A Week of Recipes for St. Pat's, Thursday -- Guinness Beef Pot Pie with Cheddar-Dill Biscuits

Made in a deep, heavy 8 quart cast iron pot with a  lid  (Dutch oven)

Last year around this time, I made a pot roast with big pieces of butternut squash and halved onions in the oven.  A day later I took the leftovers, including the gravy, and made stew.  Stew from leftovers is definitely an improvement over freshly made stew.   There's a deeper, fuller, and more flavorful rich quality--without question.  It's just that there's usually less than when you make a fresh pot. That stew made very quickly with the addition of more onions, celery, and Guinness stout, etc., was divine.   I mean it, it was an incredible stew. When my boss tasted it (and she's a really good cook), she said, "Alyce cooks for God, you know."

At the top of Dublin's Guinness brewery, there's a 2DIE4 pub...here's one view.

Streamlined Beef Burgundy with Vegetables

 
In St. Paul, there's a high below 1 degree Fahrenheit today.  It was -14 degrees when I got up and pressed the button for coffee this morning.  I stayed home, cried throughout the inauguration, and did what any self-respecting, frozen food blogger would do.  I made beef burgundy...or boeuf bourguignon...  If you can spell it, you can make it.   

The inauguration poet, Richard Blanco's poem, "One Today" was one of the highlights for me.  The other was James Taylor singing "America the Beautiful," of course.  The speech was so, so fine.    

ANYWAY....After all the stir! about Julie and Julia for all that time....and all the hype about boeuf bourguignon, I think we may have come down to earth.  I no longer hear neighbors rolling the name of the dish around their hungry tongues and the Meryl Streep or Amy Adams talk is long past the appetizing roles of Julia and Julie.  For the record, I'd love a whole movie about Julia starring Meryl Streep. Sadly director Nora Ephron last year crossed the river and is now surely writing all kinds of wonderful things God doesn't require her to any longer sell.