Impromptu Nonsequiturs

Conficker and Windows Updates

This is a little out of date, I meant to post it two days ago, but got busy. But anyway - I didn't know anything about this conficker worm until Tuesday when all the headlines on the internet started blaring information about it, due to its imminent uprising on April 1. Since I run protection software, I wasn't too worried about it. Till I read that one of the things it'll do is try to disable your automatic Windows updates.

Funnily enough, a month or so ago I noticed that when I turned the computer on in the morning, I was getting a little error bubble telling me that Windows could not check for automatic updates. (I have my computer set up to automatically do Windows updates every morning at 8:00 a.m.) It offered me the option of manually updating, but when I tried that, it wouldn't download any of the updates. I always got an error message.

So when I read that conficker doesn't like to let you update, then I got nervous. I went to the Microsoft website and ran a comprehensive scan they offer for free there. (The fact that I could do that was a good sign, though - according to what I read, if you have the conficker worm, it will block you from doing things like that). The scan turned up no conficker, although it did turn up three trojans picked up from trying to download from Limewire. (I know that because when it gave the names of the files in which the trojans were located, they were the name of a song I'd recently tried 3 times - unsuccessfully - to download from Limewire; I detest Limewire and only go there when desperate, and after that last bout, I uninstalled it from my computer and don't intend to ever put it back).

Eventually, after slogging through the convoluted help sections of the Microsoft site, I was able to find some information on my particular update error code. Turns out there are three lines that get inserted in the registry (Microsoft doesn't know how they get there - interesting) but if you delete them, it doesn't "seem to" cause any unwanted side effects, and often fixes the update problem. I tried it, it worked, updates are back on schedule.

Interesting.

Chicken and Biscuits
It's been awhile since I had a foody post. I'm starting to really like to cook, to search out new recipes and then experiment and tweak them. I'm no gourmet cook yet, but I get by. My favorite site is allrecipes.com, because there are thousands of recipes to choose from, you can search by main ingredient or even just what you have in your cupboards, but more important are the reader's reviews. That's where you get the really good information for ways to make a so-so recipe even better, or tweaks that people did when they didn't have one or more ingredients the original recipe called for, and useful stuff like that.

I found a great recipe recently that I tweaked a bit and will pass on to you.

Chicken & Biscuits
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
some (about half a bag is what I had on hand) baby carrots, cut into 1" pieces
3 or 4 potatoes, peeled and cubed into 1" pieces
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1/4 tsp thyme (or so; more to taste if you wish)
1/4 tsp black pepper (ditto above)
salt to taste
some frozen peas
all purpose baking mix
milk

(I hope you remember that I'm one of those "a pinch of this, a bit of that" kind of cooks ... measurements are all relative).

This is a crock pot recipe - I've been searching out a lot more of them because now that I don't get home from work till 5:30, I'm not in the mood to start dinner the second I walk in the door - and if I do take half an hour to unwind first, then I stand around cooking for an hour or more, and have dinner at 7:00 or 8:00 at night. And the 'quick' stuff just isn't as good to me any more.

Whenever I'm cooking meat in a crock pot, I prefer to brown it first. It's a little time-consuming, and takes away some of the convenience of just tossing things in the crock pot before work, but it's worth it. It not only looks more appetizing, it tastes better.

So here's what I did.

Brown the chicken breasts in a little oil olive. Have the oil hot and sear it quickly, don't try to cook it through. Cool it, then cut into approximately 1" chunks. (I browned it the night before and left it in the fridge overnight, then cut it up in the morning; have you ever tried to cube hot chicken?) (Yeah, you could cut it up first and then brown it, but I don't think that would be the best way to proceed ... but try it if it floats your boat).

Place the celery, potatoes, carrots and cut-up chicken in the crock pot. Stir the soup, about 1/2 a cup of water, the thyme, salt and pepper in a bowl, and when mixed, pour over the stuff in the crock pot. Cover and cook on low 7 to 8 hours. When you start the next step, toss some frozen peas in and stir it up; they'll thaw and heat up by the time the biscuits are done.

