Recent backpacking trip

The Manistee River in Central Michigan.

Jake jumping for the sake of jumping.

Insert caption here:

Jake hanging from a bridge for the sake of hanging from a bridge.

If three guys are gay in the woods do you post it on the internet?

Gramma's Beef Barley Soup

I want to apologize for going AWOL from the blog for so long. I only have my apparent abundance of latent gayness as an excuse. Rob gave me the equivalent of an email bitch slap and now here is the requested Gramma Ruth recipe for Beef Barley Soup. I also included a bonus recipe of hers for Meatloaf if you are so inclined.

Beef Barley Soup (quoted exactly as written followed by my additions)

1. Beef (drawing of a tiny circle within a larger circle here) round/ bone in middle
2. soup bones (3 about)
3. brown in a little olive oil
4. put in kettle with celery tops and onions, clove garlic and cook for 2 or 3 hours
5. strain (cut up meat and save)
6. add to broth 1 can beef broth and barley
7. cook 45 minutes or 1 hr. test barley
8. add carrots, celery, zucchini, corn, etc and 1 can diced tomatoes
9. cook just til done
   

Okay, this recipe is actually really good but it needs some splainin. This is for 8 servings.

• The tiny circle within a circle means eye of round, its a cut of meat.
• There are no measurements so I used my own, here they are:
• 4 lbs eye of round (or chuck) cut into 1 inch cubes
• 8 tbsp olive oil
• 8 cups beef stock (add to step 4)
• 3 medium carrots sliced (half for broth, half for soup at step 6)
• 3 ribs celery sliced (half for broth, half at step 6)
• 1 large onions diced
• 1 cup pearl barley
• 1 medium zucchini diced
• no corn, just seemed weird to me
• I also added 1 tsp worcestershire, 1 tsp soy sauce , salt and pepper to step 6
• pearl barley took an hour

Sorry for the long recipe, just thought you'd like to see the original.

Here's the meat loaf recipe. Never made it, mostly because I have my own kick ass recipe.

Meat Loaf (written exactly as she did)

• 1/2 # veal )
• 1/2 # pork } Or the mixture in the store
• 1/2 # beef )
• 3 beaten eggs
• 2 large onions----1/2 green pepper
• 4 c. crumbs (mostly bread)
• 3 c. milk
• 5 tsp salt--1/2 tsp pepper---2tbsp parsley
• 1/2 tsp dry mustard
• 1/4 tsp sage or poultry seasoning
• 1/4 tsp garlic salt
• 350 degrees--1hr---1 1/2 hr

So there you have it. Enjoy and will one of you Smith boys cut and paste this to your mom?

Matt:
Can you post that Grandma beef recipe you mentioned you love the other day? I forget what the dish was...stew? Brisket? Grandmabeef?