From time to time, I’ll watch Food Network. Usually, I watch Giada or Ina — sometimes Chopped (usually, while I’m blogging) but rarely anything else. Sunday morning we watched $10 Dinners. I find the host to be quite grating – but Sunday’s episode had several recipes that sounded quite lovely. The episode was called Winter in Provance and had two recipes: Daube a la Provencale and an Orange Olive Oil Cake. We decided to make this for our Sunday dinner. I made the entree and MS made the dessert.
I followed this super easy recipe — except for letting it marinate for 6 hours. That’s just crap. I started cooking this thing at 13h00 and wouldn’t have had enough time to marinate it more than just 2 hours (assuming I wanted to eat dinner on Sunday night). The final product was so good – and will definitely make it into my recipe box. The meat was so tender and flavorful.
I also ran out of red wine vinegar, so I just added some extra red wine and tossed in 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. It seemed to work well. This beef dish is not like a traditional stew — it doesn’t have a thick base, but a watery broth base. The addition of macaroni works surprisingly well. I thought about swapping out the noodles for potatoes (boiled or mashed), but I was afraid this would make it too much like a standard/traditional stew. I’m happy I followed the recipe.

This is the first recipe I’ve made from $10 Dinners. I haven’t done any research on this show, nor have I ever watched a full episode (I didn’t even watch the full version of this episode). But I do have one question – how the hell can this woman make these meals for less than $10? I had most of the items (except the wine or the meat) and it still cost me more than $10. The meat alone was $10.68. Where is this woman chopping: Kansas? Is she slaughtering the cow herself? I don’t get it. It reminds me of Rachel Ray’s 30 Minute Meals — no way in hell those meals take 30 minutes. I stopped watching Rachel about 6 years ago because she just annoyed me so much.
Do you watch $10 Meals? Can you pull these meals together for less than $10? What about that Rachel Ray — can you do her meals in 30 Minutes? Don’t you just love a great stew on a cold winter day? What is your favorite cold weather recipe – something that cooks all day and fills the house with heat and amazing smells? Share your favorite recipe with us all.