What's Your Dinner Tonight -- Part II

White beans with diced onions, peppers, chicken, a sour apple, mushrooms, celery, and what ever spices, basel, black pepper, one of my 3 staples:cheers:
 
with winter coming I offer a cabbage soup.

Half cabbage chopped
Cup carrots chopped
cup celery chopped
Cup Onions chopped
One Peice garlic chopped fine.
Large can diced tomato (Use entire can until empty)
A small can of diced tomatoes specifically with Oreengo, Garlic etc. Essentially Italian seasoning without trying to manually add it)
Carton of swansons broth (Veggie)
One green pepper chopped.
PAckage of Liptons onion soup dry.
A bit of black pepper and whatever else you choose to put in there. (A little tiny bit...)

Put cabbage celery, carrots, onions in bottom of crockpot. Spread one package of liptons onion on top. Dump in the two cans of tomnatos (With the juices too) Pour in veggie broth over everything. Mix it with big spoon.

Turn on crockpot and cook on high 3 to 5 hours until cooked. Your nose will know for sure. We generally serve a big bowl and set a tiny amount of apple cider vinegar to our taste when sitting down with that as the main meal.

The Mountain Pot, my version.

Take a skillet (Non stick) get it hot. Almost too hot to take cooking spray.
Toss in a pound of lean ground sirloin beef (Emphasis on lean, and quality seal) ground. You can always vary the amount according to people you are feeding. The important part is to cook the meat, chopping in pan until you end up with a well cooked pan ful ready to go. All chopped up and well done. It will hardly have any juice towards the end of cooking. Dont let it overburn or cook too much.

A word on lean sirloin. We usually get the 92% or more lean angus sirloin choice. Its pretty pricey. The thing is that the less fat with the amount of ground beef the less trouble you will have in the whole meal. It needs to cook down in your skillet to well done without swimming in fat. Youe going to be putting in a great deal of fluids into the entire meal and if you come out with hardly any juice with the cooked suirloin you are in good shape. Emphasis on well done. But not cooked too much. Thats no fun in eating.

(A subsitute for sirloin would be deer venison. It comes out very similar to sirloin. If you heve ever a pleasure of enjoying a properly process and safe source of cooked deer meat it will be a valid choice for this kind of food.) The goal is to get fueled up for the next workday in the worst of winter.

In the ground beef while frying all of it to well done, you add just a small amount of worchesire sauce. But not too much. Your nose need to know there is much more good beef than sauce. You have room to add in whatever you think to into the meat while hand mixing prior to frying on stove. Possibly chopped onions and chopped peppers for example. That will save you a step in assembly and give you a bit of room for whatever else later.

Grab a bunch of potatoes chop them up. We use cans of sliced potatoes as a workaround to ease the labor. Diced potatos also work, but its not as rustic or good as would be with say chopped idaho russets.

Get about 5 cans of swanson beef broth. We use a huge crock pot because it is a expensive meal to make one time and the biggest pot you can find to use the better. (Will explain shortly)

Assemble everything in layers at the bottom of crockpot, starting with cooked sirloin ground, then potatoes.

Add a layer of onions, tomatoes as you like it, corn (We use sweet yellow when in season off cob but sometimes can...) if off cob, its sliced off the cobs after they are cooked through in water in it's own pot. A bit of green peppers, a couple of Jalapeno peppers sliced. (I cannot emphasize being careful with this one. With our taste we can tolerate three to five slices for heat. Otherwise it could ruin the food) Throw in some carrots sliced. and keep going until you think you have reached all the add ons you can stand.

We usually toss in a small, I mean small can of that salsa mix which is a tomato based item. Usually a small Rotel brand salsa. The tomatos in can usually came out of delmonte Diced or similar. What you dont want is just basic stuff that is not that fun to eat.

Put in a few drops of olive oil. NOT too much. Its a way of taking care of your nose and body while you deal with this meal after eating.

Pour in the beef broth from cans. Make sure that the entire crock pot ends up about maybe half a inch or a little more below the lid. It will expand while cooking all day. While cooking you can stir it. Make sure it's completely stirred by the time its' done hours later. It will tell you when its done. If you put in too much broth etc the liquid may expand and get out from under your lid. Thats no fun.

Get the bowls out and feed the tribe. A word of warning. You want to save this meal for a three dog cold winter night. Thats the fuel to get people fed properly and warm no matter how cold it gets for a good long time.

In trucking you dont have time to stop and cook. But you will be somewhere at the end of the day or night's trip hungry. Get a pair of dutch ovens tied into your truck's power on the floor of the cab, toss in a diced ham your choice. Throw in a bunch of small tiny onions. Top off with Brussel Sprouts. Add a little water. You do have the option of tossing in some diced potato but thats strictly a option.

Combine everything into both dutch ovens (It will come out to a couple pounds worth of dinner good for 4 servings for two people) add a bit of water to both. Close em up and plug in. Start driving. It will be a minimum of 6 hours. However your nose will know for sure when its properly cooked and finished, you will be able to tell that each of the items are done.

Its a really basic meal. You can generally add bread from a bakery where availible and whatever else you like to that meal. However as long you have enough water in both ovens to allow the meal to cook nicely without drying out you will end up with a sort of semi soup that will take care of your hunger and hydrate you too in a way.

The meal is not much as far as meals go, but its one of many possible combinations that you can toss into a dutch oven, plug in and let it cook all day. You will have dinner later on when its done. Just takes a long time. Probably much less time when you are using a dutch oven in a wood stove or at home in the oven. (Call it 350 for a hour and check on it against your nose. It will tell you when its done but not before)
 
Big mac salad so good ! I found the recipe on TikTok
 
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