debate half-empty or half-full

IMG_7393, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

To understand why I am so proud of this meal, you first have to understand one thing. My apartment has a smoke detector. This, normally, is something I like, as I pretty much prefer not dying in a fire to any other activity one could imagine. But this smoke detector is the fussiest little bitch in the entire world. It goes off at everything.

Everything.

Like, not just on the (reasonably infrequent) occasions when I burn stuff in the kitchen. Notable and serious fire hazards have included “the oven heating up” and “the smell of cookies baking.” I basically want to take this smoke detector and throw it in Lake Ontario. So when, while making this stew (which involves, essentially, throwing all the ingredients together and then chucking it in the oven for three hours and hoping it works out), some of the contents boiled over inside the oven, you can just imagine the fun times I had fanning the smoke detector to keep it happy. It was awesome.

That said, though? When I finally opened the oven and took a look at what was in that casserole dish three hours later, it was absolutely worth it. The recipe is adapted from this adaptation of Jamie Oliver (substituted pot roast for beef brisket, halved the amount of meat and doubled the amount of carrots), and it really is a leap of faith to make. Because of the nature of the dish, if you do it wrong, you don’t know until three hours later when you’re kitchen’s a mess and all that money on ingredients is wasted and you’re hungry.

I’m really, really glad this worked out.

Song of the Entry: Death Cab for Cutie – Marching Bands of Manhattan