Slow Comfort...

When it starts looking like this outside (see the snow?), I fire up the crock pot.  We're fortunate enough to have electricity and while at the grocery store, I went with my instincts (and thrifty nature) to go for the deeply discounted meat department as opposed to the emergency rations aisle.  Luckily the power stayed on and I didn't have to break out the grill in the middle of a hurricane with snow.

With the beef, I slow-cooked it overnight in a sweet and tangy tomato sauce.  (Think of the sauce as a hybrid between marina and barbecue sauce.)  The extended cook-time over a low heat in combination with the acidity of the tomatoes and the apple cider vinegar, helped keep the meat extremely tender and succulent.

When the sauce is as good as this, I firmly believe in a "flavor-soaker-upper".  My go-to side-dish is rice.  With an Asian mother, every meal was served with rice.  But I wasn't feeling the rice, bread or pasta.  Instead, I made spiced sweet potato fries!  Before baking them, I tossed them in olive oil and dusted them with a combination of brown sugar, corn starch, ground pink peppercorns, cumin, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, and salt.  Eaten as a snack alone, a squeeze of lime over these tasty morsels sends them out of this world!  The blend of flavors of the sweet potato fries and the slow-cooked beef was simply delicious and did well to keep the snowy cold at bay.