It may or may not feel like autumn where you live, but according to the calendar it’s official. Autumn is here.
If you’re not quite ready for a cozy stew, you should definitely print this recipe for Instant Pot beef stew and save it for later. It’s a perfect stew, with tender chunks of meat, buttery potatoes, sweet carrots and a rich, silky broth.
An Instant Pot takes all of the guess work out of cooking stew. You don’t have to check in on the stew and decide if it’s ready or needs more time. You don’t have to worry about adding more liquid. My recipe will tell you exactly how to put the stew together and then you just step back and let the pressure cooker do all the work.
Make this recipe on a day when you have extra time - it will take about 1.5 hours total, including prep work, cooking time and the time it takes for the Instant Pot to release pressure.
You’ll be rewarded with a truly delicious dinner, hopefully one that will provide leftovers for an extra day or two.
Find the recipe for Instant Pot beef stew here
Dinner Last Week
Last week was rather uninspired, I was just trying to keep up with life and get the family fed. I noticed that Amy from Yummy Toddler Food had the same kind of week when she shared her week of real life dinners.
She makes two great points in her recent newsletter:
#1: Much of what you see people eating on Instagram isn’t really how families eat, even the families of food bloggers. We all know this, but it’s still very easy to feel like everyone else is doing dinner better than you.
This is one of the reasons that I share an honest summary of what my family eats each week, without fancy photos or bragging about how much my kids love vegetables (they don’t).
#2: When Amy meal plans, she plans to eat one meal twice in a week. For her family, this meant two nights of burrito bowls. I love this type of meal planning!
Here’s what my crew ate last week:
Tuesday: I was out of town on Monday and returned Tuesday afternoon, driving directly from the airport to pick up the kids at school. Dinner was a simple pot of pasta with jarred red sauce and chicken sausage.
Wednesday: We had battered fish in the freezer, so I popped that in the oven along with a sheet-pan of roasted potatoes and cabbage.
Thursday: Pasta again! This time I defrosted a small container of ricotta from the freezer and made pork and ricotta meatballs. I used up what was left of the marinara sauce from Tuesday night. We had a simple salad on the side, made from butter lettuce and cucumbers.
Friday: Leftovers, or make your own grilled cheese.
Cookbooks
I found Cookish at the library last week and bookmarked a whole bunch of veggie recipes. Curried carrot salad sounds good, and so does charred broccoli with miso vinaigrette and skillet-charred Brussels sprouts with apples & pecans. Beyond veggies and salads, you’ll also find lots of main course recipes.
This cookbook focuses on recipes with short ingredient lists that pack a punch. You might have to build up your pantry a bit with ingredients like harissa, dates, miso, pickled ginger, etc.. but a decent number of recipes in the book stick with simpler ingredients.
This cookbook is great if you’re in a flavor rut and crave new, inspired recipes that aren’t too complicated.
This is the last weekend of September, can you believe it?
We don’t have any changing leaves in LA, but the artichoke flowers in a neighborhood garden are quite lovely.
On Saturday Sorin and I are kayaking the LA river, which sounds outdoorsy but is more of an urban adventure. The river is like much of Los Angeles - an industrial concrete channel with pockets of lush natural beauty and wildlife.
This is something we’ve been talking about doing for years. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Hope you have a good weekend,
Jenny