The original recipe was for chicken and dumplings, with the dumplings being biscuit mix dropped onto the top and left to cook another half an hour. But I had used a small crock pot and knew that I wasn't going to have enough dumplings if I did that. So instead I followed the directions on the package to make up a batch of biscuits, then served them split with the chicken mix poured over top.

This sounds kind of mild. But I'll tell you what, it was phenomenal. Really really good. Of course you could always tweak the spices a bit to your liking. And make homemade biscuits if you're good at that sort of thing (I happen not to be, yet).

A note about chicken in the crock pot. I had read dozens of times that if you cook chicken pieces in the crock pot, 7 to 8 hours is too long, they'll overcook and develop some weird texture, or something. Some allrecipes.com reviewers suggested putting the chicken in the crock pot frozen to avoid that problem. Others said you should never put frozen meat in a crock pot, but I didn't want to do it anyway, because I wanted it browned first - and browning it, then re-freezing it was more trouble than I was willing to go to. I was in a dilemma - because to make any chicken dish in the crock pot, I had to let it cook at least 8 1/2 hours as that's how long it is from the time I walk out the door for work till the time I get home - I have no way to cook it any less time.

I decided to try this anyway, and can tell you I had no problems with it at all. Even with cut-up chicken, which would cook faster; and even considering that when I browned my chicken I cooked it just a tiny bit too long, until some of the pieces were already almost cooked through when I put them in the crock pot, even so - after about 9 hours in the crock pot (the last half hour being turned down to "keep warm" while I made the biscuits), the chicken was delicious, and not at all overcooked. I don't know if some people have crockpots that just get hotter, or whether mine is somewhat defective (although it's relatively new), but regardless ... cooking unfrozen chicken in the crockpot for more than 8 hours didn't cause me any grief. And this was just one of those recipes that was way better than the sum of its ingredients.

Vacation!
I'm on vacation effective immediately! I finally did it. For the past several years I'd been taking a vacation at the beginning of August (for Pennsic), then the end of September (my annual birthday trip), then had nothing from the first of October all the way through till the following end of July. Was not working for me at all. I do have a third week of vacation, but it always got divvied up in little chunks, a day here, two days there. And that long stretch was killing me.

So this year we took the week of spring break off, so the Dread Reverend can have the kids all week. Initially we were going to go to North Carolina again (once a year just isn't enough), but with the move and all, we decided to stay home instead. I'm just thrilled to get a week off work. While I don't want to spend my whole vacation working on "the move," I am hoping to putter around putting some more things away, and fixing up the Imaginarium - which will be fun, not like 'work.'

I have several imminent projects for the Imaginarium. I want to paint the insides of the kitchen cabinets, and decide what I'm doing to the outside (painting all, painting part, some other decor), then get some more of my stuff put away in them. I want to get the Christmas decorations that are currently living there put away in whichever cubby is going to become their home. I want to get a dresser that's been in the living room since we moved in, moved upstairs where it goes, so I can put my material and things away. And I want to find a sewing table ... so I can start working on projects! That's the last step to beginning some sewing, is finding a place for the sewing machine to live and room to do that work.

Because I have new sewing projects I want to try ... curtains for some of the rooms, decor-stuff like that.

I'd also like to start working on the bookshelves for the library. Right now all the books are still in their boxes, and I'd like to get them out. I haven't decided whether I'm building the shelves from scratch, or buying pre-made ones. That would be expensive, but far less time-consuming and easier - I'm sure the finished product would look better. I'll put some thought to that in the coming week.

I'd still kind of rather have the library in a more accessible place ... either in the main living area of the Imaginarium, or even downstairs in the living room. But the main area of the Imaginarium doesn't really have room for the library - the wall spaces are all small, broken up, and oddly shaped, so I think if I filled all that area with custom-built bookcases, it would just look cluttered. And we had initially said no bookshelves in the living room, because we had that at the old house and got really tired of it. Of course, one difference there was we really didn't have room for them, so they were making the place look cluttered. In this living room, we do in fact have room for them. It's something I'm still considering. Fortunately, there's time, as we haven't done anything with the living room yet anyway.

