The Intimidating Round Roast

Uggh.

I am faced with a three pound bottom round roast that, thus far, has kicked my ass.

Let me preface this tale.

For most of my adult life, I have been a vegetarian. I probably spent eight years as such. I even spent about six months as a vegan. I do not like to cook meat. I do not feel meat is a daily necessity. I think it general Americans consume too much meat, and too much processed foods, and too much flat out junk. As this blog documents, I do eat meat.

It started toward the end of my pregnancy with the occasional turkey sandwich. I was on a gestational diabetes diet and after several months of eating protein six times a day, the vegetarian options were starting to get old.

Then, when my daughter was 18-months old, I got a high stress job and starting craving bacon cheeseburgers, even though I hate bacon. So once or twice a month I would eat one.

But all this time, I ate vegetarian at home. And occasionally I'd eat a tuna sandwich. I took vegan cooking courses. And, thanks to the gestational diabetes diet, I was very cognizant of mixing our foods to get protein, calcium, green veggies, orange veggies, fruit, etc. That's when my husband starting calling me the nutrition nazi.

I ventured into cooking some meat while working on the manuscript of my second (yet unpublished) novel. I had the main character cooking. And he's French. And they eat anything they can catch. In order to make the scenes work in the novel, I had to test the recipes. So I did. And I tried to put myself in my main character's shoes. And that's how, even today, I force myself to cook meat.

Now, someone I know who is concerned about us brought me some pork and a three-pound bottom round roast that he found on sale. (A $14 roast for $6) He read my blog entry about my last trip to Wegmans and I guess he feared we were too poor to buy meat (due to my recent unemployment).

I called my mother-in-law and asked how to cook it. She said put it in the crockpot with liquid and carrots. I thought I could handle that.

So my daughter peeled carrots, I got some water and some Wegmans vegetable stock, and the roast was WAY too big for the crock pot.

A facebook poll of my friends led to me cutting it. I added a cup of water and a cup of stock and a hearty few grinds of garlic salt. IT FILLED THE CROCK POT. No room for carrots. I sliced them and put them in my skillet, with stock and water, thinking about 30-40 minutes before dinner, I'll put some meat in there and roast in in the oven.

This better taste damn good. Because it took an hour to get this far.