February 26: Greek Braised Beef Stew

Today I made this Greek stew. I started it at about 11am. I gathered up these ingredients:

 

I put 1/4 cup flour in a plastic bag with 2 tsp Greek seasoning, some salt and pepper, and shook it up to coat:

 

I browned the meat in hot olive oil, working in two batches:

 

I transferred the meat to the crockpot, then added 2 large onions cut into 8 wedges each, a pint of grape tomatoes, some kalamata olives, some fresh oregano, and a can of reduced-sodium beef broth:

 

I cooked it on high for about 6 hours:

 

The stew was served with lemon wedges and fresh sprigs of oregano:

 

This soup was really good. I'm glad I used the reduced sodium broth, because the olives added a lot of salt. I loved the texture of the tomatoes, and the lemons really brought out the flavor. This one's a winner.

 

For dessert, I made a recipe I found on Pinterest: microwave mug brownies! This is so easy, and I usually have all these ingredients on hand:

1/4 cup each of flour and sugar

2 tsp cocoa powder

a pinch of salt

2 tbsp oil

3 tbsp water

 

You just mix up the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients, stir, and microwave for 1 min. 40 seconds. Our microwave is old, so it took 2 min. 40 seconds for it to be perfect. We ate it with strawberry ice cream and it was delicious. I took a picture of it b/c I thought I might have to send it into Pinstrosity, but it came out great!