Savory Beef and Root Vegetable Stew

The chilly weather is moving in here in the Northeast, and that means it's the season for soups and stews. Beef stew is a winter staple in our house, but I decided I wanted to play around a little bit to see if I could come up with something with some different flavors.

This stew is pretty versatile, as you can adjust the herbs and spices to your liking, as well as play with which root vegetables you include.

Read on to see what I did.

Korean-Style Beef Bowl from Pampered Chef

I'm a big fan of stir fry style foods, mostly because they tend to be healthy, quick, and relatively easy to put together.  Cook up some meat, add some veggies, throw on a tasty sauce, put it all over some steamed rice, and often in less than 45 minutes (less if you plan ahead and cut everything up the day before). I usually end up doing some type of stir fry dinner once a week on average, and it usually tends to be chicken. But sometimes I mix it up.

Last year, I acquired a copy of the Pampered Chef 29 Minutes to Dinner recipe book, and have since bought the second and third volumes, and there's a pretty excellent recipe for a Korean-style beef bowl.  I gave it a whirl a while back.

I deviated a little bit from the recipe to accommodate the available ingredients, but that's one of the nice things about a stir fry dish - you can adjust to your likes and whatever happens to be in the fridge at the time.

Grilled Steak with Orange Teriyaki Sauce

Summer means grilling, and in my house, grilling, much of the time, means steak.

I like me some steak.

Recently, I pulled out an "old favorite" recipe and gave it a little bit of a change up.  I came up with my recipe for orange teriyaki steak last fall when I discovered some steak in my freezer that had been there about three months.  The steak I made recently with this recipe didn't require as much help as the deep-freeze steak.  And I happened to have some mushrooms (I'm on a bit of a mushroom kick), so I added those to the mix.  Pair it with some fresh sweet corn - oh wow!

Now, I will share the marinade for the steak, but the process I want to go through with you specifically is for the sauce.