I use celery in my base mirepoix for everything. It is a pantry staple along with the basic onions, carrots, potato, garlic. Must be hundreds of pot roast and beef stew recipes. None exactly the same. It does seem to be not only regional, but what ones family heritage is. Commonly a comfort dish on a Sunday and used what vegetables were easily had during off seasons and what stored well. I made a beef stew wednesday and like grainlady i cleared out my veg bin. Last night it became a beef pot pie with even more veg topped with a sliced meyer lemon and used sliced sweet potato and reg potato as the top crust. Oddly enough, having lived in NewOrleans, i've not used or bought green peppers in years but did back then. It is a special purchase when DH makes gumbo. Yet i use roasted red peppers all the time now. "A mirepoix (/mêÃÂrÃÂpwÃÂÃÂ/ meer-pwah; French pronunciation: âÂÂ[miÃÂÃÂpwa]) is a mixture of chopped celery (either common pascal celery or celeriac), onions, and carrots. There are many variants, which may include just one of these ingredients, or include additional aromatics. Mirepoix, raw, roasted or sautéed with butter or olive oil, is the flavor base for a wide variety of dishes, such as stocks, soups, stews and sauces. The three ingredients are commonly referred to as aromatics."

Thanks islay, i will soon make that. A rustic easy prep is my game indeed. I don't have muffin tins of any kind, never have for some reason but will improvise with ramekins? Also late to the party having just spent the weekend harvesting yet again. I just made a wonderful vegetable soup using a smoked chicken stock from the freezer, creating during the drive home 'think tank'.. A nice pureed veg soup of roasted fresh harvest. Tomato. leek, shallot, celery, corn, green beans...had some left-over caramelized onions and half a baby white pumpkin i had roasted. All in the small 2 qrt soup pot when the stock came to heat...Un-packed the truck and it was ready...immersion blender and done. Nice that it did not have oil or any butter or fat at all but so rich with flavor. -I drove and husband snored the entire way home. He was shocked at the speedy outcome but cooking in my head while driving made the trip zippy fast. All the roasted veggies were from last nights dinner and a fresh tomato corn salsa. I don't consider it leftovers as i like to roast and prep soups a day ahead anyway.

Posted by Johnliu: "-----Another way of cooking a roast, definitely fun, is buried in rock salt. No, it doesn't get salty. The salt absorbs heat and transfers it to the meat more effectively than air does, and reduces evaporation of the meat's juices. Just buy 2 lb rock salt, put the roast in a Dutch oven with salt under, over, and all around. ----" That is a very good way to make an extraordinary roast. Basically, the salt layer insulates the heat, allowing the "slow & low" method to take place easier. ---------------------------------------------------- Simple facts "Slow & Low" method addresses: 1. Water boils at 212 F. As long as there is water, you can never go above 212 F, regardless how high you set the temperature. (normal pressure) 2. Meat is a poor conductor of heat. 3. Meat shrinks under high heat and toughens (well-done). 4. Heat can only migrate from high to low and it is not reversible. 5. Meat gets tenderized (collagen denaturing) even at low temperature if cooked long enough. 6. Resting means cold meat. The picture shows a typical roast prepared the typical normal way. No matter how you slice it (PUN?), you generally end up in some degree the following (Which, BTW, to many people that's the way it should be for a perfect ribeye) Zone one - Brown layer (Maillard reaction), Many chefs advise not to char the meat. Browning gives the flavor. Charcoal is not tasty. Also, at higher temperatures, more carcinogenic compounds can be produced. Zone two - well done layer (meat is tough and dry). This is the 212 F to 165 F layer. Zone three - Medium. The 212 F layer of heat travels inward to warn up the colder layer to 145 F. Zone four - Medium rare. The layer is about 135 F. Zone five - Rare. The 212 F finally reaches this layer and warms it to 125 F after a long rest. Meanwhile the 212 F layer is get cold to room temperature from losing heat to the air and to heat the inside of the meat. Zone six - raw, uncooked meat. One problem with "Slow & Low". You produce very little juice, because the meat shrinks very little. The reason for "Low" is ridiculously simple. If the final desired temperature is 125 F, why not just cook at that temperature? The reasons for "slow", well I will let the author Nathan Myhrvold of the $500.00 cook book Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking explain to you why 24 hours is recommended for ribeye. If you just Google his name. And I will also let the famous chef Heston Blumenthal show you in this video how he too cooks low and slow: Here is a link that might be useful: Low & Slow

Although fish boils are very popular around the lake here, I have yet to get to one, it's on my bucket list. I have done salmon or tuna on the grill, frozen fish would be the best thing I could get where I live right now, and considering how expensive it is, not any particular incentive to serve it for entertaining, although I have. And I also love enchiladas and baked ziti or any other type of pasta, but in the summer I like to take full advantage of the grill. I did the kebabs two years ago for a porch party and it was easy peasy to prepare ahead of time and marinate, and easy to serve. Also easy for picky eaters to avoid something they didn't like from the selection. I think I did some type of rice pilaf in an insulated serving dish and I think I made it ahead and reheated. Now I have an instapot which I would use as to avoid heating up the kitchen. I can't remember what I did for sides . . . but I made a whole round two layer frosted cake for dessert (chocolate with almond coconut frosting) served up on my crystal cake stand, and almost no one ate a slice . . . I get so frustrated at how all my friends never eat desserts anymore. I mean I get it, I don't either, which is why I always want to make some nice fancy dessert that I never get to eat when I entertain, for special. And then I end up with a ton of it left over . . . A friend brought fruit salad and that was what folks ate, it was good too. I had a friend over a couple of weeks ago and we just loved noshing on guacamole, hummus and spinach dip on the porch with some store bought sangria. So easy as I bought everything at the deli. But it could also be home made in advance too. Pita and corn chips. I always make some type of chopped salad in the summer, marinating the veggies a bit ahead of time and then serving them over fresh chopped lettuce. So many great combinations. One of my favorites is home grown tomatoes, crumbled bacon, diced avocados over lettuce with whatever else seems good. Or just the tomatoes and other veggies with a green goddess dressing. If you want to stick with a bit of a Mexican vibe, yellow rice with peas makes a tasty and colorful entry. In fact, that may have been what I served last time. It's just rice with tumeric added, and whatever seasonings you like . . . peas optional, just for the color constrast. Could use red onions or red peppers too. Here's an unusual potato salad I like to make in summer for my lighter Mexican meals. I tasted it from the deli at Wegman's once and fell in love with it. I also sometimes make sweet potato salad but find a lot of my friends don't like it even though it looks pretty. If you par boil sweet potatoes they are nice on the grill though. Latin Red Potato and Corn Salad - Recipe from Wegman's Edited to add that I forgot to mention another dish that is always well received, a southwestern black bean and corn salad. Here's a link to one recipe. I'm not sure if it is exactly like the one I got from Annie on CF years ago, but very similar if not exactly the same. https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/all-purpose-southwestern-corn-black-bean-salad