Comfort food...

I wanted to make another stew recipe, actually this is one Jeromy tried from before and we liked it, so I wanted to make it. After leaving my mom's yesterday, I went to the grocery store to get a couple ingredients I was missing and then went home to make the stew. Oh ya- after stopping at the post office, bank, gas station and group health to pick up Kent's prescription.... THEN I went home lol!

Once I got home I put 3 different Christmas CD's on and played them on shuffle. Made me think of my mom while cooking. She was listening to Christmas music the morning of her stroke.

So I got some beef chunks from Costco- they have such great meat.

 Then peeled and chopped 5 large carrots....

 Cut up 2 large onions- recipe called for 3 but only 2 were good from the bag I had gotten a while ago...

 Fresh celery chopped. What I love about cooking is that I can cup up everything to the perfect thickness that I like, not too thick or too thin... JUUUUUUST right!

 Six potatoes, normally I don't peel them but I did this time and I'm glad I did cause there were alot of gross brown spots under the skin, cut them all off! Pheww that was close!

 Here it is with all the added spices and 1 cup of water.... seems kinda thick....

 But here it is 12 hours later after the peas were added! Looks great! It cooked all night and when Jeromy woke up for work he added the peas for me. I'm bringing some for my dad tomorrow. We are taking shifts with my mom. I take the morning/early afternoon shift, he takes from early afternoon till after dinner when she's ready for bed. But he's not eating the greatest, so I told him I'd bring some of this delicious homemade beef stew- hope it's not too spicy for him!

It was delicious!

My mom is still doing great- not fast enough for her, but she is amazing all her therapist, nurses and other staff. She did a real flight of stairs yesterday, not the practice stairs in the other picture of about 4 stairs, but a real flight of stairs, there were 21 stairs, she was beat but she did it. Her appetite has been pretty good and she's working really hard in therapy, getting stronger every day. And she's getting stronger in her hand, too, still a long way to go but making progress daily- seriously she is doing something new everyday!

Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers for my mom- you know who you are, and if you don't now you do!!!