Beef Stew: turned out delicious!

I'm afraid my beef stew is often a hit or miss kind of thing....it all depends on how good the beef is. today we were lucky: the beef was excellent. i made this one in a slow cooker/crock pot

I started with 1 package of Renee's family's beef (how can you get better than that?) and 1 lb from my local butcher...

• Brown the beef in a heavy skillet. i tried the "blanch 2 pieces of bacon - i had a really thick single piece - to remove the smokey salty taste and then fry it in the pan that you sear your meat in"...but as it was from the local butcher it wasn't very fatty, so i added olive oil.
• remove beef from skillet and put it in slow cooker
• add a bit of flower, salt and pepper to the browned beef and stir so it coats the cubes
• saute 1 onion and 2 cloves of garlic in the skillet (don't clean it first...we are "de-glazing" or whatever....add a bit of red wine (whatever i had on hand...today it was Fuzion)...about 1/2 cup to 1 cup to get all the delicious off of the bottom of the pan...mmmm
• throw the softened onions into the crockpot

now it is time to add the seasonings and water/liquid to the mix:

• i added 1 1/2 or 2 cups of liquid that i reserved from defrosting tomatoes i had frozen. weird, i know. it looked like water but it tasted like tomatoes. i try to use EVERYTHING, so to honour my ingredients. the freezer is one of my best friends.
  
• if you don't have crazy tomato water, just use water, and the stew is better for adding a large chopped tomato
• chop up 3 - 4 carrots and throw 'em in
• cube 4 medium to large potatoes (depends on how much you like potatoes). i've also used tiny potatoes, but today i had 4 gorgeous P.E.I. potatoes that i got as a handout during my trip to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto. awsome!
  
• add salt and pepper and 2 bay leaves. if you like other seasonings, go ahead, but this is a nice plain stew .... as my family is accustomed to eating. mmmm
• this works best when the crock pot is set to the highest (10 hrs) or second highest (8 hrs) setting. the slow cooking makes the cheaper cut of beef very tender.
  
• today i needed it faster than i could get it cooked on the crockpot, so in the last 1/2 hour of cooking, i dumped it into a dutch oven (heavy pot) and cranked on the heat. i added some flour/water solution to thicken the copious amounts of gravy, added frozen peas and corn (really great, actually), and simmered it for 20 min.
  

yum yum good. even picky david (my brother) liked it enough to pack it for his lunch tomorrow!!!