Spicy Roast Beef and Goodbye Lie Trilogy Excerpt

Spicy Roast Beef

Do you know which female
character from The Goodbye Lie series is the subject of the excerpt below? If only she had tried the recipe which follows for Spicy Roast Beef at her dinner party...


 The Goodbye Lie Series Excerpt:


     Grammy's gift was a quart of her meat flavoring. "It's our family secret, _____. Here's the recipe. Memorize it, then burn it. Promise?"
     "Yes, ma'am. I promise."

     Peeper was not to be out done, "I saved the best fer last. It's a bottle a my very own special furniture polish."

     "The way Peep experiments out back in the little house," Michael explained to Trip, "it's no small miracle she hasn't blown us all up. Isn't that the stuff you make from turpentine, alcohol, and ether, Peep?"

     "Yup, but you forget the balsam fir and linseed oil, Michael. That's how come I'm the chemist and you're the architect." 

     The laughter had been strained and everyone had been uncomfortable. The cozy glow from the candles helped hide the chipped dishes and patched linens that came furnished with the house, and no adult noticed or, at least, mentioned the shortcomings of her table. Leave it to her brother to have asked, "How come you use all these cracked plates, ____, when you have a whole hope chest full of brand new dishes and stuff?" Everyone else had been too polite to inquire.

     She'd quickly answered, "I'll bring my chest over as soon as my cooking warrants the beauty of the china." The ladies had made a sincere attempt to reassure her that the meal was delicious. She would have believed them, too, had she not tasted her own food. The salad was gritty with sand, the deviled eggs were runny from the honey and too salty, the butter beans in the stew were hard, and the chocolate frosting was so thin, the cake showed through. ____ saw her mother throw several sharp looks at Jack Patrick each time he'd tried a new course and then opened his mouth to comment. She imagined the lecture the poor boy must have received about how to behave at his sister's house right before they'd left Dunnigan Manor...

******

Jane Marie writes:
My church friend, Kris Mandrick, brought this wonderful "stringy" beef roast to a pot luck.  I loved it.  I mean loved it!  She was sweet enough to let me share it with you.  It's made in the slow cooker with ingredients you probably have on hand.  It makes some rich gravy, is moist, is good for Sunday dinner or sandwiches and freezes well, if there are any leftovers.  Thank you, Kris. -JMM

Spicy Roast Beef

You'll need:

2-3 pound beef roast 
Lightly salt (optional) and pepper all sides.
Sprinkle with minced/powdered garlic or garlic pepper.  Put in crock.

Mix in separate bowl: 

1/4 cup soy sauce (I used lite.)

2 Tbl balsamic vinegar

2 Tbl A1 Sauce or Worcestershire sauce (I used Worcestershire.)

2 tsp yellow mustard, liquid or dry (I used liquid.)

Make several shallow slits in top of roast and pour mixture over roast. Let cook in crock 8 hours on low or 4 hours on high.

 

P.S.  This recipe will also be listed in the Recipes link at the top of this page. 

The Crocked Turkey

Our daughter, Barbra, once said, "Mom, why is it that everything you do has a bit of a nightmare attached to it."  Was I offended?  Heck no.  I thought that crack was hysterical.  She clearly appreciates her mother.  

So for the holidays, I am a traditionalist.  Enter the turkey. I heard somewhere that cooking the turkey in the crock pot won't dry it out.   Since, over the years, I've tried the oven, an externally greased brown paper bag, which surprisingly never caught fire, a rotisserie and the clear cooking bags, why not the crock?

Off to the grocery store I sent my husband, Bruce, with my handwritten list. Because, sadly, they are teaching fewer and fewer lessons on cursive, he was, as is always necessary, forced to ask an elderly stranger, who does know cursive, to decode my scribblings. While he got most everything on the list, he forgot the green beans for the casserole. With no beans, we could have none of that kind of casserole, which, in turn, forced me to eat both cans of French Fried onions, not at the same time, of course.  I was smart and hid the second can from Barbra who, like her mother, would have polished off the sucker with the speed of summer lightning, as they say. I've taught her well.

Back to the turkey.  The recipe said to get a six or seven pound bird and that is what Bruce delivered.  I don't know how big our crock is exactly, so I guessed.  I guess a whole lot when I cook. Forget that this appliance is a couple of decades old and the glass lid is long gone.  It still gets hot and a metal spatterware plate works well as a substitute lid.   So there I was, positioning the bird in the pot or trying to.  Then I remembered reading you should put the whole breast side down when roasting so the juices stay in the meat. And then I thought, too, it might be interesting to have a taste test.  To that end, I turned the breast on it side, covered it with carrots, apples, onions, onion soup mix and a bit of water.  My goal was to determine if the submerged portion was juicer.

But first I had to cover the pot.  I tried.  The blue metal plate would not rest on the crock.  The crock was too full.  What should I do?  Weight.  I need weight, I thought.  And so you have the next photo.  After stacking a red metal frying pan, heavy glass lid and metal bunt pan on top, the blue plate fit snugly.  It was off to bed for me.

We awoke to delightful turkey smells, the result pictured below. 

 In dramatic fashion, note the careful placement of the carrots around the turkey slices.

Oh how tender was the meat, all the meat. Remember I had turned the breast on its side, half in the juice, half out?  Well, so much liquid cooked out of the onions and apples, the turkey was completely covered, so that experiment will have to be repeated.   I was, however, disappointed that there was not as much sliced turkey from the breast as I had expected.   As I picked the turkey,  I turned it over and found that there was another entire half of breast! Remember, I may have mentioned in an earlier blog how when I cut up a whole chicken, we play a game Bruce likes to call Guess the Piece. I never did well in my poultry anatomy class, as you might imagine.

"Where's the trash can?"  Somebody yelled.  "It's on the washer." (We'll save the explanation of the deeper meaning of this paragraph for another blog.  It's a stand alone story...)