I have a confession to make.  In the last two years, two books have profoundly altered the way I think about food.  The first, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, made me rethink diet entirely.  I ended up teaching it, and I'll teach it again.  It's an amazing extended argument about science and health.  I've not found another popular text like it.  I think this book is so important that I've been known to offer cases of beer if people would read just the first five chapters.  Today I offered my sister $10 per chapter (I'm serious, Sarah).  The other one is Eating Animals by Jonathan Saffron Foer.

What's challenging, is that GCBC shows the how bad carbohydrates are for us and EA shows how bad eating meat is for the animals and the planet.  This is clearly a bind.  The solution I'm currently exploring: low-carb vegetarianism.  I am not happy about this, but I've bought the health argument, and now I've been convinced of the moral argument.  Not acting would mean bad faith.  

I'm still working all this out, but the confession is to say: I expect the next few meat recipes will be my last for a while.  At least until I can verify the source of my meat.    

And with that:  Pot Roast!

This Christmas I gave my sister the Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond.  She loved it, and when she wasn't obsessing over it, I stole a few recipes.  This one I've made twice, in two different ways (thus cheating and counting it twice).  The first time I followed it exactly (opening shot).  The second time I didn't have any carrots so I substituted a bunch of turnips and it turned out just as good.  This the easiest and best pot roast recipe I've found.  It should become a staple in your kitchen  

 2-3 T olive oil
kosher salt
2 onions
6-8 carrots (or 6-8 turnips)
pepper
2 or 2 1/2 beef stock
3-4 fresh rosemary sprigs
2-3 fresh thyme sprigs

1. Preheat oven to 275

2. Salt roast

3. Cut onions in half, brown in oil and remove

4. Cut carrots (or turnips) in 2" pieces, brown quickly and remove

5. Brown roast, 1 minute per side

6. Use 1 cup of stock to deglaze the pan

7. Add all ingredients, rest of stock (until roast is half covered), and cook until done (3 hours for 3 lb roast, 5 hours for 5 lb roast)