I almost regret getting rid of those 20 or so boxes of books in the last few years ... now I'd have room to have that much library!

I think that's all the news that is news (or passes for same around here) tonight.

Knitting Evilness; and In Praise Of Oven-Ready Lasagna

I got my Knitpicks catalog in the mail yesterday, and while browsing through it, saw a little article on Miriam Tegels, the official world's faster knitter (Guinness even says so) (the book, not the beer). Constantly bemoaning my slow knitting speeds, I had to check this out.

I almost wish I hadn't. Watch this.



Knitting fast just for the sake of knitting fast has never been my thing (and good thing, too). I always enjoyed the meditative, relaxing pace of my knitting. But it does get frustrating when things take so long (as I've mentioned before). All I could think of while watching this was, "Wow, if I could knit even half that fast, I could actually start a sweater in the season I hoped to wear it in, and finish it in time!" If I could knit a sweater in a month to six weeks I'd be happy. Miriam could probably knit one in a couple of days (or less). I just tried to imagine sitting down and knitting, like, an entire scarf or baby blanket during one episode of your favorite TV show.

Of course - she must have to spend a fortune on yarn that way. See, there's always a bright side - I only have to buy yarn once a year or so.

But, I'm plugging away at my sweater - got several more rows done last night. I'm nearing completion of the third repeat of the pattern on the back, so that's not too terrible. (I don't remember how many I need to do, it's in my notes which aren't handy - 7 or 8 maybe?). I started it last winter with the intent for it to be a summer sweater (3/4 length sleeves and all). Then when summer blew by, I decided it would make an acceptable winter sweater (back to long sleeves). Now it looks like it's back to being a summer sweater - a next summer sweater. Ah well. It's all knitting, so it's all good.

Moving on ... okay, I don't make a particularly fancy lasagna - I don't use ricotta cheese or anything like that, just plain fare - lasagna noodles, sauce and hamburger, shredded mozzarella and grated Parmesan cheese - but I love the way I make it (and the Dread Reverend's pretty happy with it, too, so we're all that matter). But I always made it the 'old fashioned' way - boiling the lasagna noodles, then making the layers of lasagna in the pan, then baking it to melt the cheese and heat it.

Well. I went to make lasagna last night, and discovered that by accident I had bought the oven ready kind that you don't have to boil first. I intentionally never bought this before because I was just skeptical - 'oven ready' implied, to me, 'pre-cooked' - and I didn't see how pre-cooked lasagna could be any good.

So when I discovered that was all I had, and I already had the sauce and hamburger cooking on the stove, I decided to go for it. Man - was I glad I did. This was the best pan of lasagna I've ever made in my life! I don't know if it was just the lasagna, or that in combination with the sauce (I always buy plain sauce, then spice it up to my liking, never the same way twice - maybe it just turned out exceptionally good this time). But I was deeply impressed with the oven ready lasagna. It was definintely done after baking, not sort of chewy like I expected it to be. But at the same time it had some structure left to it, wasn't all limp and lifeless like my lasagna is when I boil it first (even when I boil it al dente - the baking after the fact seemed to kind of wreck it).

So, kudos for oven ready lasagna - I'll never boil lasagna noodles again! For what it's worth, here's my lasagna recipe. Seasoned cooks (ha ha, pun intended) might find this boring, but the unadventurous and / or new cooks might like it. And it's open to a lot of personal tweaking. I happen not to like chunky pasta sauces with veggies in them, which is why I use plain sauce and fix it up. But you could of course use one of those chunky veggie sauces, or add mushrooms, or anything you like.

A simple basic starting place, but really good even just as is.

