Slow Cooker

Today I decided to make Beef N' Barley soup er, stew.  I found some beef in the freezer that had been there for a bit (not too long but long enough that everybody but me forgot it existed) and thawed it last night.  I also bought a pound of barley at the grocery the other day and some frozen peas and carrots today.

So I got out the slow cooker thingy, forgot what they're called, and filled it with about 6 cups of water and some beef concentrate (a type of bullion) and let it heat for a bit.  I chopped the beef into 1 inch chunks and browned it in some olive oil in a pan then plopped it into the warming beefy water.  Next I added a little over a cup of washed barley, dropped in a couple ounces of olive oil, gave it a stir and let it sit for a couple hours.  After that couple of hours I added about three cups of frozen peas and carrots (slightly more than I wanted) and one clove of finely minced garlic.  Sprinkled in a dash of salt and let it sit for another two or so hours.

Somewhere in the middle of this Younger-taller brother came into my room and asked if the stuff in the cooker was edible.  Yes of course it is, it's food you dumbass.
Anyways, I explained to him that the Beef N' Barley soup/stew was for me but I plan on giving some to Conker, and if he wants he can have some since there'll be enough leftovers.
He went off and microwaved some of last night's steak. 

So this soup... stew... is so far really good.  It's certainly not Progresso Beef N' Barley (which I love) but I prefer homemade to canned anyways.  I can control what goes into it, how much of each ingredient and can tailor it to my taste better than you can with a canned soup.  Besides, with the homemade stuff I have leftovers and can give some to my dog if I watch what I put into it.

I cooked the soupstew for a little under five hours on my cooker's high setting.  I don't have any idea how hot that is, only that it has a 4 and 6 hour time setting for high and a 8 or 10 hour setting for low.  After the selected amount of time it'll switch to "warm" mode and won't particularly cook anymore so I had to turn it on again since I was using the 4 hour setting.  I think next time I'll set it for 6 instead of 4 and see how that does.
I know I'll get to make it again pretty soon since this batch won't last long.

Conker had been waiting all day for this, and was really miffed when I gave his to him while it was still somewhat hot.  He was being very impatient and following me around like mad so I gave him hot food and he'll have to take his time eating it instead of scarfing it down like he always does.
If it hadn't been still fairly hot he would have gone through it in seconds.  Maybe I should feed him more hot food to keep him from bolting it all down.

I added a couple things to Conker's food that I personally wouldn't really want in there.  His joint supplement, a squirt of salmon oil, the chicory/probiotic blend I made some weeks ago and some of that PlaqueOff stuff.  Oh and a bit of powdered eggshell since this meal has no calcium at all.

With the exception of the beef, which was cooked, this entire meal was new to Conker so hopefully he won't have an explosion from it.  I doubt it though, since this isn't his first 100% new meal and the last one he had he did fine with. 

When compared to the price of canned Beef N' Barley soupstew, I saved a ton of money by doing it this way.  A can here, when not on sale, is $2.99.  On sale they are $1.99.  I buy beef for $1.99 a pound or less, so if I'd bought that beef it'd have cost me about $2.  The pound of barley was $1, so were the peas and carrots and I have enough of both to make another batch.  Everything else I put in we always have on hand, so I would have spent a grand total of $4 on this meal and it made about 7 servings or so (comes out to under .60 cents a meal!).  The same amount in canned soup would have cost me $21.