Bavarian Beef Dinner

Today was one of those Sundays where all my pent-up energy and plans for cooking were finally realized! It's been a very busy last few weeks with the semester really starting to race to the finish, but today I got back to my traditional weekend batch of muffins which make a nice breakfast during the week - apple streusel muffins, wherein I actually successful made streusel for once! I usually overwork it and end up with cinnamon sugar butter...

Also got a little improvising going with chocolate chocolate-chip cookies! I took the standard Hershey's chocolate chip cookie recipe from the package of semisweet chips (which incidentally, is the only chocolate chip cookie recipe that I've found that makes chewy cookies!), and I subbed out 1/4 c of flour for cocoa, and put in 1/2 white chocolate chips and 1/2 semisweet. They're really good!

And then, since this is my week to cook, I had the Bavarian Beef Dinner marked for my next food share. Do you ever get the urge to sit down and read through some of your cook books? It doesn't strike me very often, but a couple of weeks ago I read through several cook books and marked recipes that sounded good (another interesting find: Mexican-style Chicken Kiev).

Bavarian Beef Dinner (Best of Country Cooking 1999):

2 lb boneless chuck roast, cubed (I bought extra lean stew beef = $10.75)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1-1/2 c beef broth ($0.15)
2 med onions, sliced ($1.59)
1 garlic clove, minced ($0.05)
1 tsp each dill seed, caraway seed, paprika, salt
1/2 tsp pepper
(added mushrooms = $0.59)
1/4 c cold water
3 tbsp flour
1 c sour cream ($0.80)
egg noodles ($1.50)

Brown beef in oil. Add broth, onions, garlic, and seasonings. Cover and simmer for 2.5 hours, until beef is tender. Reduce heat. Combine water and flour until smooth; gradually stir into beef mixture. Cook and stir for 2 minutes. Add sour cream and heat through (do not boil). Serve over rice (or subbed egg noodles) with sauerkraut on the side.

I didn't include the sauerkraut in the tupperwares, although I do enjoy sauerkraut. The total for this meal was $15.63, coming in at $1.95 per serving!