12 lasagna noodles - oven ready!
2 cans Hunts Traditional spaghetti sauce
about a pound or so of ground round or hamburger
1 pkg. shredded mozzarella cheese
grated parmesan
spices: Basil, Oregano, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Salt

Pour the sauce into a pan and heat (mostly because it tastes yucky cold, and you're going to be doctoring it up)

Add spices - those listed or experiment - and taste till you like it

Meanwhile, cook and drain the hamburger

Stir sauce and hamburger together. Spoon some into the bottom of your pan - I don't have a pan measurement for you because I don't have a proper lasagna pan at the moment, but ideally it'll be just wide enough for 3 strips of lasagna to cover the bottom. Or 4 pieces across the bottom - then you might need more than 12, depending on how thick you like your lasagna. Three to four layers of noodles works well for me.

Place 3 lasagna strips across the pan, on top of the sauce and hamburger mix you just spread around the bottom of the pan. On top of that spread a layer of the sauce and hamburger mix, a generous layer of mozzarella cheese, and a good sprinkle of parmesan. Repeat those layers till you place the last layer of lasanga, top with sauce and hamburger, and lots of cheese.

Cover tightly with tinfoil and bake at 375 for about an hour (or whatever oven temperature your particular box of oven ready lasagna tells you to use; that's what mine said). Take the pan out of the oven but leave covered and let stand 10 to 15 minutes. Then dig in - num yummy! (Also to-die-for left over).

Yes, I'm A Freak - It's Blogapalooza

I was in the mood to post recently, but didn't really have anything to say. I was looking over my page, and noticed what a long list of categories I have. And it came to me ... I'll do the annual (?) Category Update, with a little blurb about each thing on the list.

Okay - I suppose the 'blather' category can come at the end (if the middle doesn't cover it).

In knitting news: I went back to work on the sweater this week. Hopefully I'll keep steadily at it, and maybe get it done by ... umm, spring? Sigh. Oh well. I wasn't too keen on the last pair of socks I started, so I may scrap them and start a new pair. I decided some time earlier this year that life's too short and uncertain to waste time on projects I've truly lost interest in. It's a hobby - for fun. Not something (else) I have to force myself to do.

I haven't thought about whether I'm doing any Christmas knitting this year, but if I am, I'd better get busy planning that.

SCA: This is the time of year that my post-Pennsic glow (if there was one) is waning, and I start forgetting about the whole thing till next year. Bad idea. This is the very time of year to keep motivated on long-term projects, and if I did, I'd be very happy with myself next year. So I'm going to plan to work on some of my projects at least once a month throughout the winter. Some of the things I want to do:

• make some more (better) garb


• decorate the garb I have - embroidery and such


• make my tent cover


• make a new top for my shade pavilion


• hmm, I'm sure there are some more things, but that's a good start

Gardening: Well, I started strong this year, but was disappointed in my follow-through. But the good news is, since I decided to start treating gardening as work-in-progress, as an experiment of sorts, I'm not too angsty about it. I learned a lot from this year. I lost steam about mid-summer, and didn't maintain my plants and things well. I especially lost it after Pennsic - I stopped watering things, and being August, it kind of did them in. Nothing really ever recovered. I also didn't plan my fall plantings as I'd have liked - I'd wanted to plant some of these gorgeous mums I'm now seeing at the stores, but I didn't plan a space for them, so I don't know where to put them. And I wanted to plant some bulbs for spring flowers, which I also haven't done (although I don't think it's too late for that). There are still some things I need / want to do before serious bad weather - mark where my perennials are, so I don't disturb them next spring when I want to start digging around in the flower beds; prune the roses; trim the shrubs out front; clean out the planters; and clean up the pond. Those things I hope to do soon, to at least get prepared for next season.

Weaving: I haven't done any weaving in way over a year. But it's something I'm still very interested in. I'd like to continue learning about tapestry weaving, but to do that now, I'd probably have to start over in my 'tutorial book' I bought last year. Well, it'll stay on the wish list for awhile yet.

