Day O'Frustration

We've all had these days, right?

This weekend I had plans. The kind of plans that involve cooking a lot of unrelated things all at the same time because I have lots of different things on my mind. Today's plans revolved around canning soup, making bread, and making cookies. All double batches, mind you.

The only thing that worked as planned was the soup. Somehow I killed the yeast in the bread and the loaves didn't rise, and we ran out of brown sugar for the cookies and the texture was off - probably partly due to using regular sugar and molasses in the place of the brown sugar, and partly due to the "light butter" that has replaced my usual butter blend in the store. NOT buying that again. It's lousy for tadic, too. I couldn't salvage the bread but the cookies are at least edible, even if they don't look the same.

Here's the soup recipe:

Beef, Broccolini and Rice Soup
1 thick slab of prime rib
1 package stew beef & bones
2 leeks, sliced thinly
2 shallots, minced
5 ribs celery, diced
2 cups chopped cooked broccolini
1 package crimini mushrooms, sliced
kosher salt, pepper, bay, thyme
Worcestershire sauce (about 1 T.)
1 large can whole pack tomatoes in puree (about 3.5 cups)
17 cups water
3-4 cups of rice

I browned the stew beef, shallots, leeks and celery in oil and added the tomatoes, water, Worcestershire sauce and spices. This simmered for about an hour and then I removed the bones. I added the prime rib, cubed, and the broccolini and mushrooms. After about another 30 minutes I added the rice, cooked it through, and then canned it. This yielded 14 pints, the maximum the pressure canner holds, and 1 bowl for later. Processed at 10 pounds of pressure for 75 minutes.

They all sealed. That's one food thing that went right. After all that work, we ordered a pizza for dinner.