Home cooked meals were an every night event for my family as I grew up. We were a family of five so going out to eat was difficult and expensive, but my mom preferred to cook for her family anyways. Throughout my entire childhood, I would always stand on a stool as my mom cooked to observe and learn. Even today I enjoy being in the kitchen as my mother cooks to learn new recipes and tricks. I have many favorite meals, all my mom’s recipes, but the first one that popped into my mind as I read the topic question was beef stew with biscuits and apple pie with ice-cream for dessert. 

 Every year in the fall my mom would make beef stew in the crock pot in the morning and then my family would go apple picking for the day. By the time we got back from apple picking, our dinner would be almost done, and, in the meantime, we would make apple pie with the fresh apples we picked. My mom’s beef stew was the classic beef stew with beef, potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery in a beef broth base. With my mom’s recipe, she starts out by tossing the stew meat in a bowl of flour, salt, and pepper. She then sears the meat in a hot pan with vegetable oil and butter to brown each side, but not to cook it all the way through. She then adds 4 cups of beef broth, seasonings, and 2 bay leaves to the pot and scrapes all the browned bits at the bottom, she tells me they are filled with flavor. The broth is brought to a boil and then turned down to a simmer for an hour. She adds the bite sized chopped potatoes, chopped celery, baby carrots, and finely diced onions into the broth and lets it simmer for another 45 minutes, or until the vegetables are fork tender. To thicken the broth, she adds a mixture of cold water and cornstarch to the pot to simmer. She takes out the bay leaves, so no one chokes on them, and serves it in a bowl.  

 My mom told me, “Beef stew is one of my favorite meals because my mom used to make it and it makes me happy to pass on a comfort food tradition”. My mom grew up with four siblings and was raised by a single mother. Even when her mom, my grandmother, was busy working to single handily provide for her family, she always made sure she had a home cooked meal on the table for her children. My mom has told me stories about how her mom always made comfort meals with any ingredients she had on hand, which is very impressive to do. My grandmother passed away when I was in the third grade, but I remember her making American Chopped Suey quite often, which is also one of my favorite comfort meals. 

 My mom’s love language is acts of service and her main service is cooking, “I love to cook for my family and this meal is how I show my love. Beef stew has all the food groups but is still filling and comforting”.  Before my dad passed away, he would always do the grocery shopping, the kids would bring the groceries in and put them away in the fridge or cabinets, and my mom would cook the meals. Now, I love to go grocery shopping, and I love to cook so occasionally, I will go grocery shopping, come home, put the groceries away, and cook a meal for my mom and me. I love cooking for my mom because I learned it from her. I know it makes her proud that she has passed on the cooking gene to me. My dad did occasionally cook, always lazy meals or meat on the grill, but it was still delicious, and it gave my mom a break from cooking for a night. My dad was picky with vegetables and loved meat, but my mom and I love vegetables, so she had a talent of being able to alter every meal, so we can pick and choose what we want on our own plates. 

 My family consists of very busy individuals so when we got to sit down every night to eat together it helped us stay connected and updated with each other’s lives. We would go around the table and say our highs and lows of the day, share funny stories, tell each other our goals, and overall, just keep each other in the loop. My brother is ten years older than me, and my sister is fourteen years older than me, so they were in and out of the house, but they always found their way back in time to eat my mom’s food with the family. Up until the day my dad passed away, his favorite thing was Sunday family dinners. My dad was a very hard worker. Since he was a teenager, he worked in construction and eventually became a master carpenter. His days started before I woke up and he would work through the scorching heat or the freezing cold, but he did love it no matter how difficult it got. He was great at what he did, and he loved coming home to a warm house, his high school sweetheart, and his children to eat a hot meal. Sunday family dinners consisted of meals that were comforting and “stick to the ribs” as my dad would say. 

 Beef stew is definitely a Sunday family dinner meal. The potatoes and thick broth are filling, the carrots and celery are sweet, the meat is tender, and all together it’s an amazing comfort dish. We always paired our beef stew with the Pillsbury flaky biscuits. It was the perfect meal to accompany a day spent picking apples in the chilly fall weather and the apple pie with ice-cream for dessert just topped it off. My mom would make the pie crust dough and I would make the filling by peeling and spiraling the apples with my grandmother’s old apple peeling machine that stuck to the side of the counter. Then, toss the apple chunks in a cinnamon sugar mixture before baking it in the oven until the crust is golden brown and the apple filling is bubbling. My family’s favorite ice cream brand is Ben and Jerrys so we would have a scoop of their vanilla ice cream with the hot apple pie. Eating dinner with my family every night is absolutely my favorite memory as a child and I will definitely be doing the same with my future family.