Tyler: Tyler's doing great. He had a wonderful time on vacation, running around on the beach. He seemed to do well on the trip there and back, despite it's length. I just had him to the vet's on Saturday for a T4 check (testing his thyroid to see if his current medication needs adjusted), and they told me his levels were perfect, so his meds are fine. He's lost some weight though, and is getting kind of bony. I know part of that is aging (he'll be 14 next month!) but I'm going to work on bulking him up a little without letting him get too fat. I'm adding a third snack / meal to his day, consisting this week of a half-cup of whole wheat pasta and some mozzarella cheese. We'll see how that does for him. I'd also like to start taking him out more for exercise - as I mentioned, he did great on the trip, wanting to run around and seeming very energetic. Here he just lays about all the time, but I think he truly just gets bored because we don't do much - it's my fault we don't go for walks and outings anymore. As long as he still feels like it, keeping him active can only be good for him. Unfortunately, I waited till fall when the weather will be turning bad - but we tend to have relatively mild winters here, so hopefully if I ever get started, there will still be lots of exercise to be had in the coming months.

Embroidery: I have several embroidery projects I'd like to get back to. One is the embroidery on the pirate coat (a separate entry). Another is some embroidery on garb (mentioned in the SCA entry). I want to finish The Dread Reverend's Sea Chameleon favor, as the only person who has one right now is Berg, and I certainly thing the Commodore deserves one at least as much, if not more. Maybe over the winter months.

Quilting: This is one of those hobbies that I'd like to have time for, but never do. I mentioned in knitting that I'd learned the difficult lesson of giving up on projects that were no longer 'getting it' for me. I'm about to that point with the Tolkien quilt. It's at least 10 years old, and I've just really lost interest in it. I think if I could scrap it with a clean conscience, it would free me up to do some other useful things. I would like to make a scrap quilt; I got a book awhile back full of patterns for scrap quilts made with 5" squares (so it's easy - you cut all your material into 5" squares, then you can choose any pattern from the book and you're all set for it). I spent an entire weekend some time ago cutting all my large, accumulated fabric stash into 5" squares, and have added to it since - I could probably make several of these at this point. And this type of project (if I don't over-engineer it) could easily be completed in a couple of weekends. So perhaps that's something I'll think about getting done this winter as well.

Poi: I'm still practicing! I had a wonderful evening on the beach in North Carolina doing some solitary poi with glow-sticks on the poi balls. It was around sunset /dusk, and I was actually standing in the swash zone, with the income waves washing over my feet. It was magical. I plan to continue working on poi, although I haven't learned anything new in quite awhile.

Travel: Well, the NC trip was a success (despite some dark spots which I won't go into here). I cannot WAIT to go back. So my vacationing for this year went really, really well. The only thing I want to do differently next year is plan a spring vacation - whether it's NC or some place else - because as it stands now, my only two 'real' vacations fall at the beginning of August and the end of September - too close together, with that hideously long stretch of 10 months in between.

Shenanigans: We haven't had many of these for awhile. We had the one wild porch party this year, but that was about it. We have our annual Samhain party coming up, but I've been getting lazy and not really wanting to turn it into an overnighter / weekend event anymore. I'd rather have something more quiet. Wild raucous parties are fun - except for having to deal with the aftermath the next day. I wish someone else would host the party; then I wouldn't have to worry about that part of it.

Project: Pirate Coat: I've done nothing with it since before Pennsic, except wore it in the surf in North Carolina and got saltwater on the bottom. :o) Which was planned. I need to remove the temporarily-sewed-on cuffs and finish the embroidery on them; and then do the embroidery on the rest of the coat. I ought to think about starting that soon, because that's going to be a winter-long project.

Sewing: Yeah, I don't even know why this category is here. I don't make much of anything that wouldn't fall into the SCA or Quilting categories. Fact is, while I enjoy the idea of homemade things, I don't really much like sewing.

New House Project: While the original house that spawned this category is old water under the bridge, I haven't deleted the category because it's kind of a never-ending dream of mine. I'm back on it, at least temporarily. As I've said many times before, my house is simply too small for the people who reside here throughout the month. We desperately need a bigger house. The problem is (a) affording it, and (b) figuring out how to unload my house in this market. But I'm currently re-obsessed with a house I first noticed a year and a half ago, which is still on the market, recently changed realtors, and on which they've significantly dropped the price. I have an appointment to go see it tomorrow. I really love this house (what I know of it) and it would be perfect for us - 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a living room, family room AND rec room; 2 acres; an in-ground pool; just gorgeous. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

And that brings us to recipes, which I've only ever posted once. That's only because it was my mom's recipe, and so not copyrighted. But I muck about with recipes all the time. Maybe over the winter I'll see fit to post some new ones.

