This weekend’s round-up of interesting and entertaining posts is a day late because I spent yesterday shopping, cleaning house, and preparing dinner for friends. A great time was had by all: following a Julia Child recipe for beef bourguignon, I turned a pot roast into something awesome.
A dollar short because pot roast is not pore folks’ food any more. Good grief! In the first place, I couldn’t find a decent roast. Neither Safeway nor Costco had a chuck roast capable of rising to the occasion: Safeway’s was actually chuck steak, an inch or so thick, and the only “chuck roast” in Costco’s meat case was two small pieces wrapped into a single package. Both choices were overpriced, higher than the much larger rump roast that I got on mark-down at the Safeway. By the time I finished buying the meat, some dried noodles, a few stewing vegetables, a box of relatively unadulterated beef broth, and a bottle of cheap wine, the dinner cost almost fifty bucks!
Rump being an altogether-too-chewy cut of lean meat capable of cooking up into shoe leather, I had to bard the darn thing with parboiled bacon fat, a lengthy process and a nuisance. But it turned out more than good enough for government work.
It seemed strange that no beef roasts, to speak of, were available at mid-morning on a Saturday. Are we looking at a meat shortage? Or should we join My First Million in contemplating the possibility of a coming famine?
For those of us who have been reduced to penury by the weekend grocery bill, Catherine Shaffer reminds us that DVDs are to be had for free at the local library; at Wisebread she explains how to get your hands on those perpetually loaned-out new releases and popular television shows. Trent and Mrs. Trent are experimenting with cloth diapers (hope they save enough to cover the cost of the extra diaper rash cream they’ll soon be needing…ouch!). Poorer Than You has an eye-opening post about how to foil those darn messages from your printer that tell you the ink cartridge is almost empty-when it’s not. And over at Get Rich Slowly, the project to track the cost of growing garden vegetables proceeds: so far, JD and Mrs. JD have spent $157.30 to arrive at the robust seedling stage.
The Mac is really annoyed at having been made to do things it didn’t want to do, and now it’s galloping along at the speed of a stampeding snail. So, it’s time to shut everything down and reboot.
Or better yet, to shut everything down and go dine on some leftover pot roast. Outta here! A fine Sunday evening to all!