Stone Stew

Year-End Oddities

It started with a “clean out the ice box before I leave town” exercise. Turned into a delicious “Stone Stew.”

The title of the stuff, Stone Stew, derives from a fractured memory of a tale about a village, in the cold, dark days of winter. Right before the Solstice, the Sun was setting at 4 in the evening. Felt like a good and proper winter, although, the date I started making the stone stew, it was close to 80 outside.

Typical for South Texas — don’t get lulled into a false sense of security — weather that made history?

There was one chicken left over from the boys at the chicken ranch. Then there was a mostly thawed package of bison meat, like ground beef, only, a little more lean. And, as it turned out, that package was a little stringier, too. No idea how long it’s been in the freezer.

There was an old, yellow onion, back of the fruit section, and two, near dead, bell peppers.

Chop the chicken. Fracture the meat, chop veggies. Drop it all in a large skillet, set on low. Add paprika, cumin, cayenne, sea salt, part of a left-over garlic bulb, and let the stuff simmer on “Lo” for the next 12 hours.

Stone Stew.

The tale about the name? Way I recall, a childhood memory, there was a village, cold, dark days of deepest winter, with the archetypical village in Central Europe, pleasant peasants, starving due to the high taxes, or drought in the previous summer. Pull it al together, start a big pot with just a stone, then everyone would cough up a little of this and that, making up a filling feast.

Yeah, loses something in the memory recall.

Unrelated:
The Tube’s birthday?

Remember: Omnia Explorate, Meliore Retinete.

How could I miss that?