Well, I guess that's about it - and certainly covers the blather. That's my life in a nutshell right now: desperately trying to figure out a way to afford a bigger house, and fit my many hobby dreams and wishes into my life. Winding down into the cocoon of autumn, and thinking a lot. But that's a post for another time.

And so it begins ...

I started on the pirate coat today. I was obsessed, I was a sewing fiend ... mostly because I don't really care so much for the sewing part, and really just wanted to get to the embroidery part.

I didn't make it that far ... but here's what I did get done between about 11:30 this morning and 6:00 tonight.

First I cut out all the pattern pieces and pinned them to my fabric. This took a lot of time, for several reasons. First, my fabric was 54" wide rather than the 45" called for in the pattern. If I had any math sense, I may have been able to figure out how much less I needed, since the fabric was wider, and not have had to get the whole 6 1/2 yards. But I'm not that mathtelligent, so I just got the 6 1/2 yards. Consequently, after first pinning the pattern pieces out according to the pattern schematic, I realized I could save a lot of space by rearranging them ... so I did. (I also had quite a bit of fabric left over, but I'm sure I'll find a use for such nice twill).

Finally, I was ready to start cutting ...


... this part always makes me nervous. I'm always afraid, what if I screwed something up? At this point, I'm totally committed ... if I screwed up, it'll be too late to fix it once I cut everything out.

Eh, whatever. I cut them out, and then laid out the back and one front side on the table, to begin brainstorming my embroidery coup de grace. (The material is all black, it just looks all different kinds of shades in these pictures).




But I wasn't really getting inspired from looking at it this way, so I decided to put at least some of the coat together. I figured I could envision my embroidery scheme better that way, and it wouldn't really make it any harder to embroider some parts of it ... like the skirts.




Then I got paranoid that the sleeves might not fit, so thought I'd better do them to make sure, before I invest any time in embroidery. I got one done ...

... and it fit fine, but by then I'd pretty well lost steam (it was getting close to 6:00) so I called it a day. My one-armed pirate coat is hanging out awaiting further developments.

One small project I might have been able to start on tonight, embroidery-wise, is the cuffs. But I needed interfacing to begin putting them together, and I hadn't gotten any at the store yesterday. I thought I had some, but it turns out I didn't have enough. I don't want to embroider through the interfacing, but the way this pattern is set up, there is a cuff set with interfacing (the 'facing' cuff) and then a cuff set without interfacing (the 'outer' cuff), which you then sew together, turn right side out, and use as the cuff proper. I don't want to get that far before I do the embroidery, but I do I want to put them all together at least pinned, to get a good idea of exactly where on the cuff the embroidery will be most effective, and how much space I have after seams. To do that, it would be easier to work through the process in order, and that would have required putting the interfacing on the cuff facings to proceed from there.

Had my mind been clearer, I may well have been able to figure it out without the interfacing, but ... it was getting late, I was hungry, there'd been rum, and I'd been working on it for over 6 hours. I decided anything else I did at that point was highly susceptible to serious screw-up, and my best bet was to call it a day, and relax in front of the TV knitting (and probably watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3!).

Meanwhile through much of this, I'd been throwing together a pot of beef stew. It's funny - I learned to make beef stew from my mom years ago. Then for a long time I couldn't get it to turn out quite right, and was always futzing with it. But the more I futzed, the worse it turned out. This time I really wasn't in the mood to cook, and was just tossing stuff at the pot on my downstairs breaks from sewing on the way to or from the bathroom or to make another drink ... and this is the best beef stew I've made in a long time. Apparently it doesn't like futzing.

