Beef stew & Cornbread

I found an old CD I put together years ago. It was like a little time capsule, and I was listening to it while I made the beef stew & cornbread, so there was a lot of dancing and singing. Not so much with the picture taking, though. I digress.

Beef stew, in the beginning:



The instructions said "put the flower in a plastic bag and use it to coat the meat," and honestly my first thought was the grocery bag I brought the ingredients home in. It had been a long day, I wasn't thinking clearly. Anyhow, flour in a bag, in case you needed a visual:



Coated meat:



And this is right about the time I realized I forgot to cut up the bigger pieces into smaller pieces:



I let that cook with all the spices for an hour, during which time I did dishes and danced. Don't be jealous, it's no way to live your life.

Then it was time to make the corn bread. I think we all know how this goes. Dry ingredients, wet ingredients, pan:







Meanwhile, I cut up some veggies for the stew. I know that sounds like a bit too much excitement for some of you, so I'm going to skip posting those pics.*

So anyway, finished cornbread:



And finished stew:



Looks pretty good, right? Wrong. The potatoes and carrots in the stew weren't done, and the cornbread was kind of grainy, like the corn meal hadn't, I don't know, mixed right. Instead of melt-in-your-mouth good, the whole thing was kind of crunchy. I put the cornbread in the bottom of the bowl of stew (like normal people do) so it wasn't as noticeable, but the crunchy potatoes and carrots were still kind of shitty.

So, next time I'll add those much earlier, and then the frozen stuff for the last half hour.

Meanwhile, I need a better cornbread recipe.