULES!

I Wanna Be a Dragon

Sometimes (what do I mean, sometimes) strange topics arise when I am conversing with individuals of a random nature. While twitter appears to exacerbate this, it has been happening for as long as I figured out the mouth could make sounds approaching words (somewhere around age 13 when I finally got my voice).

On Friday I was conversing with someone about Fairy Tales which then wandered off to Sleeping Beauty and then to how I preferred Maleficent to the princess du jour. And for some reason my little colloquialism stuck with me so I had to try and piece together a graphic.

After making it a bit more PG-13 I decided, you know what, why not put that on a T-shirt for sale:

I can't decide if it's funnier on a babydoll or if it'd still look better on a gray. Oh zazzle, always feeding my terrible habit of putting things onto other things.

In other less shiny news got Skyrim this weekend so I expect my productivity at putting words into my magical box to plummet like an angel who's sick of the big guy telling him what to do. Just 11,000 more to go before it reaches that magical "okay you can call it a novel now" level.

But Dragons to slay and dungeons to crawl and ten minutes getting a horrible cramp sneaking as I wait for a bandit to step back into the torchlight. Hm, how much is it to clone myself?

Easy Cheesy Enchiladas

First Happy Oh look the date's doing that thing again. Only one or two more years until we can stop doing this crap.

Ooh! We should all play the lottery and get married and prepare for the alien invasion.

All done? Okay good, now we can get to the meat of the matter. Red peppers (as well as Green and Yellow - I don't discriminate) are pure evil. They do things to my internal organs that would be outlawed by even the spider people on Rigel 7. If I consume even a tiny bit part of me hurt that I didn't think could feel pain or existed.

So I am cautious around a lot of wrapped foods, or anything that has those bright shiny chunks of evil crunchy death. (This is also true of relish and 1000 Island dressing, a Reuben is a Weapon of Mass Destruction around me) but damnit sometimes one just wants an enchilada. Luckily I found a fairly easy and okay not that quick way to make my own that is super flavorful without any death peppers.

It starts easily enough by cutting up some chicken breasts into edible pieces that fit nicely inside things like mail slots. Add those, a couple teaspoons of oil and some onions if you like to a skillet to depinkify.

About a minute before the chicken is done toss in 2-3 teaspoons chili powder, 2 teaspoons paprika, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, some Tabasco and anything else to bring the heat if you want.

Drain that because no one wants soggy enchiladas (if you do there is something seriously wrong with you, go sit in the corner until you figure out what it is).

Fold, stir and gooify in 3/4 cup of sour cream and cheese (I used a Mexican mix but I imagine just about anything other than velveeta would work. If you want to use velveeta you know where to go sit)

Now's a good time for another taste test. A dash of salt or pepper to brighten the flavor or even a dash of vinegar.

Take your ooey gooey chicken stuff and plop some down into a tortilla:

No, that's way too much. What? Is your spatula bigger than your eyes? Start over and try again.

Much better. Roll them up into adorable little bundles and place in OCD rows inside of a pre-greased dish:

Now to bloody this thing up. Drench them in Enchilada sauce. I tried to make my own once, I had a tub of the thing sitting around after an hour of slicing, dicing and purifying so I just use a can now.

Cover with tin foil and place in a 350 degree oven for 50 minutes. Or 300 50 degree ovens for 1 minute. Or shoot it into the sun and hope it doesn't have a Superman hair mixed in.

Easy Chicken Enchiladas:

Oooey gooey with nary an evil pepper or chile in sight (but you can add them if you like, I guess weirdo).

Holy Shit, what's this?

After sitting on it, not literally unless I needed to find something in my what was once a painting room but has quickly turned into a junk pile of epic proportions, for almost a month I have finally listed my first new painting for sale in almost a half a year.

It's my Four Seasons scattered across Four canvases. Four!

As you can see it is difficult to keep them all from posing at a jaunty angle and acting like they're too cool for straight edges.

The edges are painted in a mock frame fashion because I thought the idea of a painting of trees surrounded by fake wood was kind of funny. Or I had some leftover brown, 6 of one half dozen of another.

If anyone's at all curious I have it for sale in my long neglected and unloved Etsy store - where dreams go to die.

There is another painting sitting in my room that hasn't been photographed or listed but I need to keep one back to cover any menacing skulls coming through the wall. It happens every winter when the graves get too cold and all the skeletons start scrambling to get in the house.

Week 2- Why did it have to be week 2

God I hate the second week of NaNoWriMo.

I know, this is only my second annual attempt at writing a novel in month, but I'm noticing a few patterns from my brain.

One is to never ever feed it after midnight. I'd like to take the time now to apologize to that nice farm couple from Wisconsin, I have no idea how I wound up in your garden wearing just a pointy hat and some lederhosen.

I, unlike all of my normal contemporaries, seem to require breaks in between writing sessions. Rather long ones, with a meal or two separating them. It seems my brain goo can only come squirting out in fits that get pounded into a keyboard for so long before smoke pours from my ears and I call time.

But perhaps the greatest lesson I've learned is if I just keep slogging through week 2 I'll see a light at the end of the tunnel and remember to dodge out of the way of the train unlike all the coyote carcasses  lining the tracks.

Week one is a strange high, as neural receptors shoot off endorphins each time my fingers hit keys and something approaching a word spills out. I can reach my daily quota no problem, once the dog's been trapped inside her containment bubble.

Come the seventh of November a dark cloud settles upon my little laptop. The words sit stubbornly hidden behind walls, in trash cans or neck deep in mud laced with razor blade refusing to budge. My eye wanders more and more away from the page to shiny things mother magpie keeps bringing me. Apparently she thought I was some kind of disney film and I could really use a dress made of scraps of newspaper and old cups to the ball.

It's a battle between the one side of my brain that says "No, you need to write because if you skip your pattern now, you'll skip it again and this thing will never get done." with the other side that says, "BUT I DON'T WANNA!"

If you can't tell I am firmly embroiled in the middle of week 2, banging my face against the keyboard in the hopes something coherent will come out and I can add that to my stagnant word count.

But if I just stick it out, keep struggling like a man who enjoys wearing large sea birds as accessories once week three hits the words will dig themselves out of the muck, shake some of the dirt off and without apologizing get in line while I stand to the sides a bit jaded knowing that I can never truly trust them again.

And now one more coloring page for any out there who want to color nice things: rainbows, kittens, undead zombie ponies:

Enjoy!