Two - count 'em - two food successes in one day!

Today was a good cooking day. :-) It actually started two days ago... I took our ~2 lbs of chuck roast out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw. The next evening (last night) I trimmed the fat away and cut it into medium-sized pieces, M made a batch of "Big Daddy Rub" (from Aaron McCargo Jr's recipes on Food Network), and we marinaded the beef with the rub and some olive oil in the fridge overnight. Then, early this afternoon I cooked the beef on the stove top in a little more oil just for a few minutes so the outside would be cooked. The remaining marinade was put in the bottom of our slow cooker, and then I added the beef. I made 3 cups of beef broth from buillion cubes, and sauteed two crushed garlic cloves, a chopped small yellow onion, a few chopped carrots and a couple of chopped russet potatoes in the pan with the beef "drippings". I meant to add some celery, but forgot. Then all the veggies along with the beef broth went into the slow cooker at high heat for several hours before turning down to low heat. I think it was cooking about 5 hours before I had my first bowl (yes, I had more than one bowl). The meat was falling-apart tender, and the flavor was great. (Big Daddy Rub is pretty spicey, but it also has some brown sugar in it for sweetness.) Next time I might cut back a little on the rub spices, but not much. I think I'll also cut back on the amount of beef broth, but add another potato and some celery. All in all, though, it was quite good! :-)

Then, tonight I made eclaires! (M helped at several stages.) It turns out that making eclaires is very easy. You start by making a pate-a-choux, which is a type of dough, and then squeeze it through a piping bag (aka, a ziplock back with one corner cut off, in our case) onto the baking sheet (actually, onto parchment paper). Then bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 for another 10 minutes. When they come out of the oven, as quickly as reasonable you should poke a hole in each eclaire to let excess steam out, then they can cool. Meanwhile, we made pistachio pudding (it was the only mix we had) for the filling, and I had melted some semi-sweet chocolate chips with a little milk earlier in the day (to dip pretzels in - also a success). After the chocolate was reheated and the pudding was done, we piped the pudding into each eclaire through the little hole we had made. Then we dipped the eclaires upside-down in the warm chocolate, and had a little desert. Mmmm-Mm! We're thinking of bringing some to our church Community Group tomorrow, but that will require some self-control to make sure they are not all eaten before they have a chance to get there...

I'm now looking forward to making some homemade bread. M makes very good oatmeal bread and cornbread, but I think I need to start with something a little simpler... Will let you know how it turns out!