As I walked along the meat isle at the IGA, I saw some packages of “stew beef”. Most of these packages contained “family” size portions of beef chunks, but I then spied a “REDUCED” sticker on a small package. I looked closer. Only $1.73 total, reduced from about $3.42 and about .83 lbs. of beef chuck. I put the package in my cart, and made a note to try and make sure that I was charged the reduced rate. *I think I noted at the register that I had been charged the lower amount.

There were some dark red chunks of beef visible through the plastic. Once I opened the package, I did see that a few of the chunks were lighter in color. I sifted through the larger chunks, and cut them into smaller pieces.

I did get online to look for “Stew Beef Recipe” and then “Vegetable Beef Soup”. I thought I had thrown away some old (beginning to soften) white potatoes, and when I went looking, sure enough I had no potatoes. Had used the last of the little white potatoes that I bought at Pate’s weeks ago. Vegetable soup without potatoes is lacking, but I wanted to get this meat on the stove.

I braised the beef chunks in the pot, in olive oil. I chopped up some onion and added it to the pot. Added a can of Roasted Garlic diced tomatoes and set all of that to cook for an hour, or more. Added some Agave Nectar, and some Splenda sweetener to the pot, some marjoram, thyme, ground coriander, S&P .

Cut up some carrot, and got a small container of garden peas, lima beans & corn that I had frozen (a long time ago) and thawed that in the microwave. *Went looking for canned corn, and could not find any (small or medium cans), thought I had frozen some from a previous soup, and after digging around did find the Tupperware container in the freezer. The frozen veggies may not add anything to this soup (which is beginning to taste pretty good), but hopefully won’t detract from the flavor.

I also added a few dried Lady Cream Peas, and then thought, “Oh, these may take a long time to soften.” I checked online and if they are soaked, the Lady Cream Peas should soften in about 30 minutes, so not having soaked them, hoped 1 hour cooking time would get them in shape.

It’s about time for me to add the chopped carrots, celery, and thawed-frozen veggies. I’m also going to add a little green bell pepper, and a can of green beans. *It is important to have just the right blend of tomatoes and other veggies in this soup, and I usually know that by taste. Tomatoes need to be a primary flavor, but some green beans and corn can add to the mix.

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I did not add many of the dried Lady Cream Peas to the soup, but they cooked well. I think I would add more of these peas to the next soup, but would probably try to soak them first. I have added Pearled Barley to previous vegetable soups. The Lady Cream Peas are larger than the barley grains, but I think they provide some of the same texture to the final product.