I'm so psyched about getting to the embroidery on this coat!! But I know I have to take it one phase at a time, and do each one well, if I want the whole thing to really turn out nice, and not just look trashy. So I'll be patient, and work through it. I need to get interfacing, and finish the front facing before I can hem it ... then I can start planning the embroidery for the 'skirt' panels. And I need to figure out the cuffs, and then I can start embroidery on them as well. I'm also going to be embroidering up the front facing and around the neck, and that part I could probably start on any time, although it might be wise to decide what type of fasteners I'm going to put on the coat, and get them, so I can plan my embroidery around them.

There's still a lot of prep work before I can get to the embroidery. Not to mention, finding or making up designs for the embroidery itself.

For tonight, though ... looks like it's back to finishing the Log Cabin Blanket. And a big ol' woo-hoo to that.

You want the Futzless Mom's Beef Stew Recipe? Here ya go ... but remember ... this is totally futzless, so if you're not comfortable cooking this way, either bite the bullet and give it a try once, or move on to something more precise. But I'm telling you ... all the years I tried so hard to make this beef stew "right," this is the first time it's turned out this good, and this is exactly how I did it.

Mom's Beef Stew

about 1 1/2 lbs stew beef (give or take a chunk or two)
about 3 carrots
about 3 potatoes
a can of peas
some water
some cooking oil
some flour
a heavy pot

Cut the beef into pieces you'd like to see in your stew. I use scissors for this. Trim any excess fat.

Pour some cooking oil into the bottom of the pot and heat it up.

Dump some all purpose flour into a gallon-size ziplock bag. Throw in the meat, shake it up really well. When the oil's hot, open the bag and pull out handfuls of the meat, with whatever flour you happen to grab with it. (don't try to get all the flour, but don't make a serious effort to shake any flour off the meat, either). Toss it in the pot. Let that cook a little while, then use a spatula, wooden spoon, or whatever you find handy to stir it up a bit.

Continue to cook and stir the beef with flour until it's mostly browned. Stop before it burns.

Put hot tap water in the pot till it covers the beef by about an inch or two. Cook this for 2 hours. Once it starts boiling good, turn the heat down and adjust until it's mostly simmering. Keep a lid on. Stir often. Keep it simmering. (Usually when I make beef stew it doesn't stick; this stuck horribly and had to be stirred a lot; however, as I mentioned, it turned out better than usual, so I figured it was worth it).

Go do something fun for awhile. When it's been almost 2 hours, peel 3 carrots (more or less) and chop them into about 1/2" rounds. Throw those in the pot, stir again, put the lid on.

About 25 minutes later you're going to add potatoes, so sometime before that peel 3 or so potatoes, and chop them up into more or less bite-size pieces. Toss those in, stir, put the lid on.

At various points in this process shake in quite a bit of salt (if you like salt; if you're on a low-salt diet, I'm sorry ... do your best). A generous portion of pepper wouldn't go amiss, either. Stir often, since - as I said - this version seemed to stick more than usual. (I think it was the excess flour; but that's what makes it thick and stewy - so it's worth it).

When the potatoes have cooked about 25 minutes, open a can of peas. Now you can do two things with the liquid in the can: if your beef stew is just about the right thickness (and if you played loose with the flour, it should be), you can drain the liquid into the sink. If your beef stew has managed to get too thick (hard to imagine) you can dump the liquid from the can of peas in with the peas. Either way, dump in the can of peas and stir it up. At this point it's basically done ... just leave on the heat and stir long enough to heat the peas (about 5 seconds).

If the stew isn't thick at all, you did what I'd been doing wrong for years - not enough flour at the start. This is where I start futzing, and usually bugger it up. The only fix for it I've found out at that point is to make a flour and warm water slurry, and add it to the stew. It will probably thicken it up some, but it always detracts from the color and flavor when I have to do that. That's why this pot turned out so well - I didn't have to do that this time. So remember - lots of flour at the beginning.

There ... that's my N0-Futz Mom's Beef Stew. If it's excellent, thank my mom. If it turns out like crap, it's your fault.